Decided to celebrate my birthday by taking the day off and making a batch for the first time using the new system. The last part, a 15" false bottom from Sabco, came in today. It was pricey but I was very impressed with the quality. It's extremely thick and fits the keg snugly. Getting it out either requires either tipping the keg or jabing something thin like a paperclip in one of the holes and lifting it out.
Tennis season is starting soon so I decided to do a 10 gallon batch of my team's favorite beer, Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde. Everything worked out well so I'm officially calling this project complete! My biggest concern, the inline heating of sparge water, worked perfectly and the final runnings measured at 1.007. It was pretty cool seeing dark wort come out first and transparent water at the end. It was painful sparging slowly instead of the double batch sparge i'm used to. I guess it's worth it, as my efficiency was at 83%, better than the low 70's using the cooler.
Lessons learned today:
1) A 5500w element can not only get you to a boil quickly but also produce a massive boil over, even with fermcap. Next time, set duty cycle to 60% before it's too late.
2) A shop vac can clean a MLT like no other. No need to lift a keg into the yard and dump. Shop vac has wheels and a large dump valve.
3) A counterflow chiller will beat a 5500w element at 60% duty cycle. If temps are dropping slower than expected during the cooling phase, make sure bk element is actually off. (Oops, unfortunately took me 20 mins to realize).
4) Easiest way to prime a pump is to turn pump on, and loosen the output side so air can escape. When liquid starts to squirt out, tighten clamp. I guess a bypass or float valve would be ideal, but not necessary.
5) You can kink the end of a silicone tube to prevent most spillage when swapping lines.
6) Using the RIMS heater as an inline fly sparge water heater also takes care of cleaning that side of the system.
7) HLT's are optional.
Overall I'm very happy with the system. It provides all of the benefits of a traditional 3-vessel dual pump system with only 2 vessels and one pump. I'd like to avoid swapping lines so I have a lot of valves and tees ordered. Other than that, I don't think I'll be making any changes.