Sanity check

Wow, nice save on the CMOS. Glad to hear it's worked out. Now, before you do anything else...BACK UP YOUR DATA!!! I'm sorry, but I lost a 17 page research paper once to a corrupted sector. Since then I back up the system, and backup all my school and work related stuff online through school. I just can't have that happen again.

With the recipe, I'm using great western for the base malt, so your pale malt will be just fine. For the rye I'd sub 2lbs of rolled and up the base malt by a pound to compensate. As far as the crystal rye, just go with half a pound of some crystal/carmel 100ish barley. That will get you most of the way there, and if you decide that you like the dry, spicy rye flavor just up the amount next time. As far as hops, I chose glacier because they're my current favorite, and the spicyness plays really well with the rye, but I imagine it'd be great with any spicy/earthy hop variety that you have handy. Let me know what you do and how you like it. I'm always interested in improving my recipes.

Back on topic, I rebuilt the RIMS and it's leak free. I also fixed the one pinhole leak in the MT/LT. Just doused it in flux and heated it back up until the solder flowed again. I ran a batch of oxyclean through it. The MT/LT started at 52, and it got up to 175 in about 35 mins with the pump going full guns. I moved that over to the BK and had a nice rolling boil at 100% in about 15 mins. I'm now running a batch of water through it, and will do the same again tomorrow. I'm continuing to iron out the kinks before I actually put grain into it.

When I rebuilt the RIMS I flipped ends, and oriented the input horizontally to facilitate draining and keep air out of the tube. It's much easier to use in this configuration, and with the ball valve on the input I'm able to keep it flooded to prevent dry firing the element. I had some issues this time getting the element far enough into the 2"x1" reducer bushing to get a good seal with the gasket. I'm considering tapping the thread to NPS on that bushing so I can tighten it down all the way and really sandwich the box. Has anyone done this? How hard is it to get a 1" tap into a stainless bushing that's currently cut for NPT? Where would I go to have it done? I'd hate to spend $$$ on a 1" tap that I'm only going to use once only to find out that I can't turn it in by hand.

Here's the new RIMS setup:


And here's the rig doing a water run, the CP's inside, the rest is on the patio:


Here's 14ish gallons of water at full boil on 65% pwr:


One last question for tonight, what settings does everyone use for their BK that's controlled by an Auber PID? I have it on manual at 100% to get to a boil, then 60% to maintain, but it cycles between a crazy boil when the 5500w is on and nothing when it's off. Right now the cycle time is 2s, which seems to be the minimum. Is this what everyone else runs? Since it's uninsulated and ambient was around 50 today I'm probably using a lot more power than I need to, but I want to get a couple beers in the fermenter before I actually polish and insulate the kegs, just in case I decide to make changes after a bit of getting used to one another.

In my system (Omega PID), I had to decrease cycle time to 1 second before I could no longer see an on/off in the boil. Are you sure the minimum cycle time is 2 sec? The minimum on my PID is 0.3 sec.

stevehaun said:

In my system (Omega PID), I had to decrease cycle time to 1 second before I could no longer see an on/off in the boil. Are you sure the minimum cycle time is 2 sec? The minimum on my PID is 0.3 sec.

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Hmm, from what I read in the owner's manual the SSR cycle time should be set at 2s, which is the minimum. I'm assuming that's an absolute sort of thing, but I dunno, this is my first PID controlled system.

On another note, I just took 14 gal from 165 to boiling in 13 min in the BK, so that's exciting. I'm sure this will improve with insulation, but right now it looks like the 5.5 kW elements might be a bit overkill. The high/low selector in the RIMS works really well. I autotuned it on high, but it holds temp great on low, even with no insulation. I was planning on re-running the autotune after I shorten my hoses and add the insulation, since I'm guessing it'll overshoot pretty bad once I decrease the heat loss.

One other thing, the Auber timer counter is nice looking, but not the most user friendly thing in the world. Setting the time etc is kind of a hassel with just the two buttons. As far as I can tell the pause button is not maintained. Unless I'm doing something wrong with it, it only seems to pause when it's held down. If this is the case then I'm going to add in a 2 pos NO selector to pause the timer. I've got an extra lying around from the build. I kind of wish I'd gone with the one Kal used in his build now.

I keep thinking we should make a sticky or a Wiki for PID settings. I just haven't taken the initiative to do it.

I got the bug yesterday and put the new rig to use. Did 5 gallons of the RPA. I'm still waiting on the FB for my BK to come in, but as I was searching the house for a hop sack I saw my vegetable steamer and said oh what the hell. It fit past the element just fine, and did a great job of keeping hops and break out of the fermenter.

A couple questions, though. I was having real problems with recirculation. I tried running it at about half throttle on the pump, but that carved a serious channel in the grainbed. I'm using the coiled silicone hose for a return. When I throttled the pump back to a low enough flow that it wasn't cutting into the grain the flow was so low that the RIMS had some serious overshoot problems. (boiled the tube once). So how fast does everyone recirculate during the mash? How have other people solved the return line problem, short of making a diffuser of some sort? Is there anything wrong with going fast recirculating, assuming I can fix the channeling problem? I had the pump open all the way during steps from 122 to 152 and 152 to mashout and it didn't get stuck.

On a side note, I didn't time how long the steps took, but with the element on high and the pump running full bore they were FAST, surprisingly fast actually. I was monitoring temps in the middle, the edge, with the MT/LT thermometer and taking the average of them as the mash temp. The middle was about 2 F higher than the edge or the built in termometer. The RIMS was running about 2 F higher than the mash temp, which was expected.

Here's the mash:


And here's the boil:


All in all it was an awesome brew day. I scooped out the grain and hops when done then pulled the FB's, took off the clovers, and hosed the kegs out. Easiest cleanup ever... Put the clovers back on and recirculated PBW for 20 mins, then water for 20 and done.

Turning the kegs upside down and using tri-clovers is an awesome idea. Really makes clean up a snap.

stevehaun said:

Turning the kegs upside down and using tri-clovers is an awesome idea. Really makes clean up a snap.

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Well, it wasn't my idea at all, SS put it in my head when I first started this thread. It is awesome, though, having a 2" dump to just flush the last bits of grain and hops from.

On a side note, I picked up my FB for the kettle today, so no more vegetable steamer. Right now I've got ingredients for a batch of Moose Drool clone and a robust porter. Problem is that I've got approximately 0 empty fermenters, 0 empty kegs, and half a case of empty bottles. If only I could drink more, I could brew more. Stupid beer's getting in the way of my brewing.