Moving to BREW IN A BASKET

[Mike123]

Somehow the site stopped alerting me to replies to this thread.

I do see tubular stainless steel elbows around on Google, but they seem to be designed for butt-welding to pipes and not for insert soldering like the copper elbow is. It would have to be insert soldering, I don't think doing a butt-weld of an elbow to the cut surface of that nipple would be worth the gymnastics inside the keg to do it.

I don't think the thermal expansion differences between copper and stainless steel will cause any cracking over time, nor would there be electro-chemical problems between the two metals either.

The mockups look good, really good. The pump should be low enough to prime drawing from the lower valve and venting into the keggle via the top port.

Regarding the hops and filtering, I'm a whirlpool and dump chap, if some trub gets into the fermenter, so what. I use an immersion chiller, not a plate chiller and the hops would definitely clog up the plate chiller. The pump and plumbing shouldn't have any trouble with recirculating the hops as the pellets break up into leaf fragments in most cases. You could put a bazooka screen on the intake dip tube to keep the material from ending in the plumbing in the first place.

You could also use an inline filter between the intake and the pump, or the pump and the chiller, with a 400 micron stainless steel filter in it. That would remove the recirculating requirement by using the 400 micron hop basket as a filter.

Thanks Bruce_the_Loon. I found a SS 1/2" elbow, and I have a 1/2" copper elbow also. I did a mockup of them both in a hole in the keggle wall (NOT THE NIPPLE I WILL ACTUALLY BE INSERTING THEM INTO) to show roughly how they will fit, and it turns out they are similar in "turn distance", the distance the tube travels in making the 90 degree turn. Either of these will work. I will probably drill out the entire length of the interior of the 1/2" SS nipple so the 1/2" SS elbow will just fit, and silver solder it in place. I can attach a silicone tube to that to take it the rest of the way to wherever I want it in the keggle bottom. OR, I will use copper tubing if I can find a size that will fit snugly over the 1/2" SS elbow. The 1/2" copper tube does not fit snugly over it.

 

[Mike123]

Well I finally installed the gas line between the propane tank and the burner, and cleaned out the burner with pressurized air. Figured that could not hurt anything. I attached a front and rear view of the propane line. Works fine, next step is to see if the burner works OK with the new heat shielding that I added on the front side of the burner. My only concern is will it get enough oxygen....worked great before this added shielding. You can see the unpainted shielding in the third and fourth photos. Next I'll add the keggle, fill it with water, and do that plumbing test I have been talking about forever

 

[Mike123]

I also saw a brewing vendor with a discount, so I pulled the trigger on a hop basket for my fermentation vessel, and a SS spoon.

 

[Mike123]

Hooked up the plumbing, added water to the keggle, and tried it out. The pump primed immediately and so far it works as intended. I did not have to manipulate any valves, or disconnect anything, it just primed in the recirculate configuration. The return copper elbow you see in the picture is just a temporary component, I still have to make the final version with holes in it for mash infusion. Flow rate was very strong. Did not hook up the plate chiller yet. So far so good. It got dark outside so I called it a day, and tomorrow I'll play with it some more.

 

[Mike123]

OK, I'm sure this will get somebody's attention, but here goes. I am considering using my 800 micron grain basket as a hop basket/spider. Reminder - my grain basket is 800 micron because I want maximum wort flow during the mash in my RIMS setup. My grain will be a bit coarse also.

It is not common, but there are 800 micron hop baskets for sale out there, so somebody must be using them to get better hop utilization. (I know that 300 and 400 micron mesh is the most common sizes used for pellet and leaf hops).

I realize I will have more trub, but not enough to clog my pumps and valves (I hope). The 800 micron size mesh will force me to filter out some of the trub before I use the plate chiller, but I was planning to do that anyway with a cheaper 400 micron filter.

Comments/feedback/opinions please?

 

[wilserbrewer]

Filtering trub can be difficult, many attempts have failed miserably as trub is part sticky gelatinous protein, think egg drop soup w hop matter mixed in makes a perfect plug ...
While hops can form a filter bed, pellet hops won’t.
Ymmv

Also, fwiw your recirc wort path doesn’t make sense to me,
Why use a center infused return w/ a bottom draining basket,
Imo wort will take the path of least resistance and mostly exit at the bottom of the perforated return pipe and exit the bottom of the basket, creating channeling of sorts...or drain vertically adjacent to your return pipe, or maybe it will work brilliantly for no apparent reason as some things do...

 

[Mike123]

Filtering trub can be difficult, many attempts have failed miserably as trub is part sticky gelatinous protein, think egg drop soup w hop matter mixed in makes a perfect plug ...
While hops can form a filter bed, pellet hops won’t.
Ymmv

Also, fwiw your recirc wort path doesn’t make sense to me,
Why use a center infused return w/ a bottom draining basket,
Imo wort will take the path of least resistance and mostly exit at the bottom of the perforated return pipe and exit the bottom of the basket, creating channeling of sorts...or drain vertically adjacent to your return pipe, or maybe it will work brilliantly for no apparent reason as some things do...

Yes wilserbrewer it is true this might not work as planned, and I'll find another way, but I decided to see it through. I'll be posting my results as I go. I should have my 800 micron grain basket in about 4 weeks, and I'll fill it with medium/coarse milled grain and try this out. The combination of the large mesh and coarse/medium milled grain should result in a good flow radially from the vertical pipe through the grain and out the sides, and some will travel down through the bottom of the basket, therefore achieving a good efficiency in extracting malt. At least that is my theory, we will see. I might have to play around with the size of the milled grain, and/or the number and size of the holes in the vertical infusion pipe, and the returning wort flow rate. But then I am retired now and have plenty of time to mess around with this. Cheers!

 

[Mike123]

OK it has been a while, so here is an update. I've used my brew rig, still in development, twice for extract brews. I have ordered the 800 micron grain basket from Utah Biodiesel, should have that in a few weeks. Below I show a picture of it configured for extract brewing until I get that basket. I'll post my final build when I get there.

Meanwhile I learned a couple of things.

1) My system will recirculate pellet hops without clogging. I threw 2 ounces of pellet hops directly into the Keggle, and recirculated near the end of the boil and was able to capture almost all of the hop material by catching it at the return connector at the top of the Keggle (I used a nylon mesh bag). Took about 10 minutes to get enough so the plate chiller would not clog. At the 2 ounce level the system does not clog....had a momentary problem with flow reducing and a quick stir indicated it was at the dip tube. I'm not sure how many ounces it will tolerate before clogging.

2) I don't think I need an automatic heater for my RIMS system. My original plan was to, as a final step, incorporate a heater with PID control for my RIMS setup. I'm going to hold off on that step because I noticed when I turned off my propane burner (when my "mash" temp was 150F) the temperature rose another 6 degrees due to thermal heat storage in the keggle and the supporting steel frame, and it very gradually dropped to 152 over the next 30 minutes with no applied heat....and I was recirculating during about half that time. Based on this I think I can just apply heat with the propane burner, which has a valve on it with very fine control of the gas, to maintain mash temperature and/or even for step mash temperatures down the road. I'm going to go this route for at least a few brew batches and see how that goes, before I drop a couple hundred bucks on a controller. My base motivation for redesigning my brew rig was to simplify my brew day without sacrificing brew quality. The controller is starting to look like an unnecessary complication. (If you are wondering, when I say mash here...this was one of those partial mash recipes where you steep grains for 30 minutes and then the rest is extract brewing).

Sorry about the duct tape on the Big Mouth Bubbler. An eyesore - I need to devise another, prettier, means of holding that lid on.

 

[Mike123]

Somehow the site stopped alerting me to replies to this thread.

I do see tubular stainless steel elbows around on Google, but they seem to be designed for butt-welding to pipes and not for insert soldering like the copper elbow is. It would have to be insert soldering, I don't think doing a butt-weld of an elbow to the cut surface of that nipple would be worth the gymnastics inside the keg to do it.

I don't think the thermal expansion differences between copper and stainless steel will cause any cracking over time, nor would there be electro-chemical problems between the two metals either.

The mockups look good, really good. The pump should be low enough to prime drawing from the lower valve and venting into the keggle via the top port.

Regarding the hops and filtering, I'm a whirlpool and dump chap, if some trub gets into the fermenter, so what. I use an immersion chiller, not a plate chiller and the hops would definitely clog up the plate chiller. The pump and plumbing shouldn't have any trouble with recirculating the hops as the pellets break up into leaf fragments in most cases. You could put a bazooka screen on the intake dip tube to keep the material from ending in the plumbing in the first place.

You could also use an inline filter between the intake and the pump, or the pump and the chiller, with a 400 micron stainless steel filter in it. That would remove the recirculating requirement by using the 400 micron hop basket as a filter.

Well I finally got around to installing the stainless steel elbow as a dip tube. Here are the pics. The SS nipple ID was 0.5" and the SS elbow OD was 0.5", but not quite round (we are talking very small variations here) so it would not fit into the nipple. I drilled out the nipple with a 1/2" drill bit, and now the SS fits nice and tight and I'm going to leave it that way. It is not quite an interference fit, but pretty close, I had to tap it gently to get it to seat fully in the nipple, but I can work it out by hand if I need to. Did not need to solder after all. I forget what the SS elbow ID is, but it is larger than my system silicone tubing, which is 3/8", so I did not compromise the flow rate I currently have, which is very good. I am very happy with this result. I can attach a piece of silicone tubing as an interface if I want to run a tube the rest of the way to the center bottom of the Keggle, or if I end up whirlpooling this dip tube will work fine for that.

 

[Mike123]

OK the pump power control part of my build is done. Works great...........I have two "switched" outlets one for the recirculation pump and the other for the chiller pump. The toggle switches and the outlets are behind weatherproof covers with water tight connections so I can spray the whole rig down with a garden hose if I need to, without power applied of course. I grounded to the frame directly as shown in the picture. The rig power cord is orange, and about 25' long. I'm trying my best to keep this rig neat and tidy, I'll be looking at it for a long time. Next I need to add the chiller garden hose somehow so it can be stowed when not in use, and not an eyesore. I might coil it up on a spool of some kind, or coil it in a bucket, dunno yet but it needs to look good and be functional both, that's just me. I am still waiting on the custom grain basket I ordered.

 

[Mike123]

Somehow the site stopped alerting me to replies to this thread.

I do see tubular stainless steel elbows around on Google, but they seem to be designed for butt-welding to pipes and not for insert soldering like the copper elbow is. It would have to be insert soldering, I don't think doing a butt-weld of an elbow to the cut surface of that nipple would be worth the gymnastics inside the keg to do it.

Regarding the hops and filtering, I'm a whirlpool and dump chap, if some trub gets into the fermenter, so what. I use an immersion chiller, not a plate chiller and the hops would definitely clog up the plate chiller. The pump and plumbing shouldn't have any trouble with recirculating the hops as the pellets break up into leaf fragments in most cases. You could put a bazooka screen on the intake dip tube to keep the material from ending in the plumbing in the first place.

You could also use an inline filter between the intake and the pump, or the pump and the chiller, with a 400 micron stainless steel filter in it. That would remove the recirculating requirement by using the 400 micron hop basket as a filter.

Thanks Bruce_the_Loon. As you may recall I ended up with drilling out the SS nipple in the bottom of my Keggle, and inserting a SS 90 degree tube, which fits very tightly and does not leak. I did not need to solder it, the interference fit is just right, and I can remove it by hand with a little tugging. I attached a picture here.

I may still employ whirlpooling, and since you are a whirlpool fan, could you help me out with how to do that? I've never done it. I know that the idea is to stir the wort so the trub collects in the bottom center of the Keggle, and the clearer wort exits through the SS tube. Is this tube is oriented correctly, and how close to the bottom of the Keggle should it be? Should the wort be stirred in the direction the tube elbow is facing? Should the elbow be pointing slightly downward? How much liquid will I leave behind using the whirlpool technique? Thanks, and Cheers!

 

[Mike123]

Progress report on my ongoing

BIABasket build.

I received the custom grain basket, and it fits perfectly. I made the mash infusion tube so that is done (In the first image below the holes were not yet drilled in the tube). My approach to the holes; the total area of all the small drilled holes is approximately equal to the ID of the copper tube. That way I don't introduce any additional flow restriction. Still a few things left to do before I can fire this up and make beer, but I'm getting close. To be honest this has been fun and I'll be a little sad when I'm done, but then again I can always make adjustments forever and ever, right? ​

 

[Mike123]

In addition to a custom work surface made from cookie sheets, I fashioned a shield for the pump motor to keep water out of it. It is made from scrap from the cookie sheets. The work surface is above the pump, but I wanted additional protection. In the first picture the work surface is removed so I could access the pump. I want to be able to spray the entire rig down if necessary (unplugged of course).

 

[Mike123]

Been busy doing other things, but finally got back to this...….here is my finished BIABasket rig, and a platform for my grain mill. Everything works...…..so tomorrow, unless it rains, I am brewing my new recipe, Mike's Wicked Ale, a variation on Pete's.

 

[Mike123]

OK here I am with results of my 1st brew day with my new BIABasket rig. I think it was a huge success actually. I conditioned and milled the grain at a 0.035" gap, and it looked good so I did not run it through the mill a second time. The mash was done in 40 minutes according to the iodine test, but I let it go 60 minutes. I had to apply a little propane heat every 20 minutes or so to keep it at 153F. The handful of trub is the material that got past the 800 micron grain basket, which I caught with a 400 micron hop filter. The recirculation worked well.....the injection pipe kept the wort moving throughout the mash. No problems with clogging at any time during the mash, or through the chiller. After 60 minutes I caught the bittering hop trub with the 400 micron filter, chilled the wort to 170F and did a 20 minute hop stand. I recirculated during the hop stand and the temperature dropped to 162F by the time it was done. Then I filtered out the hop trub again and chilled the wort to 65F into my fermentation vessel. I measured the cooled wort OG at 1.058, and came up with an efficiency of 85%. I am very happy with how this turned out.
Addendum of Lessons Learned;
1) I did not account for the water loss during the time heating to mash out temperature, and for the hop stand, which together totaled about 40 minutes. Although not at boiling temperature, there was still some loss, which explains why my volume into the fermenter was 5.25 gallons versus the goal 5.5 gallons. I plan to top off the fermenter to 5.5 gallons. This would also mean my OG value would decrease some, and my efficiency. I think I am probably still better than 80% on efficiency.
2) I added 48F grain to 163F water with a resulting mash temperature of 158F....too hot. Some stirring and fanning got it down to 153F in about 10 minutes. I'm sure this happened because my setup has a lot of mass (heavy duty burner frame and SS keggle), so there is a lot of thermal energy storage. Next time I'll use a lower water temperature, depending on grain temperature of course.
3) I have more sediment than I am happy with, which I am pretty sure is grain flower, in my end product. I believe I caught most of the hop trub with the 400 micron filter. I recirculated during the mash at full pump flow, resulting in little or no filtering of the grain bed. Next time I will slow down the recirculation rate near the end of the mash so that I can catch some more of the grain flour trub before mashing out.