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1st test with the pwm-controlled heating pump: Interesting to see what it does with the grains, above with just water...

I did 4 brews with just an insulated bucket and some hot water to mix in. I had 2 sensors in the mash to see how much hotter the upper levels of mash are compared to the lower ones. Red and blue are in the mash. Here's a plot of 90 minutes mash: They stayed pretty much identical once I...

Still some stuff to do, but already a couple of brews done with this set up :) It has a kettle + mash tun too, but new bigger pots are on they way, more pictures after that.

It's my own code, the temperature control is really simple at the moment. I use simple on/off-routine (no PID), but I have two sensors, one in the mash and one just after the wort HEX and they both can cut the heat off i.e. stop the heating pump. When I find suitable DC-pump (cheap, powerful...

I'll make a beer or two to see how it brews. I've to keep the HLT near 85C, because I've very small fuses in the house and I've to store some energy to the 90L of water in the HLT. If this works as I hope 85C with heat loses will be somewhere between 74-76C when sparging. But the plan is to...

Here's a test with my new set up. It's with about 5 gallons of water. The spikes on wort temperatures are about 2 seconds, so the amount of wort that is over heated is really small. I'm just wondering is there any science out there about the times how long it takes to over cook the enzymes...

Yes, 15mm + 22mm copper.

Latest try, I haven't had a change to test it yet to see how efficient it is, but I'm sure it's OK for CF-HERMS. Nice and compact with the straight pipe's. I'll make a longer one for cooling, I think I'll make it in a shape of a triangle or a cube and use 180 capillary angles instead of bending...

I've noticed the same problem. I'm going to make my new mash re-circ arm to look like something like this: From above it looks like :off: edit: and I think I'm going to change the direction too ... pump the hot wort from below, let the heat rise.

OK, thanks for the info. I thought that it's the other way around, the enzymes in the grains (me so stupid). I'm only doing pilsners and the repeatability/taste has been excellent. I guess the amount of time (a second or two) and volume that is heated over the threshold at one time is so small...

Yep, I was recirculating the wort all the time and running the pump that heats the HX as necessary (sold almost all my gear, I'm in the process of building a new setup http://tinyurl.com/chgken9). The mash it self was not heated over the set temperature, just the wort. I had quite a lot of...

I wanted to make a whirlpool kettle that I could use to cool the wort as well. To get the whirlpool going small diameter tubing is not an option. I had some 15mm soft copper handy and came out with an idea how to make the grooves ... it's boring to go the easy way ;) I've noticed that, if I...

Yes, and the only way to control the boil intensity is to control the amount of power that goes in. There's a big triac inside, a really basic circuit, looks like a zero crossing.

You could use a cheap power regulator to cut down the BK-power. I don't know how big patches you do, but you wouldn't need too much of a power to heat the sparge water during the mash. I've one cheap regulator that I use on my brew kettle...

That sounds good, how fast heating do you get? Have you noticed some off flavors, if the recirculation is on all the time or why do you want to limit that? But you're right anyway, why recirculate more than is needed? DC-pumps would be very handy, I think that I'll use those, if I ever...

Thanks, I'm glad someone is getting something out of my yarns :) I'm moving and can't take the gear with me, at least not the whole brewery. I might get back on to it with a bigger set-up once I know where I live next. I'm hoping I can get my hands on **** next, into bio-gas methane that is ;)...

If you can afford another pump and a CF-HX, I would do that. The beauty of the CF-HERMS is that you can use the water on the HLT to sparge straight after you have finished your mash schedule. If you have the HX-coil in the HLT and reduce the water to get faster heating, you will have to play...

That doesn't help you at all. With the "traditional" herms-setup it's still down to the amount of the water you need to heat (HLT or dedicated herms-kettle) and the heating power that you have available. Those 2 things determinate how fast you can do the step mashes. If you have a very long...

A plot of the latest mash. One of the temp probes is playing up and dropping to zero once in a while, I need to replace that.

The actual control is done by wort and mash temperatures. This one controls how much hotter than the setpoint (for the mash) the wort can be. It's a counter flow HX herms. I'm using pump to control the heating. Of course there's a basic ON/OFF control for the heat source too (HLT)...