Single tier - why not 2 burner

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Kayos

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So I almost have SWMBO sold on a brew stand. I have always used a cooler and batch sparged. I was planning on continuing to batch sparge and watched some videos (via Bobby_M) on it with a single tier stand.

So.....


Why does everyone get a 3 burner? I realize this has to be a dumb question...but I keep going over it in my head and it seems like the only reason to get a 3 burner is to fly sparge.

My plan is a direct fire single tier with a single pump to batch sparge. Use my BK as an HLT also (like I do now). If I wanted to do HERMS, I would need a second pump, but not a third burner.....Maybe fly is that much better....I dunno.

Please assist my small brain
 
So I almost have SWMBO sold on a brew stand. I have always used a cooler and batch sparged. I was planning on continuing to batch sparge and watched some videos (via Bobby_M) on it with a single tier stand.

So.....


Why does everyone get a 3 burner? I realize this has to be a dumb question...but I keep going over it in my head and it seems like the only reason to get a 3 burner is to fly sparge.

My plan is a direct fire single tier with a single pump to batch sparge. Use my BK as an HLT also (like I do now). If I wanted to do HERMS, I would need a second pump, but not a third burner.....Maybe fly is that much better....I dunno.

Please assist my small brain

Well,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,I've never seen a three burner. But I"m sure that's only there if the brewer wanted to direct fire the MLT. I'd much prefer HERMS or RIMS than direct fire but I guess that's a personal choice.
 
Personally, i like to heat up my strike water in my MLT. No reason you can't heat it up in your HLT though and transfer. I imagine it would take a little longer before you can mash in.

I have RIMS and run that with my burner and my strike water is up to temp pretty quickly that way.
 
Well,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,I've never seen a three burner. But I"m sure that's only there if the brewer wanted to direct fire the MLT. I'd much prefer HERMS or RIMS than direct fire but I guess that's a personal choice.

Wait.......aren't all the single tier stands you've seen 3 burner?

brewsteel, abetterbrewstand......B3 stands....etc?
 
Personally, i like to heat up my strike water in my MLT. No reason you can't heat it up in your HLT though and transfer. .

Yes, exactly....so again, 2 burner not 3 right? Why even have the place for the 3rd vessel on the stand? What's the 3rd vessel for?

MLT with strike water heated up in it. If you need a HLT, use the BK then when the HLT is empty, it turns into the BK.
 
Are you happy with the temperature holding capabilities of your cooler? If so then you don't need a third burner, or a second pump (you said batch sparging)

If you wish you had better temp control during your mash than yes you would either need a third burner (direct fire) or a rims/herms setup.

You don't NEED a second pump if you are doing batch sparging even using herms/rims.
 
Yes, 2 vessel systems can be run quite easily.

You mash with standard ratios, then mix all your sparge water (from the soon to be boil kettle) once mash is complete. At this point, you can transfer everything to the boil kettle.

I batch sparge and use RIMS with only 1 pump.

For a single tier stand, you would need a 2nd pump if you were fly sparging.
 
It's all about options. I heat my strike water in my keggle mash tun. That way it's all Preheated. At the same time I am heating water in my hlt for herms. It would take twice as long if I had to heat all the water in the hlt and then transfer the strike to the mt. It also gives me the option to direct fire the mt if I want to step mash quicker than the Herms can go alone. Can you do all grain with only 2? Of course. But it's nice to have options.
 
It's all about options. I heat my strike water in my keggle mash tun. That way it's all Preheated. At the same time I am heating water in my hlt for herms. It would take twice as long if I had to heat all the water in the hlt and then transfer the strike to the mt. It also gives me the option to direct fire the mt if I want to step mash quicker than the Herms can go alone. Can you do all grain with only 2? Of course. But it's nice to have options.

Even in this situation, can't you use one burner for the HERMS and one for the direct fire? The third would not be needed until boil began and in that case you wouldn't be using either burner anymore.
 
Why even have the place for the 3rd vessel on the stand? What's the 3rd vessel for?

MLT with strike water heated up in it. If you need a HLT, use the BK then when the HLT is empty, it turns into the BK.

Having only two vessels eliminates any potential for fly sparging. It also means that you cant drain your mash tun before adding the sparge water on top of it (if your sparge water is coming from your BK. It always been my understanding that this will lead to a lower efficiency than draining the first runnings and the sparging.

If you do want to do a 2 kettle system you could always do a brutus 2.0
http://www.alenuts.com/Alenuts/brutus20.html
2 vessels, two burners, two pumps
This does have it own unique disadvantages!
 
Yes, exactly....so again, 2 burner not 3 right? Why even have the place for the 3rd vessel on the stand? What's the 3rd vessel for?

MLT with strike water heated up in it. If you need a HLT, use the BK then when the HLT is empty, it turns into the BK.

Well, I have three vessels. One is the HLT, one is the MLT, and one is the BK. The HLT is NOT empty when I"m filling my BK so that's why i have three vessels!

Even when I batch sparge (sometimes), the first runnings go into the BK while there is still water in the HLT. When I fly sparge (needs two pumps on a single tier), the wort comes out of the MLT and into the BK, but the HLT is still pretty full with sparge water. That's why I have three vessels. I have an electric system, but only the HLT and the BK have elements/heating abilities.

The Brutus system is a classic two vessel system, and that'd be worth looking at if you're seriously considering two vessels.
 
Kayos said:
Even in this situation, can't you use one burner for the HERMS and one for the direct fire? The third would not be needed until boil began and in that case you wouldn't be using either burner anymore.

Well when it comes to sparge time then you are moving wort into a kettle that isn't on a burner. Now you are moving a hot kettle off a burner and in my case of 10 gallon batches, lifting 12 gals of wort around. Again you most certainly can do it, but once you are buying multiple kettles and pumps, the price of 1 burner is insignificant.
 
OK. That clarifies a lot. Thanks for all the responses! Now for the planning stages.....
 
OK. That clarifies a lot. .

It does?!?! I'm actually confused now. :p

I guess the one thing I can suggest is doing lots of homework! I've never seen a three burner stand, and yet you've never NOT seen one, so that just goes to show you how many versions of brewstands there can be.

I used to have an electric HLT, cooler MLT, and electic BK. So I guess that is why I never even thought about a burner under my MLT. But of course, it makes sense.

I have a HERMS, and I like it alot. My HEX coil is in the HLT, so that has water in it until the mash and sparge are over. But if you're running a RIMS, of course, you don't need the same set up.

It would probably be really helpful if you could brew with a few people and see what "fits" you. I didn't have that opportunity, so I've spent more time and money tweaking things for me. For example, I never considered a bottom draining MLT before. But now I love it. You could save time and money by planning ahead to what seems like a good fit for you.
 
YES! That's the plan. I am a research junkie. I am actually pretty sure I'm going to go with a HERMS system now and do a 3 burner, but only get one pump and one extra mount on a single tier. Keep the options open.......
 
I have three burners. I do not typically have all three fired at the same time, but it does occur. As stated by some others, I fire the MLT to get my strike water up to temp while I bring my HLT up to temp at the same time. Where it comes in handy is cleanup. Once I've collected into the BK (and that has had heat on it once 3 gal were in there), and the MLT is emptied, that gets the extra water I always put in from the HLT. Then some PBW and let it go with pump #1 that was used to recirc throughout the mash.

Perhaps I'm wrong here, but I have always refereed to my rig as a "Direct Fired RIMS", I do not have the rims tube but rely on multiple thermo's for my temp and fire as needed, and recirculate the entire length of the mash. :mug:
 
Why even have the place for the 3rd vessel on the stand? What's the 3rd vessel for?

MLT with strike water heated up in it. If you need a HLT, use the BK then when the HLT is empty, it turns into the BK.

The third vessel is for sparging.

Heat strike water in HLT. Transfer to MLT, dough-in, mash. Heat sparge water in HLT while draining first runnings into boil kettle.

You cannot heat your sparge water in the same vessel into which you're drawing your first runnings.
 
Perhaps I'm wrong here, but I have always refereed to my rig as a "Direct Fired RIMS", I do not have the rims tube but rely on multiple thermo's for my temp and fire as needed, and recirculate the entire length of the mash. :mug:

Well, RIMS stand for "Recirculating Infusion Mash System", so if you're not recirculating, it's not a RIMS. HERMS stands for Heat Exchanged Recirculating Mash System, and again, the key there is the heat exchanger and the recirculating.

Since you're recirculating without a HEXS, I guess it would be a RIMS.
 
It's a pretty simple concept. If you want to direct fire your mash tun, it needs a burner. If you use a plastic vessel for a mash tun, you CAN'T use a burner. If you have a RIMS tube or HERMS hex, you don't need to direct fire but you can as long as it's a metal vessel.

Also, while you only really need two burners running at any given time, once you get to a certain kettle size, or using kegs, the last thing you want to do is pick them up to move them to another burner. I've seen designs where the burner isn't fixed but can slide between two vessels.
 
For what it's worth, i'm happy with my single tier, 3 vessel, 2 burner setup. HLT, Bottom Drain-Tippy MLT, BK. Obviously no RIMS but HERMS is doable, just for our needs it's too slow for us. We sacrifice extraction efficiency for time efficiency (4 batches/brew day).
 
I started with a two burner 3 vessel system (burners under the HLT and BK). Coming from coolers and batch sparging, I went with a kettle because I was afraid I would melt my cooler. Insulated the kettle and it worked okay, but I really wanted to maintain temperature in my mash. I decided on a direct fired MLT RIMS setup with Blichmann TOP controllers. This involved another trip to the welder to add a windscreen and burner support. Suffice it to say, this would have been less expensive to have added when I first had the stand built. That's why I am a fan of building a stand once to meet anything you think you might ever want to do. This is not quite as necessary if you know how to weld. But if you are having it built, go with 3 burners. Pay once, cry once.
 
Why 3 burners:
3 burners are used for the following applications:
HERMS
Direct Fired RIMS
E-RIMS tube with burner fallback
Most E-RIMS systems do not have a third burner.
 
It does?!?! I'm actually confused now. :p

I guess the one thing I can suggest is doing lots of homework! I've never seen a three burner stand, and yet you've never NOT seen one, so that just goes to show you how many versions of brewstands there can be.

Well, here's mine. Now you've seen at least one single tier with 3 burners.

I batch sparge most of the time. By the time I'm draining the first runnings into the BK, I have the BK fired and the HLT has my sparge water up to temp and waiting to pump into the MLT. Works great, impossible without 3 burners. I heat my strike water directly in the MLT, and use the MLT burner to maintain and raise the mash temp.

IMG_4980.jpg
 
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