Does anyone using this set up have hard numbers on how long it takes to raise the mash heat (10 gallon batch) from 150 to 170 as an example. On my system it struggled with getting that hot. Am I asking too much of it or do I have an issue? Eventually I pumped in a bit of hotter sparge water to help out.
I am speaking from limited experience here as I just built my system and have been testing this past weekend.
First, for reference, I have a 5500 low density element running 220V through 2" stainless Steel. I am using an Auber PID with fuzzy logic (the $44.50 one I believe).
I have yet to been able to set up the PID to step mash or to "ramp" as people call it by using the PID function of the controller, what I can do though is run the RIMS system in manual mode (% of time vs. cycle rate PID function= t), and the temperature climbs quite fast, I am sure you will not have any trouble going from 150 to 170 in a ten gallon batch. Where the trouble lies is in programming it to say, not heat any water/wort hotter than 170. It will be about 10 degrees hotter than the existing temp in the mash tun depending on how fast you circulate and what % setting you set in manual mode. At first this alarmed me because I thought that I would not be able to safely heat up to set temps without overshoot in the tube, but in reality this doesn't matter because dec. mashes work by taking some amount of wort out, heating it to boiling then returning to the mash tun and stirring to bring the entire mash to a new temperature.
Once you reach your new temp. simply run the PID controller in Autotune to maintain temperature, then sparge when you are ready.
The really cool part is when you use an element as powerful as I am and others have, you can heat your sparge water on the fly
!!!
This may not work for everybody (cold ground water) but here in sunny California, I can take ground water in the high 50's and heat it to 170ish by just controlling the flow through the RIMS with a gate valve on my water hose (after going through filtration of course).
This opens up a world of possibilities, namely, not having an HLT and having a true two vessel system (think Brutus 20) with having the ability to fly sparge your grains so your effeciency doesn't suffer (not to say that some Brutus 20 guys don't pull down good efficientcy).
Bottom line, if you have any hesitation left, let it go, this system is bad a$$. :rockin: