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I can almost guarantee if your beer tastes like garden hose and you used a garden hose that's not food grade it's the culprit. I'm pretty sure in Palmer's how to brew it even specifically states there never to do it that way for that exact reason. Cheers

I have gotten rid of said hose and I am replacing it with a silicone hose (not under pressure) to fill kettles going forward.
 
I believe my issue on this last brew was that I had the mash recirc too slow. Which theoretically, I should be picking up more heat from the HLT/HERMS due to slower speed and longer time inside the HERMS coil, however that was not the case.

My process is pretty close to yours.

The recipe calls for single mash rest at 152F. Beersmith calls for my strike water to be at 165 to account for temp loss when I add the grain.
  • To get the water in my mash tun to 165 I set my panel to 175 because it is faster heating the strike water when the HLT is much hotter.
  • Press go and begin to heat HLT water with a pump recirculating it in the HLT
  • Fill my mash tun to the strike water level calculated by beersmith (7.88 gallons in this case)
  • Begin recirculating my strike water through the HERMS coil (so now I'm heating both HLT and mash water at the same time).
  • Wait until my mash water is at strike temp (added acids/campden/brewing salts)
  • Reduce HLT controller to 3 degrees above mash temp. (This differential works perfect when recirc is full bore, I am still dialing in the temp with recirc throttled back. Towards the end of my last brew I opened up the recirc valve and the differential was closer to 5 degrees.)
  • Add cold water to HLT to help drop temp quickly
  • Turn off my wort pump and close MT valve - at this point my mash tun water is at 165 and my HLT water is at 157
  • Mash in grain and stir, ensuring that the temp levels off at 152
  • Let the mash sit for 5 minutes covered
  • Stir the mash
  • Turn wort pump back on and throttle back to about 1/4 open.
  • I watch the mash tun outlet temperature (mash going TO the HERMS coil) as an indicator of bulk mash temp - if it starts to drop over the course of my 60 minute mash, I will raise my HLT temp by 2-4 degrees to compensate but I rarely need to do this.
  • At the end of 60 minutes I shut off the mash recirc, add silicone hose to mash recirc port, and switch hoses around for the sparge - and simultaneously set the HLT to 168
  • Once the HLT hits 168 I'll start sparging
My issue the last brew was during step 6, I had the Mash recirc barely cracked (trickle) and in order to keep my Mash temp anywhere near 152, I had to turn the HLT temp up. (15°-18° higher than mash) Once I opened up the mash recirc a bit (slow stream) the differential was closer to 5°.

That still seems off.. Your kettle should hold the mash at 152 for ~20 minutes with no HERMS at all. It doesn't take much to maintain mash temps.

I suspect that what you are calling a trickle is actually just what's coming out of the hose by gravity, and you aren't getting any true flow past your temp probe. Try hooking up your sparge hose for the mash recirc and holding the end of it at an upward angle then and get wort to flow out of it that way as slowly as possible. If it comes out uphill then you know it's the pump and not gravity.
 
The black expandable one was what I used.

I think the mistake I made as mashing out at above 170 deg. I messed up and left the HLT heating and my sparge water got hotter

So you were using the black hose to transfer your HLT water to your mash tun? I'm a little confused
 
I believe I'm that idiot, unless someone else said the same thing. I crush my grain to 0.045" based on what Kal at theelectricbrewery suggests about grinding coarser for recirculating systems. He crushes at 0.047" (and is far from an idiot if you've checked out his site :) ). I am in the mid-90s in terms of mash efficiency for lighter beers using a crush of 0.045". His reasoning is that, for recirculating systems, if you grinder finer you have more chance of channeling / side-wall shunting. In contrast, on a non-recirc system, if you go finer, your efficiency will climb. To each their own, but I've brewed roughly 40 times on this system and I get the highest efficiency at 0.045".

No offense intended

I tried crushing coarser and my mash efficiency dropped from 75% to 50-something percent using the same flow rate so different strokes I guess
 
That still seems off.. Your kettle should hold the mash at 152 for ~20 minutes with no HERMS at all. It doesn't take much to maintain mash temps.

I suspect that what you are calling a trickle is actually just what's coming out of the hose by gravity, and you aren't getting any true flow past your temp probe. Try hooking up your sparge hose for the mash recirc and holding the end of it at an upward angle then and get wort to flow out of it that way as slowly as possible. If it comes out uphill then you know it's the pump and not gravity.

I will try this on the next brew, thanks for the help.
 
Augiedoggy, TheMadKing, Jready, and others that have done many batches on this system, about 12ish batches ago (when I was finally done tinkering with variables in terms of the process on this system), I started plotting an efficiency curve on Excel (mash efficiency achieved vs grain amount) and I'm up to 12 data points now (12 distinct recipes encompassing about 8 different styles). The goal is to generate a linear trendline that has an equation associated with it (that way, when planning for the efficiency of a new recipe you've never brewed, you can enter the grain amount into the equation and it will spit out an associated mash efficiency that you can expect). I'm happy to say that the resulting equation (that I have so far with only 12 data points...) has an R^2 value in the nineties, so the relationship between efficiency and grain amount is fairly linear assuming you aren't changing other variables like mash ratio, crush size, sparge rate, etc. (imperial stout with 55# of grain has a low efficiency and pilsner with 20# of grain has a very high efficiency). I can post this later if others are interesting in seeing it, but I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. What made me think of this was when Augiedoggy noted a 91% efficiency, so I was wondering what the grain amount was to achieve that specific value since it will vary depending on the recipe / grain amount.
 
Augiedoggy, TheMadKing, Jready, and others that have done many batches on this system, about 12ish batches ago (when I was finally done tinkering with variables in terms of the process on this system), I started plotting an efficiency curve on Excel (mash efficiency achieved vs grain amount) and I'm up to 12 data points now (12 distinct recipes encompassing about 8 different styles). The goal is to generate a linear trendline that has an equation associated with it (that way, when planning for the efficiency of a new recipe you've never brewed, you can enter the grain amount into the equation and it will spit out an associated mash efficiency that you can expect). I'm happy to say that the resulting equation (that I have so far with only 12 data points...) has an R^2 value in the nineties, so the relationship between efficiency and grain amount is fairly linear assuming you aren't changing other variables like mash ratio, crush size, sparge rate, etc. (imperial stout with 55# of grain has a low efficiency and pilsner with 20# of grain has a very high efficiency). I can post this later if others are interesting in seeing it, but I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. What made me think of this was when Augiedoggy noted a 91% efficiency, so I was wondering what the grain amount was to achieve that specific value since it will vary depending on the recipe / grain amount.

I would be very interested. I haven't done as many batches as others here and I'm still looking for ways to fine tune my process
 
Augiedoggy, TheMadKing, Jready, and others that have done many batches on this system, about 12ish batches ago (when I was finally done tinkering with variables in terms of the process on this system), I started plotting an efficiency curve on Excel (mash efficiency achieved vs grain amount) and I'm up to 12 data points now (12 distinct recipes encompassing about 8 different styles). The goal is to generate a linear trendline that has an equation associated with it (that way, when planning for the efficiency of a new recipe you've never brewed, you can enter the grain amount into the equation and it will spit out an associated mash efficiency that you can expect). I'm happy to say that the resulting equation (that I have so far with only 12 data points...) has an R^2 value in the nineties, so the relationship between efficiency and grain amount is fairly linear assuming you aren't changing other variables like mash ratio, crush size, sparge rate, etc. (imperial stout with 55# of grain has a low efficiency and pilsner with 20# of grain has a very high efficiency). I can post this later if others are interesting in seeing it, but I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. What made me think of this was when Augiedoggy noted a 91% efficiency, so I was wondering what the grain amount was to achieve that specific value since it will vary depending on the recipe / grain amount.

Yes please... this could be a great tool for a lot of us (even thoose of us who can only drool at these amazing systems!)
 
Augiedoggy, TheMadKing, Jready, and others that have done many batches on this system, about 12ish batches ago (when I was finally done tinkering with variables in terms of the process on this system), I started plotting an efficiency curve on Excel (mash efficiency achieved vs grain amount) and I'm up to 12 data points now (12 distinct recipes encompassing about 8 different styles). The goal is to generate a linear trendline that has an equation associated with it (that way, when planning for the efficiency of a new recipe you've never brewed, you can enter the grain amount into the equation and it will spit out an associated mash efficiency that you can expect). I'm happy to say that the resulting equation (that I have so far with only 12 data points...) has an R^2 value in the nineties, so the relationship between efficiency and grain amount is fairly linear assuming you aren't changing other variables like mash ratio, crush size, sparge rate, etc. (imperial stout with 55# of grain has a low efficiency and pilsner with 20# of grain has a very high efficiency). I can post this later if others are interesting in seeing it, but I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. What made me think of this was when Augiedoggy noted a 91% efficiency, so I was wondering what the grain amount was to achieve that specific value since it will vary depending on the recipe / grain amount.

That is very cool. I’m not nearly that analytical but love data when it is provided to me!
 
I believe my issue on this last brew was that I had the mash recirc too slow. Which theoretically, I should be picking up more heat from the HLT/HERMS due to slower speed and longer time inside the HERMS coil, however that was not the case.

My process is pretty close to yours.

The recipe calls for single mash rest at 152F. Beersmith calls for my strike water to be at 165 to account for temp loss when I add the grain.
  • To get the water in my mash tun to 165 I set my panel to 175 because it is faster heating the strike water when the HLT is much hotter.
  • Press go and begin to heat HLT water with a pump recirculating it in the HLT
  • Fill my mash tun to the strike water level calculated by beersmith (7.88 gallons in this case)
  • Begin recirculating my strike water through the HERMS coil (so now I'm heating both HLT and mash water at the same time).
  • Wait until my mash water is at strike temp (added acids/campden/brewing salts)
  • Reduce HLT controller to 3 degrees above mash temp. (This differential works perfect when recirc is full bore, I am still dialing in the temp with recirc throttled back. Towards the end of my last brew I opened up the recirc valve and the differential was closer to 5 degrees.)
  • Add cold water to HLT to help drop temp quickly
  • Turn off my wort pump and close MT valve - at this point my mash tun water is at 165 and my HLT water is at 157
  • Mash in grain and stir, ensuring that the temp levels off at 152
  • Let the mash sit for 5 minutes covered
  • Stir the mash
  • Turn wort pump back on and throttle back to about 1/4 open.
  • I watch the mash tun outlet temperature (mash going TO the HERMS coil) as an indicator of bulk mash temp - if it starts to drop over the course of my 60 minute mash, I will raise my HLT temp by 2-4 degrees to compensate but I rarely need to do this.
  • At the end of 60 minutes I shut off the mash recirc, add silicone hose to mash recirc port, and switch hoses around for the sparge - and simultaneously set the HLT to 168
  • Once the HLT hits 168 I'll start sparging
My issue the last brew was during step 6, I had the Mash recirc barely cracked (trickle) and in order to keep my Mash temp anywhere near 152, I had to turn the HLT temp up. (15°-18° higher than mash) Once I opened up the mash recirc a bit (slow stream) the differential was closer to 5°.

I'm in the middle of a brew day and have been thinking about your issue and another method of error checking just occurred to me.

During mash recirc, the wort returning to your mash from the HERMS coil should be the same temperature as your desired mash temp (or maybe 1 degree warmer).

You should not be losing enough temperature from your mash tun that you need to significantly heat the returning water higher than your intended mash temp. So if you are mashing at 152 and you measure the temp coming out of your HERMS coil at 152-153 and your mash temp appears to be falling rapidly then something is wrong. Either your mash temp didn't start at 152 (strike temp was wrong), your mash -> HERMS temperature is reading incorrectly (not enough flow, bad probe, or bad cable), or your HERMS -> mash temperature measurement was wrong.
 
I believe my issue on this last brew was that I had the mash recirc too slow. Which theoretically, I should be picking up more heat from the HLT/HERMS due to slower speed and longer time inside the HERMS coil, however that was not the case.

My process is pretty close to yours.

The recipe calls for single mash rest at 152F. Beersmith calls for my strike water to be at 165 to account for temp loss when I add the grain.
  • To get the water in my mash tun to 165 I set my panel to 175 because it is faster heating the strike water when the HLT is much hotter.
  • Press go and begin to heat HLT water with a pump recirculating it in the HLT
  • Fill my mash tun to the strike water level calculated by beersmith (7.88 gallons in this case)
  • Begin recirculating my strike water through the HERMS coil (so now I'm heating both HLT and mash water at the same time).
  • Wait until my mash water is at strike temp (added acids/campden/brewing salts)
  • Reduce HLT controller to 3 degrees above mash temp. (This differential works perfect when recirc is full bore, I am still dialing in the temp with recirc throttled back. Towards the end of my last brew I opened up the recirc valve and the differential was closer to 5 degrees.)
  • Add cold water to HLT to help drop temp quickly
  • Turn off my wort pump and close MT valve - at this point my mash tun water is at 165 and my HLT water is at 157
  • Mash in grain and stir, ensuring that the temp levels off at 152
  • Let the mash sit for 5 minutes covered
  • Stir the mash
  • Turn wort pump back on and throttle back to about 1/4 open.
  • I watch the mash tun outlet temperature (mash going TO the HERMS coil) as an indicator of bulk mash temp - if it starts to drop over the course of my 60 minute mash, I will raise my HLT temp by 2-4 degrees to compensate but I rarely need to do this.
  • At the end of 60 minutes I shut off the mash recirc, add silicone hose to mash recirc port, and switch hoses around for the sparge - and simultaneously set the HLT to 168
  • Once the HLT hits 168 I'll start sparging
My issue the last brew was during step 6, I had the Mash recirc barely cracked (trickle) and in order to keep my Mash temp anywhere near 152, I had to turn the HLT temp up. (15°-18° higher than mash) Once I opened up the mash recirc a bit (slow stream) the differential was closer to 5°.

I just noticed another phenomenon for the first time as well. The mash recirc flow rate did not stay constant during the mash. I suspect that the grain bed become more compacted throughout the mash so I had to open the linear flow valve very slightly more twice during the mash to maintain a consistent flow rate - This might explain your issue too. You start with good flow and then as the grain bed compacts you lose flow and your temp probes stop getting good readings
 
@DrummingGuy81 and @kj9tonne how are guys attaching the struts to the table? I have looked at the pics but not seeing how.

Thanks for the help.
I used some 3/4 sheet metal screws and screwed the short cross braces into the existing table supports. I also put some small L brackets at each end and bolted through the ends of the table to add a little extra bracing.. hopefully that makes sense.. I can try to take some pictures but it's hard to see with everything on my table..
 
I used some 3/4 sheet metal screws and screwed the short cross braces into the existing table supports. I also put some small L brackets at each end and bolted through the ends of the table to add a little extra bracing.. hopefully that makes sense.. I can try to take some pictures but it's hard to see with everything on my table..

Yes, please. Any pictures you could share would be helpful. Oh by the way nice rig you have too.
 
I start ramping up after an hour of holding at mash temp. It takes like 45 mins orclose to it, to get the whole mash from say 150 to 165 then I sparge at between 1.5 and 2 gpm rate which takes about another 40 mins or so... dont forget this is on a 3bbl system.. I did the same at home which took way less time and sparge at 1gpm pr less.

Auggiedoggy, I just read this again and have a question, are you saying "gallon per minute" for 1 gpm?
 
Auggiedoggy, I just read this again and have a question, are you saying "gallon per minute" for 1 gpm?
yes We have tried to sparge faster and when we do our efficiency drops. when our mash efficiency is higher than expected we compensate by sparging at 2gpm or slightly higher to save a little time and get our efficiency closer to what we want.
 
Augiedoggy, TheMadKing, Jready, and others that have done many batches on this system, about 12ish batches ago (when I was finally done tinkering with variables in terms of the process on this system), I started plotting an efficiency curve on Excel (mash efficiency achieved vs grain amount) and I'm up to 12 data points now (12 distinct recipes encompassing about 8 different styles). The goal is to generate a linear trendline that has an equation associated with it (that way, when planning for the efficiency of a new recipe you've never brewed, you can enter the grain amount into the equation and it will spit out an associated mash efficiency that you can expect). I'm happy to say that the resulting equation (that I have so far with only 12 data points...) has an R^2 value in the nineties, so the relationship between efficiency and grain amount is fairly linear assuming you aren't changing other variables like mash ratio, crush size, sparge rate, etc. (imperial stout with 55# of grain has a low efficiency and pilsner with 20# of grain has a very high efficiency). I can post this later if others are interesting in seeing it, but I was wondering if anyone else has done something similar. What made me think of this was when Augiedoggy noted a 91% efficiency, so I was wondering what the grain amount was to achieve that specific value since it will vary depending on the recipe / grain amount.
Im going to note that I do not have a spike system. I have a 3 vessel rims system which is very similiar in functionality to this system that I built 6 years ago and have been brewing on it regularly up until about 9 months ago when I opened a brewpub. Now in brewing on a similiar but larger scale 3bbl stout style system with a custom rims similiar to the one I use at home. as mentioned I use a slightly courser crush at the brewery with a 3 roll mil vs my CK at home. I also get much lower efficiency at the brewpub(85% vs the consistent 91% average at home on beers without adjuncts) and hope to be able to improve things with a better false bottom as the one I have now has a lot of closed off surface area.

In regards to your question. we use beersmith and it does a good job of calculating amounts when we put our target efficiency in. at home though I did notice sometimes on beers with wheat or oats my efficiency dropped, I still believe this is due to mash recir and sparge flow and the fact that I didnt use rice hulls.
 
I just noticed another phenomenon for the first time as well. The mash recirc flow rate did not stay constant during the mash. I suspect that the grain bed become more compacted throughout the mash so I had to open the linear flow valve very slightly more twice during the mash to maintain a consistent flow rate - This might explain your issue too. You start with good flow and then as the grain bed compacts you lose flow and your temp probes stop getting good readings
I have seen this with my 3bbl setup and the probe located in my MT sidewall. its not an issue at home where the MT probe is in a tee in the exit.
I do use an actual flow meter because without one its a total crapshoot and your more or less shooting in the dark as far as flowrate. the adjustment on the valve for the pump is different for every grainbill and even changes during the mash for reasons you state so a flowmeter is an invaluable thing for me to dial in my mash and get consistent results.

in this photo you can see the relationship and time delay between the rims temp output in red and the mt temp in yellow
20190825_105106.jpg
.. if I had actually been ramping in small increments instead of bringing it right up to 168 at 10:20 you would have seen like 10-15 minute time delays between the red and the yellow catching up to it. depending on mash size. I believe this one was a large grain bill as ramping up took a long time. with my 3600w rims. (ignore the mash timer it was reset at some point there)
 
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What rate do you use at home?
about 1gpm. I used to do 1.8gpm (pump flow wide open on my little dc pump) and thats when I averaged 88% instead of 91.. I started doing a proper mashout at the same time I lowered my sparge flowrate and my efficiency jumped the 3 points so it may be of the two or a combo of both im not sure.

just yesterday we were brewing an ipa and during the sparge I did a little experiment.. at the end of the sparge I measured gravity at 1.019.... I shut off flow and then waited about 10 minutes. I turned the flow back on and took a sample moments later when the wort below the fb had cleared out of the line and the gravity had jumped to 1.024... this is why batch sparging nets higher results for some. at the end of the day more/longer exposure with the sparge water and the grain can net higher efficiency.
 
I have seen this with my 3bbl setup and the probe located in my MT sidewall. its not an issue at home where the MT probe is in a tee in the exit.

Are you sure you didn't mean the opposite?

In my experience having the probe in the mash tun will provide a temperature reading regardless of flow rate. Having the temperature probe in a tee on the outlet (as mine is), requires a minimum flowrate threshold before it can read correctly. My flow rate dropped to the point of no flow because of grain bed compaction, and my temp probe reading plummetted from 150 to 146 in minutes. I checked the mash temp with my thermapen and it was still at 150, so I bumped up the pump flow rate a hair and the temp reading returned to normal.

You are convincing me that I need a flow meter though - any recommendations for TC compatible ones?
 
When I brewed on Saturday I did a 40 min sparge so I was right at a quart a min. My numbers are close but my efficiency is down. Had a target of 1.044 and hit 1.042.
Thoughts?
 
Are you sure you didn't mean the opposite?

In my experience having the probe in the mash tun will provide a temperature reading regardless of flow rate. Having the temperature probe in a tee on the outlet (as mine is), requires a minimum flowrate threshold before it can read correctly. My flow rate dropped to the point of no flow because of grain bed compaction, and my temp probe reading plummetted from 150 to 146 in minutes. I checked the mash temp with my thermapen and it was still at 150, so I bumped up the pump flow rate a hair and the temp reading returned to normal.

You are convincing me that I need a flow meter though - any recommendations for TC compatible ones?
you are right about the flowrate but since I can see I have a flow rate with the flow meter and I am recirculating the entire time and only care about wort temp while recirculating its honestly the most accurate way for me to know actual wort temp leaving my mash tun and losses vs going into the mt. having one probe in the sidewall in one system vs the tee in the other has shown me the tee is more accurate here for the reasons you stated above but when that happens and my sidewall probe is not changing correctly its an indicator my flow rate may have been too high and ive compacted my grainbed so I will stir it up at that point and start over and slightly lower flow (4gpm vs 5 for example)

in any other instance like a BK or HLT I would NOT put the probe in the exit path tee.

I use a flow meter just like this one with TC adapters on each end... it has to be disassembled and cleaned but the sanitary ones are hundreds more$ this one is made of the proper material that is stable at mash and sparge temps and foodgrade.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dwyer-...792842?hash=item23941d230a:g:m2kAAOSwY~laH~qf
 
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When I brewed on Saturday I did a 40 min sparge so I was right at a quart a min. My numbers are close but my efficiency is down. Had a target of 1.044 and hit 1.042.
Thoughts?
what was your mash efficiency? did you check the gravity of your mash before sparging? first thing is to rule out which area of the process is low.
 
I didn’t check the mash efficiency, with a target of 1.044 what should the first running’s be?
I dont know off hand. this is one of those areas where every system is different... for example we had a wort gravity of 1.074 before sparge on yesterdays brew. after sparging we were down to 1.057 preboil (if I rememebr right) ... after to record this numbers on a few brew sessions you will find that you will normally see consisnt number values and amounts and can go from there to see what was off... most estimated values are shown in beersmith but some like the presparge mash running dont appear to be.
 
you are right about the flowrate but since I can see I have a flow rate with the flow meter and I am recirculating the entire time and only care about wort temp while recirculating its honestly the most accurate way for me to know actual wort temp leaving my mash tun and losses vs going into the mt. having one probe in the sidewall in one system vs the tee in the other has shown me the tee is more accurate here for the reasons you stated above but when that happens and my sidewall probe is not changing correctly its an indicator my flow rate may have been too high and ive compacted my grainbed so I will stir it up at that point and start over and slightly lower flow (4gpm vs 5 for example)

in any other instance like a BK or HLT I would NOT put the probe in the exit path tee.

I use a flow meter just like this one with TC adapters on each end... it has to be disassembled and cleaned but the sanitary ones are hundreds more$ this one is made of the proper material that is stable at mash and sparge temps and foodgrade.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Dwyer-...792842?hash=item23941d230a:g:m2kAAOSwY~laH~qf

Thanks!
 
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