looking for equipment setup recommendations/advice

[ChicagoJack86]

I've been looking to improve my brewing setup a lot recently. Currently I have a 7.5 gallon pot, a 10.5 gallon pot, 10 gallon mash tun cooler, 15.5 gallon keggle (currently not being used) blichmann top tier burner (without leg extensions), a secondary burner (basically a junk propane burner i havent used since i got my blichmann top tier burner) and a copper immersion chiller.
Neither of my pot have valves on them, except for the keggle. I'm looking to add a chugger pump, and either a counterflow wort chiller, or plate wort chiller, so obviously I'm going to be adding a valve to at least the 10.5 gallon pot. What I'd like to know is, what is a good way to go about installing valves, running the system itself, etc. Should I add 2 valves to my main pot, or just 1 and just run a hose into the top of the pot for recirculating? Is there a way to use the chugger pump on my mash tun that will improve efficiency? I'm on somewhat of a budget, so finding out a cheap and effective way to set this up would be great. The only major pieces I plan on buying are the chugger pump and the wort chiller. Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[experimike]

The pump will help with vorlaufing and moving the mash to the boil kettle. You can place the BK high enough so you can gravity drain through the wort chiller into your carboy. I wold add valves to at least the BK and Mash Tun. You can find weldless adaptors at bargainfittings dot com and several other internet stores. Valves make the brew day a little easier and a tiny bit safer.

I don't think you will improve efficiency all that much, plenty of threads here that compare batch and fly sparging and the consensus leans towards not much of a difference. I have tried both but typically fly sparge as a personal preference. YMMV.

You can choose between a counter flow chiller (CFC) easily made with some ciopper tubing inside a garden hose. Search the forum for many great threads on the how to. Or you can buy a chillzilla or plate chiller (dudadiesel dot com). I went with 1/2 in copper and it really does not need to be that big. 3/8 copper is plenty big. The DIY CFC is somewhat cheaper but the plate chiller is smaller and easier to store. I would go the plate chiller route if I could do over. But the nice thing about he CFC is that it is almost impossible to clog. A longer 20 plate chiller is fine for 5 or 10 gallon batches.

To sterilize the CFC or plate chillier you can run very hot (170 *F) water through it with the pump and recirc back in to your heating kettle (another reason for the valve) for 5 - 10 minutes. I do that when heating up water for mashing and then the CFC is good to go for that day. I also repeat during cleanup to clean the CFC.

 

[Duda_Energy]

I am also happy to recommend the appropriately sized plate chiller for you, if you can provide the flowrate of your water, your water temp (best case in winter and worst case in summer), and what pitching temp you are trying to reach