New sparge arm... Cleaning CPVC for mash?

So I made a sparge arm finally:

I'm still not 100% on the design, especially since the parts are cheap enough that I can make a different one for dirt cheap. I might try one with no pipe-end outlets, but rather a series of drilled holes in an otherwised closed ring of pipe. We'll see when I get a chance to try it out, anyway.

The vertical section is slip fit for now, and will go through the lid of my MLT cooler. I've got a metal collar with set screw on its way which I will put on there to hold it at the right height so that the outlets are just below the liquid surface during recirc (and during fly sparging, if I ever get around to trying that) It's assembled with the standard purple CPVC cleaner and orange CPVC cement. Thus, everything should be safe for potable water and good to at least 180 degrees.

Anything I need to know about preparing it for use? Once it's entirely dried (no more solvent smell) I was probably going to stick it in a pot of water and hold it at 170ish for a while, just in case there's anything left that wants to dissolve, and then give it a good hot water flush.

I let mine soak in Oxiclean for a day.

FSR402 said:

I let mine soak in Oxiclean for a day.

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Good call. I use oxiclean or UBC for so many other things, not sure why I didn't jump to that idea for this too. I suppose anything UBC won't take off, isn't likely to come off in a mash either

The way I see it is that everything you used is food safe so just a good wash should be all is needed..

I like your idea with the 90's as your water out. When I made mine I over did it on the hole drilling so the water hardly comes out or it's coming out to fast. I'm going to redo mine this winter some time. I think I'll try out your way.

I did the ring with holes in it. Works fine but with your design, no grain chunks can plug any holes. As long as you have a valve to throttle the flow, your design will work just fine. You don't want the holes to be your limiting factor for flow or they will be spraying all over causing turbulence.

Linc

Well, I use a braid, so there are really never any significant grain chunks in the wort to clog anything (unless I managed to damage the braid during the mash, but then the sparge arm clogging wouldn't be my only problem)

The one problem with the 90 degree outlets is that since they are each large enough for full flow, if the thing is held above the liquid surface, and isn't completely level (which is likely impossible since it's not built perfectly true anyway) nearly all of the wort comes out of just one or two ports, and would probably lead to immediate channeling. As long as it stays submerged it should be fine, but I would always have to be careful to make sure.

With distributed, smaller holes, no matter what I would get SOME dispersion of the exiting wort even if the sparge arm wasn't submerged. My pump is pretty small - it's a march pump, but a much smaller version than the 809's that most people use. It pumps enough for decent recirculation but I hardly even need to throttle it. So, unless I had some pretty small, sparse holes, it wouldn't cause the arm to really SPRAY wort even with the valve fully open

I had the same problem with the sparge arm I made. Too many holes in the ring and the wort had no pressure at all and came out one side.

I futzed with it for a while and eventually went back to letting the hose dumop into a perofrated pie tin. To this day I still don't know why I wanted to change to a manifold when the pie tin works fine and only cost like 5 cents. I have been using the same tin now for almost 2 years. Easy Peasy and no channeling.

GilaMinumBeer said:

I futzed with it for a while and eventually went back to letting the hose dumop into a perofrated pie tin. To this day I still don't know why I wanted to change to a manifold when the pie tin works fine and only cost like 5 cents. I have been using the same tin now for almost 2 years. Easy Peasy and no channeling.

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I used a pie tin for one batch, but I later found the pie tin had sunk itself under some of the grain and then shifted off to one side and was doing nothing. I'm sure it's my fault due to lack of familiarity with it. My MLT cooler is roughly 16 inches square, this may not be an issue in a narrower MLT where the tni doesn't have much room to shift around. I didn't really have any good way to hold the hose outlet in position anyway, so I would have wanted to make some kind of rigidly mounted outlet for it in the lid, and from that point, simply making a manifold is not all that much more work or expense.

To be fair though, I do not have my heart set on the manifold and I may cannibalize it and turn it back into just a simple outlet in the lid to go with a pie tin type of design.

Mainly, I just like to tinker and experiment, and this project cost me just a few bucks worth of CPVC, and kept me busy on a rainy day, so even if it's crap it was still worthwhile

that's the "problem" with mine. the tun is never sitting level so I really only get water out of 5 or 6 holes on one end. There is maybe 50 holes in it.
But I keep a good 3 inches of water over the grain and and let it run slow. Slow like 1qt per 3-4 minutes. I'm hitting 85% on my mashes this way so I guess it's working. But I think I can make it better.

FSR402 said:

that's the "problem" with mine. the tun is never sitting level so I really only get water out of 5 or 6 holes on one end. There is maybe 50 holes in it.
But I keep a good 3 inches of water over the grain and and let it run slow. Slow like 1qt per 3-4 minutes. I'm hitting 85% on my mashes this way so I guess it's working. But I think I can make it better.

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Is there any reason you don't just keep it slightly submerged? As long as it's submerged I think it would flow much more evenly from all ports since it shouldn't be fighting gravity the same way. At least, that's the whole idea behind this current design, and I haven't really tested it yet, so if I'm wrong I'd better get working on the next revision ASAP

I have the same issues with the tin too but, I check it periodically and re-float it. Actually, I intend to make a ported outlet in the Sabco fashion. They recirc and sparge by essentially whirlpooling the outflow over the top of the grain bed. I figur I can do thateasily with some of the 3/8 copper I have laying around. Best part of the 3/8 is I can bend it rather than having to fit it up.

As for a method to hold the hose, I just use a cheap plastic wood workers clamp I picked up at Lowes for like $2.00. I'll use it for the outlet port too when I get that made up.

Funkenjaeger said:

Is there any reason you don't just keep it slightly submerged? As long as it's submerged I think it would flow much more evenly from all ports since it shouldn't be fighting gravity the same way. At least, that's the whole idea behind this current design, and I haven't really tested it yet, so if I'm wrong I'd better get working on the next revision ASAP

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I have an 80qt tun so with most of my 10 gallon brews that would be a good 5 inches of water over the grain. The sparge rig sits on the ledge of the tun.

I built the same thing out of copper it works ok, but poorly enough to make me batch sparge

D-Boss said:

I built the same thing out of copper it works ok, but poorly enough to make me batch sparge

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really? Even with mine not "working" the way I hoped it's still getting me another 10% eff out of my mash. So 85% vs 75%.

Yummy PVC plastic bitter flavor in your beer. Just cut back on the IBU'S and you'll be good. I think the less plastic in my life the better, but I'm sure that'll make as a great a beer as any copper/stainless. Maybe experiment around with cheap pvc before committing to something a bit more rugged. Learn to convert a keg into a MT too!

terrazza said:

Yummy PVC plastic bitter flavor in your beer. Just cut back on the IBU'S and you'll be good. I think the less plastic in my life the better, but I'm sure that'll make as a great a beer as any copper/stainless. Maybe experiment around with cheap pvc before committing to something a bit more rugged. Learn to convert a keg into a MT too!

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It's CPVC, not PVC, there's a difference. Tons of people have various pieces made from CPVC, including sparge arms, and MLT manifolds. If CPVC were to leach out ANYTHING that was unsafe or caused strange flavors, it would not be sold as POTABLE water supply pipe. We can't all be lucky enough to rid our lives of plastic.

terrazza said:

Yummy PVC plastic bitter flavor in your beer. Just cut back on the IBU'S and you'll be good. I think the less plastic in my life the better, but I'm sure that'll make as a great a beer as any copper/stainless. Maybe experiment around with cheap pvc before committing to something a bit more rugged. Learn to convert a keg into a MT too!

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What, you are telling me to down size my MLT just so I wont be using plastic? You sound like one of the wack-a-doo's I met this past week braging about only giving thier kid "Organic wood toys". Knowing what I know about bacteria and how porous and absorbent wood is, I'll take the plastic.

There is no problem with CPVC at the temps a MLT sees.

terrazza said:

Yummy PVC plastic bitter flavor in your beer. Just cut back on the IBU'S and you'll be good. I think the less plastic in my life the better, but I'm sure that'll make as a great a beer as any copper/stainless. Maybe experiment around with cheap pvc before committing to something a bit more rugged. Learn to convert a keg into a MT too!

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Wow, if you're going to try to be all condescending, you could at least get your facts straight. If you want to try to spark a debate about whether plastic coolers are suitable for MLT's, making snide comments in a thread about a sparge arm is not the best place to do it - and I suspect that wherever you decide to bring it up, you're going to meet with a lot of resistance due to the overwhelming percentage of homebrewers who use plastic coolers as MLT's with plenty of success...

If you want to be paranoid about plastic and spend your money on going all-metal, more power to you, but that puts you in the minority, so even aside from basic courtesy, I don't see how it makes much sense to criticize the rest of us without sufficient reason.