After much reading and research and starting off with a crazy design that accomplished everything in the most roundabout way possible, I've finally settled on this. If anyone wants to look it over and share advice/critique/whatever, I'd be much appreciative.
Currently I have a single tier structure with three banjo burners and two pumps that I've been manually brewing with for a while now. This is a basic overview of a completely automated system I'm about to construct using the Brewtroller.
I started off planning a 2 pump HERMS and evolved to what you see here. HERMS to RIMS greatly simplified the required plumbing and cost-wise is comparable. I understand the concerns with scorched wort, but using a burner to heat the water and then using the tube to maintain temperature with a low density element should be fine. I'm not expecting to be able to significantly step up the temperature of the mash with this setup but am considering adding a burner to the MLT for direct fire in the future to do that (with a rapid recirculation).
I added an additional pump because it eliminated a valve and essentially isolated each process into its own system. While this simplifies it, it reduces flexibility (no decoction essentially). On that note, if anyone has an opinion on decoction vs. direct fire step mashing simply from the standpoint of an automated system, I'm curious to hear thoughts.
Anyway, on to the description. The setup is pretty straight forward...
1. Fill HLT with strike water, begin heating and recirculating
2. Pump strike water to MLT and recirculate to warm up the equipment. Heat using RIMS tube if necessary
3. Add grain and continue to recirculate
4. Fill HLT with sparge water and heat
5. Pump wort from MLT to BK and begin heating
6. Pump sparge water to MLT and recirculate
7. Pump wort to BK and boil
8. Recirculate wort through chilling loop to sanitize
9. Cut heat and begin water flow through chiller
A few notes...
-I'll be manually disconnecting the chiller-out line to fill the fermenter. Trying to sanitize a valve to automate it is way too much trouble (unless someone has a good idea...)
-The valve between the HLT and MLT isn't really necessary, I just did it to agitate the water in the HLT and get a better temperature reading. Is this overkill?
-I'm not expecting the flow meters to be extremely accurate, but I think they should be decently close.
-Each vessel will have a thermowell/couple and then the other two thermocouples will be in-line.
Thanks in advance!
Currently I have a single tier structure with three banjo burners and two pumps that I've been manually brewing with for a while now. This is a basic overview of a completely automated system I'm about to construct using the Brewtroller.
I started off planning a 2 pump HERMS and evolved to what you see here. HERMS to RIMS greatly simplified the required plumbing and cost-wise is comparable. I understand the concerns with scorched wort, but using a burner to heat the water and then using the tube to maintain temperature with a low density element should be fine. I'm not expecting to be able to significantly step up the temperature of the mash with this setup but am considering adding a burner to the MLT for direct fire in the future to do that (with a rapid recirculation).
I added an additional pump because it eliminated a valve and essentially isolated each process into its own system. While this simplifies it, it reduces flexibility (no decoction essentially). On that note, if anyone has an opinion on decoction vs. direct fire step mashing simply from the standpoint of an automated system, I'm curious to hear thoughts.
Anyway, on to the description. The setup is pretty straight forward...
1. Fill HLT with strike water, begin heating and recirculating
2. Pump strike water to MLT and recirculate to warm up the equipment. Heat using RIMS tube if necessary
3. Add grain and continue to recirculate
4. Fill HLT with sparge water and heat
5. Pump wort from MLT to BK and begin heating
6. Pump sparge water to MLT and recirculate
7. Pump wort to BK and boil
8. Recirculate wort through chilling loop to sanitize
9. Cut heat and begin water flow through chiller
A few notes...
-I'll be manually disconnecting the chiller-out line to fill the fermenter. Trying to sanitize a valve to automate it is way too much trouble (unless someone has a good idea...)
-The valve between the HLT and MLT isn't really necessary, I just did it to agitate the water in the HLT and get a better temperature reading. Is this overkill?
-I'm not expecting the flow meters to be extremely accurate, but I think they should be decently close.
-Each vessel will have a thermowell/couple and then the other two thermocouples will be in-line.
Thanks in advance!