Pump on 3 tier system

[BrewJr]

Is anyone using a pump on a 3 tier setup? I don't plan on using a burner to heat my HLT and thought I could use my brew kettle for that and just transfer it up there. Likewise for my strike water... heat in the kettle and pump it over.. as soon as I'm done with the boil I planned on using the same pump to cycle through my block chiller.. thoughts??

 

[wilserbrewer]

That will certainly work. You could also do 2 tier and pump sparge water to the from HLT to MT, and gravity drain the MT.

I think the drawback of 3 tier is overall height can become an inconvenience.

Swapping pump connections is the downside to less tiers.

How large are your batches?

 

[BrewJr]

I can do up to 10 gal but I'll stick with 5 for the time being.. is there much strike water temp loss from the pump up process you think?

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, my strike water path has roughly 8 feet of 1/2" ID/3/4" OD silicone tubing in and out of the pump, and I underlet the MLT when doughing-in.
I use Beersmith2, plug in my MLT and grain temperatures, and almost always hit my target mash temperature within a few tenths, tops.

So I'd say there isn't much thermal loss through the strike water path...

Cheers!

 

[stz]

You might have an awesome pump, but I don't have awesome pumps. I've got cheap 12-24V DC little things. They allow me to pump wort through my heat exchanger pretty easily at about double the rate I need to chill in one pass unless backed off, but they struggle to bleed air from pipes, push liquid vertically much more than a few feet and definitely do not meet the posted flow and head. The biggest disappointment is I can't get enough agitation to perform proper CIP. While I can push cleaning solutions through my system for a while and hope for the best really I'm stuck using old fashioned elbow grease.

Edit. Oh yeah. I meant to say get a good pump if you need to rely on it for your process. I can always use my immersion chiller in a pinch and gravity if pumps fail. Because mine were cheap I keep a backup anyway, it is no fun to be trying to collect wort at 10pm because you've had to strip a pump and I'd hate to be reliant on them. I use a three vessel system, but gravity does everything except push wort through the heat exchanger.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, wrt pumps, I use a pair of March 815s, but I've seen March 809s and Chuggers used successfully on 3-tier rigs...

Cheers!

 

[stz]

fwiw, wrt pumps, I use a pair of March 815s, but I've seen March 809s and Chuggers used successfully on 3-tier rigs...

I use TE649's. They are not awful, but they are not great. I managed to break a TE091 after two brew days, it was like the plastic retainer which holds the shaft in the housing started to break down and the shaft would bind. Not only did it break, it was a worse pump overall.