Blichmann G2 vale slow?

[drksky]

I was lautering with a G2 kettle today (gravity, no pump) and found that once the kettle got down to about 3 gallons, the flow slowed to a trickle even with the valve fully open. Without tipping the pot, it flow slowed to practically nothing.


Am I missing something that is causing this valve to flow so slowly? Would it work better using a pump? Although it seems with non-self-priming pumps that the slow flow would just cause the pump to cavitate and not pump anything.

 

[day_trippr]

Dd you have at least a couple of feet of tubing hanging down from the valve so there'd be some siphon effect to encourage flow?

Cheers!

 

[drksky]

Dd you have at least a couple of feet of tubing hanging down from the valve so there'd be some siphon effect to encourage flow?

Cheers!

Yep, about 3ft of 1/2" coiled on top of the grain bed, maybe one loop. There was only about a foot drop from the valve to the top of the bed. Maybe too much tubing?

Funny thing was in my G2 BK, it drained into the carboy right up to the bottom of the dip tube, so yea, maybe too much tubing or not enough drop from the HLT.

 

[day_trippr]

Given the flow from the BK to your FV seemed good, if you can safely increase the drop from HLT to MLT to match you should be in business...

Cheers!

 

[drksky]

Given the flow from the BK to your FV seemed good, if you can safely increase the drop from HLT to MLT to match you should be in business...

Cheers!

Or maybe shorten the hose so the water doesn't have much time to slow down and hopefully not disturb the grain bed.

I'm doing an improvised three-tier while working on designing and putting together a 3-vessel eHERMS (RIMS) system. So, the HLT is on the stove, the MLT (5-gallon rubbermaid) is on a 5-gallon bucket and I'm draining to an interim vessel on the floor that get's emptied into the BK when full so I'm not carrying more than 2 gallons of wort across the house.

 

[day_trippr]

I get it, it's a tricky situation. bt/dt.
I'm not sure a foot or two of 1/2" ID line resistance outweighs a foot of head, but if it's worth a shot. Worst case you're not much better off...

Cheers!

 

[flht01]

If the valve is on your HLT and your loosing flow sending sparge water to your mash tun, try taking the siphon tube out of the HLT. Just measure the amount of dead space without the insert and adjust the total sparge water volume. Hope this makes sense ...

 

[day_trippr]

Well it took like four readings (hey - it's Football Sunday and I'm five pints in! )

But I'm getting the gist, the down-side is you have to heat up more water, yes?

Cheers!

 

[flht01]

Yes but it shouldn't be more than a gallon or so. Removing the pickup tube keeps the flow rate from having to lift the water to the valves level. Downside is a little more deadspace and wasted sparge water.

 

[drksky]

Yes but it shouldn't be more than a gallon or so. Removing the pickup tube keeps the flow rate from having to lift the water to the valves level. Downside is a little more deadspace and wasted sparge water.

I could certainly lose the dip tube since I'm brewing 5 gallons with 10-gallon kettles. I think I only had 7 gallons in the HLT and it started to lose the flow when the sight glass was reading 3. I was able to coax more out by tipping the kettle forward.