reverse circulation rims

[Owly055]

I'm kind of a tinkerer, and ever since I saw the braumeister videos, I've been fascinated with the idea of reverse circulation...... it just makes sense! The grain is in suspension, which means that a stuck sparge / stuck mash is pretty much out of the question. I've toyed with various ideas and come up with one I like. A two vessel system with the boil kettle being the HLT initially. The mash tun would be an ordinary stainless steel stock pot with a fitting and valve installed, and would have two fitted screens, one for above the grain and one below. The lower screen would be an inch or so off the bottom.......just enough to clear the fitting, and strike water / wort, would be pumped IN to this fitting. Initially the strike water, and later wort drawn from the just above the top screen once all the strike water was transferred. heating thus could be nothing more complicated than an ordinary hot plate on a PID controller, perhaps with a PWM to regulate the temp the hotplate itself would reach. Once the mashing was complete, you would draw the wort from the tap on the bottom of the mash tun, and could sparge from the top if you chose to.

By having liquid wort that was circulating at the bottom of the mash tun, heating without scorching shouldn't be a problem...............

Two fitted screens from Utah Biodiesel are about $100....... send them your pot.


H.W.

 

[dinnerstick]

stuck mashes are still possible in the braumeister... unfortunately. you can get channeling and in the worst case fountains where a whole lot of the wort squeezes through one channel and sprays out the top. in my few years of upside-down BM mashing i've never had a fountain but have seen videos of them. they are sometimes grainy and remind me of yeti shots, but they're out there. reducing or eliminating this, at least in the BM, is usually just an issue of adjusting the crush or simply reducing grain bill. the other weird thing about upside down mashes is that you don't really run all of your wort through a grain filter at runoff. ideally after mashout you would like to circulate right side up for a minute to set the filter bed, then start collecting wort by gravity once it runs clear, but in the BM you just collect wort that has been previously circulating upside down. nobody really seems to mind that you don't get crystal clear wort, it clears in the kettle or in the fermenter, the beer comes out great. just saying.

 

[Owly055]

stuck mashes are still possible in the braumeister... unfortunately. you can get channeling and in the worst case fountains where a whole lot of the wort squeezes through one channel and sprays out the top. in my few years of upside-down BM mashing i've never had a fountain but have seen videos of them. they are sometimes grainy and remind me of yeti shots, but they're out there. reducing or eliminating this, at least in the BM, is usually just an issue of adjusting the crush or simply reducing grain bill. the other weird thing about upside down mashes is that you don't really run all of your wort through a grain filter at runoff. ideally after mashout you would like to circulate right side up for a minute to set the filter bed, then start collecting wort by gravity once it runs clear, but in the BM you just collect wort that has been previously circulating upside down. nobody really seems to mind that you don't get crystal clear wort, it clears in the kettle or in the fermenter, the beer comes out great. just saying.

Seems to me that flow rate is the issue as far as channeling and blowouts....... As you say, the wort clears in the kettle and fermenter, so that's a minor issue. Cycling the pump makes sense to me........You don't really need constant circulation for mashing. In fact with the proper valving, you could periodically reverse the circulation for a brief time, and circulate (normal direction) between your boil kettle and the grain bed for filtration if you felt it was needed....... With a blank sheet of paper, you can design anything you want.


H.W.

 

[IvanBrew]

Any aquarium guys out there?

My brain has been trying to smash this idea together with that of a fluidized bed reactor for some time now. I've worked out (and thrown out) a dozen concepts, but I keep coming back to it. One of these days I'm gonna have to conduct an experiment...