Herms recirc and Grainbed issues

[bornandraisedlv]

That oughtta play

One more tip: underlett the strike...

Cheers!

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around underletting actually, more the where does all of the water come from part.

I typically fill my 10 gallon hlt with about 9 gallons of water and then put the desired strike volume into my tun and run the system until I hit my strike temp, dough in and adjust controller to desired mash temp. Then do my mash, mash out and sparge. Usually I’m just about out of my 9 gallons of sparge water by the time I hit my target boils volume, about 7.5ish gallons of wort.

So if I underlet where is that water coming from? I was thinking of using boil kettle to get strike water to desired temp and just have the hlt ready to go at mash temps, underlet, and then start my recirc.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]I was thinking of using boil kettle to get strike water to desired temp and just have the hlt ready to go at mash temps, underlet, and then start my recirc.

And that is precisely how I do it. I prepare the strike volume in the BK and the sparge volume in the HLT, add the salts/acids required for each separately, have their respective pumps set to recirculate themselves (so to speak) until they've come up to their respective temperatures (typically high 160s °F for the strike, and 154°F for the HLT).

Once the strike is ready I steer the wort pump to the MLT drain and let 'er rip until the BK is empty, then set the same pump for recirculating through the HEX. After one good stir of the mash I let it sit for a handful of minutes before starting the recirculation...

Cheers!

 

[bornandraisedlv]

And that is precisely how I do it. I prepare the strike volume in the BK and the sparge volume in the HLT, add the salts/acids required for each separately, have their respective pumps set to recirculate themselves (so to speak) until they've come up to their respective temperatures (typically high 160s °F for the strike, and 154°F for the HLT).

Once the strike is ready I steer the wort pump to the MLT drain and let 'er rip until the BK is empty, then set the same pump for recirculating through the HEX. After one good stir of the mash I let it sit for a handful of minutes before starting the recirculation...

Cheers!

Got it. So you leave your hlt water recirc pump as just that the entire mash and just swap mlt from wort pump out to pump in after underletting and pump out to herms.

Simple enough will probably give this shot on Friday. Adds a couple of steps and takes a couple away so it’s wash as far as that goes. Thanks M’s got the tips!

 

[day_trippr]

For the entire recirculation, yes, the sparge side pump keeps the HLT bath nice and even for the 50' 1/2" coil.
At the end of recirculation I set up the wort side pump to drain the MLT to the BK, and set the sparge side pump to send sparge liquor through the autosparge valve on the MLT.

Yeah, there are a couple of added steps up front, but the benefits include reduced O2 in the mash, rarely any dough balls, you use two burners to get the brewing liquor up to temp significantly faster - and you only have to heat the strike water to the higher temperature, so there's some energy savings as well...

Cheers!

 

[tripeland]

And that is precisely how I do it. I prepare the strike volume in the BK and the sparge volume in the HLT, add the salts/acids required for each separately, have their respective pumps set to recirculate themselves (so to speak) until they've come up to their respective temperatures (typically high 160s °F for the strike, and 154°F for the HLT).

Once the strike is ready I steer the wort pump to the MLT drain and let 'er rip until the BK is empty, then set the same pump for recirculating through the HEX. After one good stir of the mash I let it sit for a handful of minutes before starting the recirculation...

Cheers!

I am hoping to start design of my own eherms system soon. I have had this thought as well. Correct me if I am wrong but I think the idea is to have a large enough hlt for strike+sparge. I suppose using bk would work well to heat strike water and allow underlet.

 

[bornandraisedlv]

For the entire recirculation, yes, the sparge side pump keeps the HLT bath nice and even for the 50' 1/2" coil.
At the end of recirculation I set up the wort side pump to drain the MLT to the BK, and set the sparge side pump to send sparge liquor through the autosparge valve on the MLT.

Yeah, there are a couple of added steps up front, but the benefits include reduced O2 in the mash, rarely any dough balls, you use two burners to get the brewing liquor up to temp significantly faster - and you only have to heat the strike water to the higher temperature, so there's some energy savings as well...

Cheers!

Sounds good, really not much different than my current process. It’s a wash in steps for me as now I can just mill right into mlt, and not have the process of dough in. Only thing I just thought of is mash in temps with a room temp mlt, will adjust bs for that. Thanks again

 

[day_trippr]

[...]Correct me if I am wrong but I think the idea is to have a large enough hlt for strike+sparge. [...]

That's the classic approach, which I followed as well. My three kettles are all 20 gallon models and for years I heated everything in the HLT to strike temperature - typically around 165°F (given grain at around 65°F and the MLT at around 70°F). I still underletted the strike because it was convenient to do, but that left the HLT a good 10°F too high for recirculation. Which is when I started heating the strike in the BK.

fwiw, I use Beersmith and one thing it does very well is use a solid equipment profile and a couple of temperature measurements to predict the needed strike temperature to nail the mash temperature after one good stir and a five minute rest - no matter what temperatures the grain and MLT are...

Cheers!

 

[bornandraisedlv]

Overall I had a great brew night tonight!

False is working great! I underlet for the first time and this is my go to now. Did a quick stir to make sure there were no lumps and let the grain bed settle for 10 mins.

Started my recirc and had some of the same issues right of the bat, air in the hoses but no where near as much grain.

10-15 mins in and pump wide open, no air, no grain. Success!

Have an issue with my controller and temps but that’s a whole other subject.

Hit my numbers and then some with a 82.7 mash efficiency on a 16.5 lb mash.

Seems as though most of my issues are worked out. I might go for a 15 min mash rest before recirc to try and let some of the air work itself out before getting it stuck in the hoses.

Thanks to all for the tips and advice!