Thinking about going rims or herms

[sorefingers23]

I'm thinking about adding rims or herms to my current system, and I'm leaning more towards the herms, now bear with me I dint know much about it yet, but would it be possible to use a 5 gallon cooler or 5 gsllon keg with a 1500 watt element to heat up the water with the coil? If so how long woukd it take to get to mash temps?

 

[mredge73]

I have tried both and if you have the the $$$ go with the HERMS.
I use my old 30qt SS pot for my HERMS/HLT; batch sparge water is used to heat the SS coil.
Volume depends on your system losses and boil time; for example mine requires about 4 gallons of sparge water for a 90 minute boil on a 5 gallon batch. On a 10 gallon batch it gets filled to nearly the top (~7 gallons).

Time estimate using math, heat losses are not considered:
It takes 39.12525002 minutes to heat 4 gallons of water to 170 degrees F from 70 degrees F with a 1500 watt element.

If you have 240v available I would recommend you build you system around larger elements; it only takes my system 10 minutes:
It takes 10.67052273 minutes to heat 4 gallons of water to 170 degrees F from 70 degrees F with a 5500 watt element.

 

[d3track]

I use a 2 gallon vessel to hold my hex coil with a 1500w element, so it can be done. But - I normally heat my strike water in my boil kettle on the burner to save time.

 

[rtt121]

I have a 3 keggle herms that I have now run couple times. I use a 110v 1650 watt on a 15 amp circuit for HLT. 14 gallons of water heats to strike temp in about 3 hours. This is fine for me as I just turn it on via phone app while I am still in bed. I have a sliding hurricane propane burner as well that does the majority of the "heavy lifting".

I would say if you want to be able to quickly be able to step through temps with just an element plan on a 30amp system. For me it is plenty fast to get to step up temps using both the electric and the propane together. Of course this requires a little manual intervention.

Also I am brewing 10 gallon batches.

 

[beernutz]

If you want to do herms you can go either electric or gas. I had a natural gas hookup already when I built my herms so I went that direction instead of having a 30A or 50A circuit installed to go electric. I supplement the gas burners with a 110v 1500watt DIY heatstick so that I can heat 14 gallons (for 10 gallon batches) to strike temp in less than 30 minutes using a combination of gas heat and the heatstick. Then when I'm ready to boil the natural gas heated keggle also gets the heatstick which greatly speeds up the time to get to boiling temp.

The HERMS coil is in the HLT and I pump wort from the cooler mash tun back through the herms then back to the mash tun. I also recirculate the water in the HLT from bottom to top with another small pump. The HERMS temp is maintained with an AUBER PID.

With RIMS you have to go electric, or I should say I've never seen or heard of a gas RIMS system.

My point is there are man ways to skin that cat.

 

[Riot]

I feel like one of the major advantages of a RIMS system is you can get away with 120v without it feeling like a detriment. A 1500W heater is definitely sufficient if it doesn't have to heat your initial water volumes

 

[sillbeer]

I just finished up my HLT with HERMS yesterday. I picked up this HERMS and would recommend it. It's a quality piece and the price is better than anywhere else.

https://store.brewpi.com/weldless-herms-coil-kit-40cm-npt

This is the 40cm coil which came out to be about 15.7" and 6" tall. It fits the Blichmann 20 gallon kettle perfect. They have smaller 30cm coils also and they are a little cheaper. The fittings have a lifetime guarantee.