Yes, you can burn your hop sack on the element while brewing

[applescrap]

Haha that is epic passedpawn. Did you ever have one tip?

 

[golfindia]

I put SS braid on the end of my BK dip tube. My homemade CFC has never clogged.

 

[passedpawn]

Haha that is epic passedpawn. Did you ever have one tip?

No, but I did have the pot floating in the pool once and it started raining. It tended to float out to the middle a bit and I would have to carefully haul it back by the hose.

I did have a carboy full of wheat wort break one evening in that pool. When I got started I would just run the hot wort into the glass carboy, then set it on the steps into my pool. After cooling it that way, I lifted it and the bottom of the carboy just separated. That was a bit of a mess. I like to learn everything the hard way

 

[passedpawn]

I recently switched to a stainless chillzilla, I added a stainless shell and tube exchanger in series to get the same efficiency as the copper one, but my shell and tube doubles as my herm hex, so not a big deal.
http://www.badger-pipe.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=SP85-OS

That's an incredible idea. Do you have pictures of your implementation somewhere?

 

[milldoggy]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=574257

 

[milldoggy]

I will add, this is not a perfect replacement for a herms coil. It works, but I have to keep my hlt a lot hotter than mash temp. I think the reason is flow. I have to slow down to not compact the bed, the shell and tube seems to work a lot better at full flow. I might try to change the orientation to vertical to see if that helps.

 

[passedpawn]

I will add, this is not a perfect replacement for a herms coil. It works, but I have to keep my hlt a lot hotter than mash temp. I think the reason is flow. I have to slow down to not compact the bed, the shell and tube seems to work a lot better at full flow. I might try to change the orientation to vertical to see if that helps.

I've been tossing around HERMS v RIMS forever. Now that I'm rebuilding, I'm back in again stymied by indecision. I like the tidiness of the RIMs, but I'm worried about the element burning up, monitoring flow, stuff like that, where the HERMS is safer. However, with HERMS I have to dedicate the HLT during the mash, which keeps me from heating water in there for other purposes (e.g., strike water for 2nd batch). I guess during sparging I could increase the water temp 10 or 20 degrees for strike. That would probably work. I guess I'm leaning towards HERMS in the HLT.

Thoughts?

 

[GreenMonti]

If double batch is something you do quite often. Maybe do a 4th vessel? Just a HERMS vessel. Then you could heat the HLT separate and or do a different water profile for the next batch.

 

[passedpawn]

If double batch is something you do quite often. Maybe do a 4th vessel? Just a HERMS vessel. Then you could heat the HLT separate and or do a different water profile for the next batch.

Not a bad idea! I do have a 4th keggle waiting in the wings. I've got to get my head organized and start putting things on paper to plan it out.

 

[GreenMonti]

Ya know. Thinking. What ever happened to grants? What if you used a grant with a element in it?

Yes, you'd have to watch your flow rates unless you put a level switch on it to control the pump. Easy to clean, doesn't have to be large.

Again, just spitballing

 

[GreenMonti]

Not a bad idea! I do have a 4th keggle waiting in the wings. I've got to get my head organized and start putting things on paper to plan it out.

Awesome.

 

[applescrap]

Would the herms system also double for chilling? With ice in the HLT instead of hot water. I was going to go with rim and quick disconnects on the pumps and all attachments so I could quickly and easily clean and dry out the tubing. Was seeking a single vessel system. I spent a lot of time talking with Bobby m, I mean a lot. Way more than he wanted I'm sure. He really is a nice guy and he would be a great resource to call and discuss both options with. Ultimately I decided to heat the Mash passively. Right now I am still considering using a cooler. It seems moving the water through ball valves is easier than moving the grains through bag. If you have a wench you could set up a single vessel system and ultimately wouldn't that be the easiest? It seems the options are based on expense, ease of use, style and so much more. For me I wanted fast, affordable, and upgradeable. Right now I'm probably going to build a single vessel stand with an arm for a winch. The only problem is I like being outside, but in winter maybe in the garage would be best. I need to build the 100foot sjo cord and then I could brew anywhere i want. But building a stand is my next step. That being said i dont want to leave it outside in fear of theft but also dont want to drag it around. The build is half the fun isnt it. Best of luck and i am excited to see what you ultimately decide on.

 

[jcav]

It is a tough decision. You probably won't scorch your wort if your watching it, but if the pump flow ever slowed down to a trickle or if the pump stopped for some reason, then you could scorch it with a rims. You have to take apart the rims tube and clean the element and tube after every batch, which I guess is not that bad but still has to be done.

I kicked both systems around but once I saw that the wort can never get any hotter than the water bath that the herms coil is sitting it, and I could never scorch the wort, I liked this method better for me. When I finally decided to rebuild and go the herms route, I thought Kal had the finest herms build out there, and his easy to follow instructions to build it and step by step brew day was a no brainer for me.

Just so you know since I use keggles, I heat my mash water at the same time as the strike water. Because we only have 15.5 gallons to work with it saves time as you don't have to refill and heat the HLT after transferring the mash water, since you are doing it at the same time. The HLT will reach the temp very quickly and the mash water in the coil and recirculating in the mash tun will follow about 10-15 minutes behind that. Works great. If you build a 50 amp panel you can run more than one element at the same time, so you could be heating strike water while your boiling if you are doing back to back batches. Just some things to think about......

John

 

[passedpawn]

I just ordered one of these JaDeD CFC's. Seems like an ideal chiller. I think it's about the same length as other coaxial CFC's, and is cleanable (imagine that). Has 1/2" convoluted internal copper for max turbulence. I'll probably do a side-by-side test against the Therminator, but I don't really care if it takes a few more minutes.

It's 31" long, and that's pretty big compared to the plate chiller, but it's OK because it will just get mounted in my new stand I'm building.

This should let me freeball my hops into the boiler. I guess I'll start thinking about whirlpooling and getting a nice cone now. I'll have a lot more hop pellet debris in the kettle.

http://jadedbrewing.com/products/jaded-counterflow-chiller-cfc

 

[jcav]

Wow, that thing looks like a musical instrument! You have to report back on how it works and let us know. I love whirlpooling and I think you will too. You have to make a thread on your stand your building too! Good luck on the build!

John

 

[passedpawn]

Just closing the loop on this thread. I don't use a hanging hop sack hop spider thingy anymore.

Chiller Showdown: Blichmann Therminator vs JaDeD Brewing Cyclone

 

[highland_brewer]

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