hakedr
Member
This is something that has been concerning me a bit. I just built a HERMS system. Quick, basic information: the HLT/Mash/BK are all 42qt pots. Inside of the HLT I have a 40 foot long 1/2 inch copper coil.
When I want to start my mash, to get my water to grist ratio, I need about three gallons in the mash tun. However, I need an additional ~0.4 gallons, if not greater, to fill the pump, hoses, and HERMS coil.
This isn't a concern for mashing, but I'm worried about efficiency on sparging. Here's why: I have a lot of good high gravity wort in the HERMS coil due to the re-circulation phase. So I thought I would direct the HLT sparge water through the HERMS coil to lauter - this would collect the wort in the HERMS coil in the mash tun and rinse out the HERMS coil at the same time. However, there's the approximately 0.4 gallons of wort that gets drained on top of the grain bed before clean, fresh sparge water.
Do any of you think this would impact efficiency of lautering? One thing I was thinking of doing was to empty the HERMS coil into the boil kettle before sparging. Another thing I am considering is reducing the length of the HERMS coil (cut out 10-15 ft).
The reason I ask is because I had a difficult time extracting the sugars from my grain bed. The runnings were still reading over 1.010 by the time I had already collected 7 gallons (intended 6). I know there could be other factors, for instance, I know I need to sparge more slowly (I did it over 20 minutes, should have taken 30-50 minute).
When I want to start my mash, to get my water to grist ratio, I need about three gallons in the mash tun. However, I need an additional ~0.4 gallons, if not greater, to fill the pump, hoses, and HERMS coil.
This isn't a concern for mashing, but I'm worried about efficiency on sparging. Here's why: I have a lot of good high gravity wort in the HERMS coil due to the re-circulation phase. So I thought I would direct the HLT sparge water through the HERMS coil to lauter - this would collect the wort in the HERMS coil in the mash tun and rinse out the HERMS coil at the same time. However, there's the approximately 0.4 gallons of wort that gets drained on top of the grain bed before clean, fresh sparge water.
Do any of you think this would impact efficiency of lautering? One thing I was thinking of doing was to empty the HERMS coil into the boil kettle before sparging. Another thing I am considering is reducing the length of the HERMS coil (cut out 10-15 ft).
The reason I ask is because I had a difficult time extracting the sugars from my grain bed. The runnings were still reading over 1.010 by the time I had already collected 7 gallons (intended 6). I know there could be other factors, for instance, I know I need to sparge more slowly (I did it over 20 minutes, should have taken 30-50 minute).
