Recommendations for a tankless water heater

[barryfine]

Thanks! I'm hoping to move this concept to a new brewstand one of these days with a tankless attached to a stainless cart with a couple of 50 gallon kettles for mash and boil kettle. I think your unit is the eccotemp, I looked at those and was tempted but decided to go with a used larger name brand unit instead because of all the bad press those things get on amazon plus the flow rate was less than I was after. Has it ever fired? If so I read that they have some protection circuit that cuts it out after twenty minutes to keep it from melting.

It has never fired. I checked the protection circuit and even bypassed with no success. Unfortunately, I slacked on troubleshooting and now I'm past the initial 30 days and getting it repaired becomes more difficult. It's either a faulty regulator or solenoid, just haven't had time to work on it more. I really don't want to ship it back to them for repairs.

 

[Bsquared]

I know with my Tankless, it requires a 3/4 independent gas line because it will not fire unless it detects adequate pressure of the incoming NG. Have you looked in to this for your heater?

 

[marcb]

Final working unit, for cleaning I bypass the filter and on brew days I loop through them for crystal clear beer! This thing works like a champ!

 

[barryfine]

That looks like a great setup! Just be sure that you're using drinking water safe garden hose so you don't get any chemicals leaching into your water.

When you say your loop your beer through your filters on your brew day, are you just talking about your water or are you filtering your wort?

 

[marcb]

That looks like a great setup! Just be sure that you're using drinking water safe garden hose so you don't get any chemicals leaching into your water.

When you say your loop your beer through your filters on your brew day, are you just talking about your water or are you filtering your wort?

I use NSF hoses for rv water supply and no, I just filter my brewing water, not my cleaning water and definitely not my beer!

 

[barryfine]

I use NSF hoses for rv water supply and no, I just filter my brewing water, not my cleaning water and definitely not my beer!

Very nice. I figured I had misread you. Cheers!

 

[marcb]

In action, this may very well be my favorite piece of brewing equipment to date!

 

[MaxOut]

In action, this may very well be my favorite piece of brewing equipment to date!

I agree 100% by far the best money I've spent on my home brewery. Congrats!

 

[marcb]

I agree 100% by far the best money I've spent on my home brewery. Congrats!

Thanks! Now as with everything else I build - I'm looking to go bigger! I need more capacity and higher temp (180!) for a two kettle 50 gallon system that I will be building that will have one of these in place of the HLT. I will also be designing a custom filtration system with UV filtering.... Thank God my wife is a saint!

 

[marcb]

Thanks! Now as with everything else I build - I'm looking to go bigger! I need more capacity and higher temp (180!) for a two kettle 50 gallon system that I will be building that will have one of these in place of the HLT. I will also be designing a custom filtration system with UV filtering.... Thank God my wife is a saint!

Perspective

 

[Jukas]

That looks fantastic. Can you ask your wife to rub some of her saintliness off on my wife please?

Does a move up to a 50gal system indicate an intention to go Nano?

 

[marcb]

That looks fantastic. Can you ask your wife to rub some of her saintliness off on my wife please?

Does a move up to a 50gal system indicate an intention to go Nano?

Sure can! Hope it works! Did you ever get your conical? We finally got the machined blocks back for the tri clamp conicals and should have them together in the next couple of weeks. I'm thinking about using mine as a yeast brink as I'll need 3 gallon starters with the new tanks.....

 

[Jukas]

Sure can! Hope it works! Did you ever get your conical? We finally got the machined blocks back for the tri clamp conicals and should have them together in the next couple of weeks. I'm thinking about using mine as a yeast brink as I'll need 3 gallon starters with the new tanks.....

I ended up order a brewhemoth with all the bells and whistles. Just waiting on a few more parts to come in and I'll be ready for it's virgin batch.

Ironically I think I'm only a few bucks short into this product of what you offered me your 14gal B3 for

 

[marcb]

I ended up order a brewhemoth with all the bells and whistles. Just waiting on a few more parts to come in and I'll be ready for it's virgin batch.

Ironically I think I'm only a few bucks short into this product of what you offered me your 14gal B3 for

Lol, that happens quick, I've helped a couple of friends get the temp control going on those. Let me know when you get all the pieces in....did you get the immersion coil? I love that they are pressurized as you can use it as a bright too!

 

[marcb]

How crazy is crazy?

 

[MaxOut]

How crazy is crazy?

Looks like your a Moorbeer preferred customer for sure!!

 

[marcb]

Looks like your a Moorbeer preferred customer for sure!!

Lol, you could say that! I only bought the fermenters new and only with 'beer money' (like poker money) from selling other stuff that I built. I've been on a tear though, last year this time I bought my first all grain setup which was a second-hand three tier rig for all grain. Within two months I had already built a Brutus 10 and in May I bought the used flat Morebeer stand. Now up to 50 gallon pots! In the pic is 22 gallons of Pliny in final dry hop stage and 11 gallons of Apple/cranberry cider.

 

[barryfine]

I found this propane powered tankless hot water for $200 and ordered it. It's normally $280 so I couldn't resist.

http://www.buy.com/pr/product.aspx?sku=219061279

Here is the manufacturer's website.

http://www.eccotemp.com/eccotemp-l10-tankless-water-heater/

It looks like you need this extra part to get over 140, but it was only $10

http://www.eccotemp.com/l10-overtemp-sensor/

Hopefully it will come before the weekend and I can do some testing and report back. I don't expect to be able to sparge directly from it, but it should at least be able to give my HLT a big head start.

Sorry for the delay in updating you guys, but I had some difficulties getting this thing working and I don't brew too much in the winter since I brew in a detached garage with no heat.

I did a double brew day yesterday and this hot water worked incredibly well! I was able get water from 50 degrees to up 180 degrees! I could probably sparge directly from this hot water heater, but without it being digital controlled I don't trust it maintaining a steady temperature.

Still, it saves a ton of time because I can fill my HLT with water at nearly sparge temp. Having a sink with hot water for cleaning throughout brew was also a huge upgrade.

Now that I can get water at basically sparge temp right away, I'm going to setup my HLT to be electric. I figure a small 110V heat stick will be enough to increase it 10-15 degrees in a reasonable amount of time and maintain that temp as needed.

Here are a few pics from my brewday yesterday:

Filling up my Hot Liquor Tank from my propane powered on demand hot water heater. It can get water up to close to 180 degrees!

The brewhouse. Boil Kettle on left. Mash Tun in the middle. Hot Liquor tank on the right. Sink and Hot water heater to the right of that and glass carboys getting cleaned in front of the sink.

Filling up a carboy with White IPA. *(We covered the carboy with a towel right after this pic to protect from UV.

Close up of the wort chiller and inline oxygen injection system.

Recirculating the mash while heating up sparge water.

Pumping wort into the boil kettle while sparging into the Mash Tun.

 

[marcb]

Sorry for the delay in updating you guys, but I had some difficulties getting this thing working and I don't brew too much in the winter since I brew in a detached garage with no heat.

I did a double brew day yesterday and this hot water worked incredibly well! I was able get water from 50 degrees to up 180 degrees! I could probably sparge directly from this hot water heater, but without it being digital controlled I don't trust it maintaining a steady temperature.

Still, it saves a ton of time because I can fill my HLT with water at nearly sparge temp. Having a sink with hot water for cleaning throughout brew was also a huge upgrade.

Now that I can get water at basically sparge temp right away, I'm going to setup my HLT to be electric. I figure a small 110V heat stick will be enough to increase it 10-15 degrees in a reasonable amount of time and maintain that temp as needed.

Here are a few pics from my brewday yesterday:

Filling up my Hot Liquor Tank from my propane powered on demand hot water heater. It can get water up to close to 180 degrees!

The brewhouse. Boil Kettle on left. Mash Tun in the middle. Hot Liquor tank on the right. Sink and Hot water heater to the right of that and glass carboys getting cleaned in front of the sink.

Filling up a carboy with White IPA. *(We covered the carboy with a towel right after this pic to protect from UV.

Close up of the wort chiller and inline oxygen injection system.

Recirculating the mash while heating up sparge water.

Pumping wort into the boil kettle while sparging into the Mash Tun.

Looks awesome! Nicely done. I'm completely convinced that a tankless water heater is one of the best investments you can make. I'm designing one into the new brewery I'm building for strike/sparge and also recirc loop for step mashing/temp maintenance. At the size I'm working on here it is more cost effective and takes up way less space to install one of these permanently than use a hot liquor tank.

 

[barryfine]

Thanks Marc! That means a lot coming from you. I'm following your other thread pretty closely because I'm looking to go bigger as well.

How do you plan to use the tankless hot water heater to heat up your mash? Once I switch my HLT to digital electric control, I'm just going to add a herms coils. My issue with HERMS before was that it would take so long for my HLT to get up to temp after striking that it would be pointless. Since I can get it to the correct temp out of the tap it solves that problem for me.

I still don't want to do away with my HLT, but if I bought a nicer tankless with digital controls I think I'd be confortable with that.

 

[marcb]

Thanks Marc! That means a lot coming from you. I'm following your other thread pretty closely because I'm looking to go bigger as well.

How do you plan to use the tankless hot water heater to heat up your mash? Once I switch my HLT to digital electric control, I'm just going to add a herms coils. My issue with HERMS before was that it would take so long for my HLT to get up to temp after striking that it would be pointless. Since I can get it to the correct temp out of the tap it solves that problem for me.

I still don't want to do away with my HLT, but if I bought a nicer tankless with digital controls I think I'd be confortable with that.

So in my current process I have a HLT that has an automated burner and a herms coil. To overcome the issue with temp recovery I fill the HLT with my tankless to 160 and usually have the burner control set at 170. I then proceed to fill the mash tun from the tankless and depending on the temp of the grain and what I'm brewing start the mash and set everything up for auto herms via pump control and recirc of the mash.

Where I'm headed (now at least) is a larger commercial tankless with a recirc loop. On that loop will be two CFC stainless heat exchangers and a pump. When the valve is open to the heat exchangers I will basically have the same benefit as my herms coil today in my HLT but driven directly through my tankless with zero waste water. This should work well for step mashes and there is no risk of scorching the wort in a rims tube. I should also be able to hit mash out temps. When the mash is complete I will have a temp monitor and bypass valve as well as a flow meter for calculating sparge flow/volume (I also plan on leveraging this for strike water as well)

 

[barryfine]

So in my current process I have a HLT that has an automated burner and a herms coil. To overcome the issue with temp recovery I fill the HLT with my tankless to 160 and usually have the burner control set at 170. I then proceed to fill the mash tun from the tankless and depending on the temp of the grain and what I'm brewing start the mash and set everything up for auto herms via pump control and recirc of the mash.

Where I'm headed (now at least) is a larger commercial tankless with a recirc loop. On that loop will be two CFC stainless heat exchangers and a pump. When the valve is open to the heat exchangers I will basically have the same benefit as my herms coil today in my HLT but driven directly through my tankless with zero waste water. This should work well for step mashes and there is no risk of scorching the wort in a rims tube. I should also be able to hit mash out temps. When the mash is complete I will have a temp monitor and bypass valve as well as a flow meter for calculating sparge flow/volume (I also plan on leveraging this for strike water as well)

That's a pretty cool idea! Before I realized I could get to basically strike temp on my first shot, I had thought about recirculating my hot liquor through the tankless to get it up to temp. I guess I could still do that, but since I'm sticking with a HLT I figured that doing an electric PID HLT would be easier.

 

[marcb]

That's a pretty cool idea! Before I realized I could get to basically strike temp on my first shot, I had thought about recirculating my hot liquor through the tankless to get it up to temp. I guess I could still do that, but since I'm sticking with a HLT I figured that doing an electric PID HLT would be easier.

Meeting with a plumber to discuss, for me with two parallel 1.5bbl batches going at the same time I'm struggling to find room in the garage for everything. Eliminating a 100+ gallon HLT saves me a ton of room and money. I'll let you know how this shapes up as I'll be sketching out the design.

 

[barryfine]

Meeting with a plumber to discuss, for me with two parallel 1.5bbl batches going at the same time I'm struggling to find room in the garage for everything. Eliminating a 100+ gallon HLT saves me a ton of room and money. I'll let you know how this shapes up as I'll be sketching out the design.

Going parallel is a pretty interesting idea. I'm planning a 1.5bbl system as well, but for now I'm just planning a normal 3 vessel system and will just brew back to back for a 3bbl brew. I'm sure yours would be a much shorter brew day though. I definitely look forward to seeing your system come together. I'm sure I'll find some ideas to borrow along the way.

 

[marcb]

Going parallel is a pretty interesting idea. I'm planning a 1.5bbl system as well, but for now I'm just planning a normal 3 vessel system and will just brew back to back for a 3bbl brew. I'm sure yours would be a much shorter brew day though. I definitely look forward to seeing your system come together. I'm sure I'll find some ideas to borrow along the way.

It's funny but it wasn't intended, kind of like a Noah's ark approach. I scored the two glacier kettles with false bottoms. researched the hell out of unitank fermenters that could serve as both ferms and brights and ended up buying two of the glacier uni 60g fermenters. Came across the two 52g tanks here that will make killer brew kettles/whirlpool tanks.... It all just kind of happened. I really like the idea of the parallel brews, we'll see where it all ends up!

 

[LosBarbonesBrewingCo]

Reviving this older thread because I just picked up a Noritz NR50-OD-LP and is similar to marcb's tankless.

marcb, I'm having trouble getting mine to light and was wondering what type of regulator you used? I hope I can get more details about your setup and process so I can get mine going.

Thanks.

 

[marcb]

Reviving this older thread because I just picked up a Noritz NR50-OD-LP and is similar to marcb's tankless.

marcb, I'm having trouble getting mine to light and was wondering what type of regulator you used? I hope I can get more details about your setup and process so I can get mine going.

Thanks.

Following up on this as we had taken this conversation off line in a private message and emails since. The regulator appeared to be the culprit, remember that these water heaters are low pressure and that you need to have a high enough volume regulator to support the BTU requirement of the tankless. There are all kinds of tricks to get higher water temp out of these using jumpers or hacks that you can find on the internet. Make sure you filter your water on the inlet to avoid deposits. I have since upgraded to a larger Rinnai 199K BTU unit and love it, it helps me knock out 100G batches without a HLT and I couldn't be happier. In our production brewery (still a nano!) we use these as well and eventually will need to daisy chain a few together to get the volume required but there is no underestimating the value of hot water on demand for mashing, sparging, and best of all cleanup.

 

[tiernpj]

I sell tankless water heaters for a living and rep for a large tankless company. There are a few factors to consider... #1 where in the country are you ? you need to consider what is called a delta T which simply means if you have 50 degree ground water and want to heat to 160 degrees you have a 110 degree delta T. This effects how much continous capacity the water heater will produce. A very general rule of thumb is that in the north east you will get somewhere between 4-5 gallons a minute in the south these things rock and can produce upwards of 9 gallons of water as their delta T is so low and they may have a 70 degree ground water temp. Also by federal safety laws to go over 135 degrees you need to get a master controller additionally that will allow you to go hotter. This is to prevent scalding. Lastly whichevef brand you choose do not believe the advertised continous production label do the delta T and look at the curve charts they provide on the website you may need more than one tankless. Some good brands to look at are Rannai #1 ... #2 noritz... #3.... for economy bosch or takagi though you get what you pay for in this category. best of luck pm me if you have any questions.

Can I put the tankless in a series and have more the first one move it from 50 to 100 and the second tank take that 100 and move it to 150 and the third tank from 150 to 185?

 

[InspectorJon]

You might get an answer here but these questions are better asked of the manufacturer. They typically have pretty good technical support if you poke around on their website. They want to have their products installed safely and correctly. You might need to look in the contractor/installer part of their website. You might find something under the "documentation" heading.

Conceptually what you ask is possible but you would have to change some safety settings. I am not sure all tankless water heaters are rated or intended to reach 185F water temperature.