Unboxing the Nano from CO Brewing

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Here are some post boil pictures. I ran the water out from the chill plate into coolers and kettles to save for cleaning. As the wort went into there carboy I could see there break material. Eventually I could see my poor element that took forever to clean. When it really got low I could see trub in the tubing and I quickly killed the pump just in time.

I wonder if the whirlpool tube is angled incorrectly. I'm not sure if it should point up, down, or horizontal.

I also wonder if I could get a custom filter to drop in around the pickup tube. It would have to be shaped like a goalie net or something.

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Thanks for the recap. Sounds like a learning experience for sure! Did you use the spreadsheet Tim provides to calculate your water? If so do you think doing 5 vs 10 gallon batch threw it off?

I used to have keggels if you've worked with those was your brew kettle heavier than that?
 
jready said:
Thanks for the recap. Sounds like a learning experience for sure! Did you use the spreadsheet Tim provides to calculate your water? If so do you think doing 5 vs 10 gallon batch threw it off?

I used to have keggels if you've worked with those was your brew kettle heavier than that?
Click to expand...

Spreadsheet? No. I didn't know about that, or I forgot about it. Do you have a link? I used the BrewBoss profile from BeerSmith as a template. Then I also used Priceless BIAB calculator. Today I looked at some previous BeerSmith profiles and I think I need to adjust my evaporation rate and/or my post boil trub amount. The last time I brewed the recipe I had a total water volume of 8.8 instead of the 8.3 from this session. Had I just added that .5g it probably would have worked out.

I never worked with keggles so I can't really say about the comparison. It probably isn't really that bad but compared so a run of the mill 10g Polarware it is a big jump. My guess is this is equal to those who base their builds on something like the Kal electric brewery design which IIR has 15g Blichmann kettles.
 
Looks like 9 gallons give or take would have gotten you close. You will get it all dialed in within a couple brew sessions.
 
pretzelb said:
Spreadsheet? No. I didn't know about that, or I forgot about it. Do you have a link? I used the BrewBoss profile from BeerSmith as a template. Then I also used Priceless BIAB calculator. Today I looked at some previous BeerSmith profiles and I think I need to adjust my evaporation rate and/or my post boil trub amount. The last time I brewed the recipe I had a total water volume of 8.8 instead of the 8.3 from this session. Had I just added that .5g it probably would have worked out.

I never worked with keggles so I can't really say about the comparison. It probably isn't really that bad but compared so a run of the mill 10g Polarware it is a big jump. My guess is this is equal to those who base their builds on something like the Kal electric brewery design which IIR has 15g Blichmann kettles.
Click to expand...

Tim sent me the spreadsheet, I am new to forums but would be happy to email it to you if you'd like. basically you just plug in a couple of fields and it tells you how much water to use.

Thanks for the answers on the other questions, my old system that I had before I got out of brewing for a while was a Sabco Brewmagic, those keggles were not only heavy but awkward because of how tall the stand was. You spent a good deal of the day on a step ladder and I am 6' 1"!
 
Pretzleb,

Sorry to hear about your maiden voyage frustrations. I bought the 20 gal single vessel system and got it delivered right at Christmas. For various reasons, I wasn't able to brew on it until recently. I have 2 brews under my belt so far and things couldn't have gone slicker for me. Let me chime in on some things that I have found.

I had a devil of a time getting my PID dialed in. Operational parameters given through autotune were worthless. Those values gave me unacceptable overshoots and undershoots and poor convergence on SV. I had to manually tune it and got a lot of help from Tim. I bet I ran close to 30 wet tests trying to dial things in (not fun). The PID on my rig is a 2362 and I bet yours is too although it may be rebranded with CBS logo. I ended up using P = 0.2, I = 350, d = 20, and SouF = 0.7. If you aren't getting the temp control you want, try those values. They work pretty good for me.

My final volumes have been off a bit as well. That just takes some familiarity with the system to figure it out. On my second brew, I weighed the empty mesh basket, mesh basket with dry grain, and basket with wet grain after draining. I just used a luggage scale, but that's close enough for me. I calculate absorbed / entrapped wort at 0.06 gal/lb. Boil off rate is dependent upon how robust your boil is and your guess is as good as mine. I expect to be closer to intended final volumes using this absorption rate on my next brew.

Clean up is a breeze for me. I brew in a dedicated basement "Beer Kitchen" with a floor drain and utility sink right at hand so that makes things really easy. I went to Walmart and bought a cheap utility tub with handles that my mesh basket fits inside of. After draining the grains, I just lower the mesh basket into the tub and set it aside for disposal later. I flush mesh basket and hop basket with a garden hose. When I'm finished brewing, I flush lines, pump, and CFC until they run clear. I wipe out brew kettle and re-assemble everything as if I'm going to brew again. Then I re-circulate hot Oxi Clean through the system for an hour or so. Set the PID to about 135 to keep things hot and run it like a washing machine. Last brew day was 4 hours from power on to Oxi Clean recirc. Major improvement over my old 3 vessel, 3 tier Orange Depot Cooler and Keggle rig.

On my first brew, I noticed a lot of fine material had escaped the mesh basket. That was my fault. I stirred the mash frequently during the mash and mash out. I just couldn't help myself. I like to stir the mash. On my second brew, I only stirred the mash a couple of times and left it alone during mash out. I think that gave the mash a chance to kind of set up a filter bed and capture most of those fines. From here on out, I wont stir during mash out.

All in all, I'm really happy with the system. My efficiencies are right in line with what I had been getting on my old system, so no need to tweak recipes. The support that I've gotten from Tim has been outstanding. I just wish that I had gone to single vessel electric brewing a long time ago.

Good luck on your next brew!
 
Another thing that I have noticed is that my strike temp has been too high. I use an online calculator to figure strike temp with water to grain ratio as a variable. Strike temp comes out to be about 8 or 9 degrees above mash temp (I think). I don't see much of a rapid drop from strike temp to mash temp when I mash in. I'm thinking that next time I'll use a strike temp of about 4 degrees above mash temp and see how that works.
 
cyclonebeer said:
On my second brew, I weighed the empty mesh basket, mesh basket with dry grain, and basket with wet grain after draining. I just used a luggage scale, but that's close enough for me. I calculate absorbed / entrapped wort at 0.06 gal/lb.
Click to expand...

Quick q on this. (Someone chime in here if this is crazy talk.)

If you do a mass balance around an individual grain, the grain takes on some water, but it also gives up some starch to the surrounding water outside the grain. Did you account for the fact that this starch was extracted from your grain, making it weigh less? My understanding is that your actual absorption rate would be higher than you calculated if not.
 
Yeah I'm going to have to figure something out when I clean my 40 gallon CO brewpot. Thinking of using my electric hoist to lift it and tippy dump it over the sink.

pretzelb said:
Finally, a few quick pictures showing clean up. The hard part was scrubbing the kettle over on the lawn. Man that thing is heavy. Too big to clean by the utility sink.
Click to expand...
 
TexasWine said:
Quick q on this. (Someone chime in here if this is crazy talk.)

If you do a mass balance around an individual grain, the grain takes on some water, but it also gives up some starch to the surrounding water outside the grain. Did you account for the fact that this starch was extracted from your grain, making it weigh less? My understanding is that your actual absorption rate would be higher than you calculated if not.
Click to expand...

I calculate the weight of absorbed / entrapped wort. I then convert that weight to a volume. If you use the unit weight of water (8.33 lb/gal) or figure a unit weight of wort at the specific gravity of your runnings, I would think that the difference in calculations to be minor to insignificant - especially since my sight glass is probably only accurate to +/- .25 gallons or so. At any rate, .06 gal / lb should get me closer than using something like .1 gal / lb.
 
cyclonebeer said:
I calculate the weight of absorbed / entrapped wort. I then convert that weight to a volume. If you use the unit weight of water (8.33 lb/gal) or figure a unit weight of wort at the specific gravity of your runnings, I would think that the difference in calculations to be minor to insignificant - especially since my sight glass is probably only accurate to +/- .25 gallons or so. At any rate, .06 gal / lb should get me closer than using something like .1 gal / lb.
Click to expand...

Agreed, the degree of accuracy is limited by the weakest chain in the link, in most of our cases it's the sight glass. But for with the luggage scale and a measurement of the specific gravity, you shouldn't need the sight glass, right?

Also agreed that using a value that's close to your actual absorption is going to get you in the ballpark.

Just now I found an interesting read on this topic from Ray Daniels book Designing Great Beers. According to him, "it is safe to assume that the postmash grain mass is about 40% of the weight of the grain you added."

I've never done these calcs until now, but curiosity has gotten the better of me today. Below are a couple of screen shots. I did the math, I believe as you did, weighing the grain before and after and calculating a volume absorbed based on that. Then I did the calc again taking into account the weight lost by the grain. The answer was surprising.

At the end of the day, the goal is to use a number that works with our individual processes and systems. So if 0.06 gal/lb gets you there, that's fantastic. I just wanted to go through the exercise, mostly to prove to myself what the impacts are of the two calculation methods.

Ray Daniels quote first, then the calcs below.

DesigningGreatBeers - Grain Water Absorption.PNG


Grain Absorption Calc Comparison.PNG
 
I will check tonight but I believe the spreadsheet account for grain absorption at a rate that cobrew has accounted for.

I have had too many issues with site glasses in the past so I just use a Home Depot yard stick that I've pre marked based on measuring water in the kettle. Probably not spot on but seems to work decently.
 
cyclonebeer said:
I had a devil of a time getting my PID dialed in. Operational parameters given through autotune were worthless. Those values gave me unacceptable overshoots and undershoots and poor convergence on SV. I had to manually tune it and got a lot of help from Tim. I bet I ran close to 30 wet tests trying to dial things in (not fun). The PID on my rig is a 2362 and I bet yours is too although it may be rebranded with CBS logo. I ended up using P = 0.2, I = 350, d = 20, and SouF = 0.7. If you aren't getting the temp control you want, try those values. They work pretty good for me.
Click to expand...

This is one option I'm seriously considering, however this has me concerned. I want to buy something that works out of the box. One of the main features I want is to be able to accurately maintain mash temperatures. Sounds like this system might have an issue doing that. Has anyone else experienced this problem with the system?
 
I had hoped to brew again today but one drawback to electric is it might be a problem if a storm knocks out your power.

I had not thought to look at the absorption rate. I will try to do that today.

I did an auto tune on the PID and it seemed to be much better. I have a feeling it will still need adjusting with grain and the recirculation running. But it should be improved.

I'm also going to skip the pre chiller since I think the ground water is cool enough. Still not 100% sure on the plate chiller but I have to keep trying.

I so happy to hear others sharing their experiences with this setup. I might start another thread on the topic. I have so many questions from some posts in this thread.

Now if the lightning will just go away.
 
jready said:
I will check tonight but I believe the spreadsheet account for grain absorption at a rate that cobrew has accounted for.

I have had too many issues with site glasses in the past so I just use a Home Depot yard stick that I've pre marked based on measuring water in the kettle. Probably not spot on but seems to work decently.
Click to expand...

I had a similar thought so I tried to find a large stainless steel ruler. It turns out they aren't easy to find without cork on the back and without ink for numbers.
 
molson said:
This is one option I'm seriously considering, however this has me concerned. I want to buy something that works out of the box. One of the main features I want is to be able to accurately maintain mash temperatures. Sounds like this system might have an issue doing that. Has anyone else experienced this problem with the system?
Click to expand...

This is my first experience with a PID controller but I can't imagine they are very different. My guess is any system that uses a pump and a controller is going to require some getting used to and adjustment. I suspect most people leave the gory details out when they talk about the adjustments. But maybe someone knows about a system that requires no work at all?
 
PADave said:
That whole system looks like a PITA.
Click to expand...

Shrug. I'm not sure how to make an electric 10g capacity BIAB recirc system that would be easier. Unless I took away features and then it amounts to trade offs. To each his own I guess.
 
pretzelb said:
This is my first experience with a PID controller but I can't imagine they are very different. My guess is any system that uses a pump and a controller is going to require some getting used to and adjustment. I suspect most people leave the gory details out when they talk about the adjustments. But maybe someone knows about a system that requires no work at all?
Click to expand...

I just would think that it would come already tuned and calbriated. I'm also considering the BrewEasy and haven't seen anything online or in the manual about having to manually tune the PID on it. I really like this this system just has one pot, but this is kind of scaring me off now.
 
molson said:
I just would think that it would come already tuned and calbriated. I'm also considering the BrewEasy and haven't seen anything online or in the manual about having to manually tune the PID on it. I really like this this system just has one pot, but this is kind of scaring me off now.
Click to expand...

Hopefully one of the electrical experts can chime in. I would think all controllers need to be tuned. And for someone to do that for you they'd have to fill it with water and run the cycle. And then dry it and package it. I can't see anyone doing that.

Edit - FWIW, to tune a PID you fill with water, pick a water temperature, then press and hold one button until a certain light turns on. That's it. Hardest part is reading the manual while using your phone.
 
Last edited:
pretzelb said:
Hopefully one of the electrical experts can chime in. I would think all controllers need to be tuned. And for someone to do that for you they'd have to fill it with water and run the cycle. And then dry it and package it. I can't see anyone doing that.

Edit - FWIW, to tune a PID you fill with water, pick a water temperature, then press and hold one button until a certain light turns on. That's it. Hardest part is reading the manual while using your phone.
Click to expand...

Not an electrical expert, but I did take a process control class in college and work with process control engineers on a somewhat frequent basis to help figure out the best way to control process systems. Here's what I THINK I know...

With a PID control loop, the optimal parameters for P, I and D are very specific to that system. And when I say system, in this context I mean not only your equipment (dimensions, wetted surface area per volume,etc.), but also the volume of water used, the amount of grain used, the type of grain used, the rate of circulation, length of hoses, atmospheric temperature, wind speed, maybe others.

When your grain bill changes, the optimal values for P, I and D change. When you different amounts of water and different water/grist ratios, same thing. When it's especially cold/hot/windy outside, if you have lower circulation rates during the mash (I run my pump throttled way back).

But, what most folks do in the home brewing world is run the auto-tune feature using only water, most likely with their pumps running wide open, maybe even in their climate controlled kitchen. The controller does its thing and assigns the values based on that. And it would control beautifully if that's how we brewed beer.

Technically, optimal P, I and D values are different for each brew session. But hopefully the values arrived at during the auto-tune, with water only, will get us close enough so that we don't over/under shoot the temps we want. We can get closer to optimal P, I and D values by running the auto-tune feature during a brew session with a "typical" grain bill. Again, it won't be perfect for every brew session, but it would be closer than just using water and running everything wide open!

Hopefully this helps. And hopefully someone with more expertise than me will chime in if I've said anything that's off base.
 
Ack. 2nd brew day didn't go as bad as first but still not hitting numbers. I need to collect my notes and try and get help on dialing in where I went wrong. Hopefully the beer tastes good because it smelled great.
 
pretzelb said:
Ack. 2nd brew day didn't go as bad as first but still not hitting numbers. I need to collect my notes and try and get help on dialing in where I went wrong. Hopefully the beer tastes good because it smelled great.
Click to expand...

I'm sure it will! Where did you find the manual for the PID? Guessing I will need to auto tune mine when it arrives!
 
jready said:
I'm sure it will! Where did you find the manual for the PID? Guessing I will need to auto tune mine when it arrives!
Click to expand...

I just found one on the Auber site that looked the same.

Tuning should definitely help. I should have done it while I was first running a test with water to clean.
 
pretzelb said:
Ack. 2nd brew day didn't go as bad as first but still not hitting numbers. I need to collect my notes and try and get help on dialing in where I went wrong. Hopefully the beer tastes good because it smelled great.
Click to expand...

OK, I think I found one problem. I might be underestimating my losses from hoses and the plate chiller but the big one was the grain absorption rate for BIAB. The defaults assume you squeeze the bag and thus get more back than normal methods. I can't squeeze the mesh basket so the estimates were off by around 1/2 gallon. My boil off rate of 1.75 might be a bit low too.
 
Hey @pretzelb, when doing a 5 gallon batch in the 20 gallon kettle, how much wort is under the basket? I got my kettle/basket last week (not the rest of the system) and I'm worried I effectively won't be able to do low gravity 5 gallon batches.
 
Glad to see you are starting to dial in your system a little more. It will take a few brews but you will get there! Auto tune worked for me and my system ( I have a Kal clone and have pid's also) and my temps never over shoot and are always held at the temp I set it at once it gets there. Also using a longer hose in the mash tun, to go around the circumference of the kettle, will help to keep the wort recirculating through the entire grain bed. Keep plugging away at it, and lots of luck! :mug:

John
 
pretzelb said:
OK, I think I found one problem. I might be underestimating my losses from hoses and the plate chiller but the big one was the grain absorption rate for BIAB. The defaults assume you squeeze the bag and thus get more back than normal methods. I can't squeeze the mesh basket so the estimates were off by around 1/2 gallon. My boil off rate of 1.75 might be a bit low too.
Click to expand...

According to the spreadsheet Tim sent me boil off rate should be 1.81 on the 20 gallon system. Grain absorption rate is .1.
 
jlongstreet said:
Hey @pretzelb, when doing a 5 gallon batch in the 20 gallon kettle, how much wort is under the basket? I got my kettle/basket last week (not the rest of the system) and I'm worried I effectively won't be able to do low gravity 5 gallon batches.
Click to expand...

If it's really low gravity you might want to do 10g. The kettle is about 18.75" tall. The basket is about 15" tall. That should leave 3.75" below the basket but it looks less. The element reaches up to 2" high in the kettle.

I guess it depends on how much water you use.
 
30Bones said:
I still plan on doing 6 or 12 into the fermenter once I get this to ensure I get 5 into a keg.
Click to expand...

One thing I need to nail down is the liquid height. I am going to get a stainless steel ruler and start taking notes on the levels. I was close last time but I forgot you need to adjust for temperature. I found a formula for that, just need to include it in my brew day.
 
30Bones said:
Does it not have a site glass or etched gallon marks inside the kettle?
Click to expand...

No etching. It does have a sight glass (not labeled of course) but I think the ruler might be more accurate. For me it seems easier to read. Once I'm more confident in the levels on the sight glass I need to get some peel and stick numbers. Right now I just have tape as a temp solution.

In hindsight, an etched kettle for height (inches) is probably ideal. The sight glass is great to make sure the pump doesn't starve during mash.
 
I'm likely going to etch mine with gallon markers, although that won't really help in the mash, since you won't be able to see them through the basket.
 

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