BrewEasy/Grainfather Hybrid - probe placement?

[aamcle]

I'm building again, a sequel to the sequel to the build that was going to be the last one ever.....

What I'll have is a mash tun with a GF constant head system rather than an auto-sparge.
I'm going to have two insulated drain lines, one from the central overflow and one for the wort that has passed through the grain bed which will allow me to monitor the flow through the bed.

Temperature control will be done in the boiler or the line to the mash tun I haven't decided yet and the probe in the mash tun will just be to monitor the temperature.

To the point do I :-

mount a temperature probe through the top screen into the grain bed.
or
mount it on the wort drain line. (not the central overflow)

After I've brewed a couple of batches and know how the system responds I'm not even sure that I'll need to continue to monitor the tun's temperature. If I get the strike temperature/mash in right everything else should fall into line.

Your thought please gentlemen.


ATB. aamcle

 

[BrunDog]

I am not sure I understand the configuration but I would say grain bed is probably what you want to know even though you can't control from there. So I suppose the wort line is a practical surrogate.

Looking forward to this build!

 

[pocketmon]

I've tinkered with temperature probe placement for a while.

The Grainfather that I am using divides the mash/wort into three portions by the two screens. When rising the temperature, top portion above the grain bed can be risen quickly if the flow rate of wort is high and most of the wort go down the overflow drain. On the other hand, the temperature of the grain bed changes slowly. Otherwise, you will have quick sparge issue. That is a dilemma of this system.
Placing the probe at the lower portion(the kettle in your system) like Grainfather will result in lower temperature of grain bed. Placing the probe in grain bed might result in other issue: the temperature in kettle might rise too high - because the wort flow slowly through grain bed and the temperature rises slowly.
I am using two sensors in my system, and my system can use different sensors for temperature control in different stage of brewing. However, I am afraid to scorch by using the sensor in grain bed.