30A eHerms recirculate boiling wort via herms coil to heat strike water for back2back

[Thedutchtouch]

anyone ever done this? or is it a crazy idea? I'm not able to build a 50 amp system to run two elements at once, but if i build a 30 amp system, wondering if it would be possible to just hook up the boil kettle to the HERMS coil, and use the single boil kettle element to boil the wort, use boiling wort through the HERMS coil to heat a second batch of strike water.

would this work or would too much heat be lost to maintain a good boil? let's say it's 10 gal batches. insulated keggles/kettles. SS head chugger should be good past boiling temps...

 

[RocketBrewer]

Interesting idea, but not sure about the ability to maintain a boil. You may have to throttle the flow down some to make sure you maintain a boil at first, but should be able to increase flow as HLT heats up. Not sure if you would reach strike temp, but you could get close I would think. You would want to flush the residual wort from the HERMS coil somehow too. Only 1 way to find out....
Good Luck!

 

[swimIan]

The picobrew zymatic uses a heat exchanger to heat the water to mash temp. It never truly boils either. It stops at 209 and pumps like crazy the whole time.

 

[Bobby_M]

I run my boil at 60% output once it's boiling so it's conceivable to use that extra 40% to heat up an HLT. In theory, that's enough to fully heat about 9 gallons up to strike temps in the hour of boil but you would want to dial in your boil vigor by throttling the wort going into the herms. Also, don't rule out using the wort chiller coolant output as strike water.

 

[Wizard_of_Frobozz]

Also, don't rule out using the wort chiller coolant output as strike water.

I second this! Using that waste heat from the chiller is better than sending down the drain (or out into the lawn). I use mine for cleanup hot water - it goes into my HLT since that's an empty vessel when I'm chilling. That's basically the same as what you want to do, except I don't make a 2nd batch with it.

If you do reuse the chiller water direct into your HLT, don't use regular garden hoses. They leech stuff that you don't want in your beer (I would suspect it's worse when the water is hot).

Use hoses made for drinking water - they are usually white or blue and can be found in just about any hardware store or Walmart (in the RV section). Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Camco-22783-TastePURE-Drinking-Water/dp/B004ME11FS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483969277&sr=8-1&keywords=drinking+water+hose

If you use the HERMS coil to heat your HLT with the chiller output water, hose type won't matter since the water won't ever be in your beer.

 

[passedpawn]

Some nifty ideas in this thread. You guys have me thinking!

 

[Peam]

Sending the wort through a coil doesn't work well at all. I tried doing this with my hop rocket but you pick up too much air in the lines from the boil. Needless to say this doesn't work well with the pump

 

[BeardedBrews]

I might worry about creating cold-break in the herms coil, especially before all the protein modification has had time to complete in the boil. Beyond that, pumping boiling wort is tricky, as @Peam pointed out.

 

[stevehaun]

I recirculate thru my plate chiller for 5 minutes to sanitize the chiller. I have not had problems with pump cavitation. YMMV. As rocketbrewer points out, only one way to find out!

 

[WScottCross]

I also capture the chilling water and usually end up with ~135 degree water when I do that. What you described is technically possible, but I think it has risks and using the cooling water is great way to reduce waste water and capture the heat you need to get most of the way to the mash.

 

[Toejam792]

I have 4500 watt elements, in hlt and bk, and a 2000w rims like augiedoggy and i do back to back 10 gallon batches. Running one 4500w element and the rims is 24-26 amps.

 

[Thedutchtouch]

true i didn't think about pump cavitation at all, there's still a lot to do with building out my system (propane BIAB corrently) but will need to look into this before risking my chugger. my first thought is some sort of ~ 1/2 gal bubble trap, gravity fed from the BK, where the wort will quickly stop boiling ... but then we're talking about a lot of volume not in the boil...

i do like the collecting chiller water idea, if nothing else that will get the strike heat a head start, and reduces water wastage. one concern i have about this is since my chiller is copper, and the inside never gets cleaned out (because it's just been waste water) any concerns for verdigris contamination?