Review my idea - evolution of brutus 20

I'm using a 3 keggle herms. This idea popped into my mind after thinking about some folks' 2 vessel recirculating systems. I intend to brew a 24 gallon batch with 3 sanke vessels.

This system will require 3 keggles. The HLT and BK have 5500 watt elements inside. Two pumps are required to brew a NON-partigyle batch, unless you desire to whirlpool chill like me. That will require 2 march pumps AND 2 submersible pumps.



11 gallons in MLT and HLT, recirc and mash-in

Attain mash temp and continuous recirc (Brutus 20 style)

Meanwhile bring 11 gallons in BK to sparge temp

Raise mash to mashout temp, then drain enough wort from MLT into HLT for full boil volume ( there should still be 5 or so gallons of wort and grain in the MLT)

Isolate HLT, then recirc MLT and BK for 10 minutes

Drain MLT into BK until HLT and BK both contain full boil volumes.

At this point you have both batches of a pseudo-partigyle. The gravities are different in the 2 BK's, so if they should be equal, you need to hook up both pumps and blend the two kettles for 15 minutes or so (check with refractometer every 5 minutes is my plan).

Double boil baby. Deal with double chilling. I would use dual whirlpool immersion chilling, with iced water from the MLT and 2 additional submersible pumps.

I am expecting efficiency similar or better than 70%. Seems it should be slightly more efficient than a 2 vessel recirculating system.

Anyone see any serious holes or oversights? Thank you in advance if you read and understood it all, I wish I could make a flash animation of this process.

I think that this would work, and for brewing large batches of small gravity beers, I think you would be fine. Essentially you have taken a recirculating no sparge system and made it a recirculating batch sparge system. I see two main things.

1. Given that you can fit 37.2 lbs of grain in a sanke at 1.25 qt/lb for the recirc, the biggest beer you could brew 24 gallons of would be 1.038 SG (if you combined everything). I like sessions beers a lot and make all sorts of them. 1.038 is still quite low.

2. You could get the second runnings thin enough that you might start to run into tannin extraction issues and need to be careful of pH, negating one of the big assets of the brutus 20 setup (that you dont have to worry about those things).

I am too tired to run the numbers right now, but you might look into what happens if you run 12 gallons on the first one and then run a 5 or 6 gallon batch out of the second runnings. I dont think it would be too hard to set everything up in excel to give you your numbers and you would boost your combined SG maximum to 1.050 (given a combined final volume of 18 gallons).

One last thing. I was confused about the HLT and what it was doing until I read it a second and third time. Just call them BK1 and BK2 and I think it would be more clear.

J

Thanks JF for reply, but upon thinking about this further, I believe it would work better with a rims tube heater, which wouldn't be too hard to add. In my case above I would be direct heating the mash wort while it is in the kettles, and then it would have to be pumped back in an evenly circulated manner. Seems like too much hassle, and too much chance for the wort temp to fluctuate... like where would I put the temp probe? I can't imagine keeping the temp even enough. I guess the BK1 and 2 could have hex coils and heat the mash indirectly... My brain hurts.

Just treat it like two Brutus 20 systems that happen to share an MLT. Use one system and then use the other.