My EHERMS setup

Hello HBT,

Here are the first pictures of my EHERMS setup. Just finished it last night, now I am in the process of testing it. So far, so good, should be ready for my first all-grain batch by the weekend!!

It is a 3 vessel, single tier system. I used 2 sanke kegs and 1 10gal bayou kettle. I have 2 march 815 pumps (you will notice that 1 of them has a stainless head, because I had an oops while plumbing, requiring me to buy a replacement). The Boil Kettle and HLT each have 5500w electric heating elements installed and are PID controlled. The MLT has an analog thermometer.

I used a stainless steel operating room cart as the stand.

The control panel is based on a 50amp DIY kit purchased from ebrewsupply.com and I got the box for 20 bucks from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I know it looks like a rats nest, but essentially it is 2 MYPIN TA4 PIDs, connected to SSRs which power the elements, and then independant controls for the 2 pumps.

You will also see on the left of my set-up, my fermentation chamber (pics soon). I built an insulated box around a bar fridge. I am using a sanke keg as my fermenter, with a carboy heater attached to it. The entire chamber is controlled by a 2 stage controller, which allows for heating or cooling as neccessary.

I look forward to all your comments and questions

Finally I must give thanks to the HBT community for all the help during my build, especially Joe Fisher for manskirtbrewing.com. Also the following suppliers:

www.ebrewsupply.com
www.homebrewstuff.com
www.hopdawgs.ca
www.brewershardware.com
www.austinhomebrew.com

Cheers

Kevin

 

Nice job! I'm close to finishing my sytem: single tier, three kegs, two 5500 elements, one PID, and two pumps. I'm getting ready to mount my probe for the PID. Where did you mount yours?

 

Why only one PID? I have an RTD in the HLT and one in the boil kettle. I will be using the BK to heat strike water and boil my wort after the mash. During the mash I will be recirculating the wort through the HLT. Seems like that would be hard to do with only one PID

 

You can use one PID to run two elements, just not at the same time. So, you can toggle between the two manually. When it comes time to boil, I'll just switch the PID over to the BK element and manually control the amount of power sent to the element (to control the boil). The PID needs a temperature input, but it doesn't care where it's coming from if you're using it manually. This way, I only need one PID.

In any case, where did you mount the temp probe?

 

Halfway between the bottom of each vessel and the 10gal mark

 

Very nice! Do you happen to have links to your DIN rail and DIN buses and breakers you could share? I like the look of yours. What gauge wire did you go with on the breakers?

 

I run the same as Coifi, although in my next build I will add a thermoprobe to the BK so I can run in auto or manual mode as I like.

Can you get a decent temp/time ratio with 1 5500 watt element on a keggle? My concern is that the math suggests it will take quite awhile to heat 13 or so gallons to boiling.

 

Nice build. One thing you could do if you just wanting on PID is to use a PWM controller.

 

Here is the wiring schematic...not exactly the same as I used but pretty close.

http://www.ebrewsupply.com/designs/PID/50a-PID-2-2-2PID-Electric.pdf

I had it to a full boil from mash out temp (170) in about 30 min. that included time to fix a loose wire that caused the element to quit on me

 

How do you vent the BK ?

 

That is pretty quick to the full boil. Do you turn the element once it is covered?

 

Not quite sure what you mean my that. I had a rolling boil at 212. Set PID for 215, kept a nice boil