Steam injection boiling anyone?

[bakins]

I know several folks use steam for mash temperature control. Has anyone tried using steam injection for boiling?

Reference : http://hbd.org/brewery/library/SteInjCS1295.html

Not sure how pragmatic it would be, but when has that stopped any of us?

 

[Sawdustguy]

If you are talking about steam, Kevin (kladue) is your man. He is a whiz at this stuff and a really great guy to boot.

 

[jds]

Steam is powerful stuff, and a great way to dump a lot of heat into a system quickly. It seems like you'd have a hard time with beers that need to boil down to final gravity, since steam injection condenses water into the boiler.

 

[TXCrash]

Steam is powerful stuff, and a great way to dump a lot of heat into a system quickly. It seems like you'd have a hard time with beers that need to boil down to final gravity, since steam injection condenses water into the boiler.

Which is a good and a bad thing depending on which you're brewing

Sparge (or top off) to exact volume you wish to have post boil. No carmelization from the burner.

Great for light beers, not so great for heavy beers or those who's flavor profile depends on malliard reactions.

My long term brew plans involve a 2 burner setup - one for the boil kettle and one for the steam generator. Boils will be by steam, propane, or both depending on what is being brewed.

 

[kladue]

If you want to try boiling with steam try injecting steam into your immersion chiller and drain the condensate into a bucket or on the ground. This is a copy of the method used in most of the commercial multi barrel boil kettles. The large scale systems use steam @100 PSI /350 degrees in a stainless pipe coil and use a steam trap to maintain pressure inside coil and only release condensate. You should be able to reach a boil with 5-10 psi steam but will find that generating enough steam will be a major problem, it would be much easier to direct fire the boil kettle with a burner than trying to make enough steam.
I would advise against direct steam injection as the wort volume would increase,(steam injected would equal water evaporated plus heat losses), and the ability to inject steam at low flow rates into liquid quietly is not easy.
Make a flash boiler for water heating and steam for steam injection into pumped wort and you could get by with one burner under boil and one under boiler like my old system and the new phase 2 automated system.
Here is a commercial example of steam coil heating on page 5 of this linkhttp://www.langhambrewery.co.uk/tour.php