# Whirlpool Vessel: Angle Of The Dangle?



## schooey (17/2/11)

So I found this big pot... h34r: 

...and I'm thinking of turning it into a whirlpool vessel. I have a few questions;


I know I have seen this here somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere, or I've spoke to someone here about it, but anyway, what I want to know is;





What should the angle, theta, be between the tangent and the inlet centreline for optimum whirlpool?

Should the whirlpool suction point be directly opposite the inlet(A) at ( B) ?

Cheers!


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## jonocarroll (17/2/11)

A separate whirlpool vessel... that one's new to me.

Some more info might be helpful - do you plan to stir this, or just let it pour in to form the whirlpool? If you're stirring [or as I might otherwise guess, using this as your kettle], it doesn't much matter what angle it enters at.

Otherwise, maximum tangential velocity will be when the inlet is... tangential.


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## MHB (17/2/11)

30o in from the tangential, usually a quarter to a third of the way up from the bottom of the pot to the top of the liquid, keep the velocity under 3 m/s
MHB


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## schooey (17/2/11)

I plan to pump wort from the Braumeister into this vessel after the boil and once in there, recirculate with the pump to whirlpool. There are a few motivations; It will give me the height I need to then run through the plate chiller back down into the fermenter in the fridge without having to lift hot wort, and still keep the braumeister at a height where I can get the grain basket out under a 9 ft ceiling. The other is I can add some whirlpool hops and a few other things... as well as leaving a lot of the kettle trub in the braumeister and get a second bite of the cherry with the whirpool vessel.


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## schooey (17/2/11)

MHB said:


> 30o in from the tangential, usually a quarter to a third of the way up from the bottom of the pot to the top of the liquid, keep the velocity under 3 m/s
> MHB



Aha.. It was you! I was planning on calling in and picking your brains tomorrow anyway, but now I can start drawing....


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## stuchambers (17/2/11)

I have used this principle in a very large fish aquarium to separate a large amount of the soilds before biological filtration.
It was done in a conical vessel pumped into the bottom third and overflowed off the top.
The solids would collect in the bottom of the conical, there was a valve that could be cracked at the bottom of the conical at remove the solids along with only a small amount of the water.
Obviously you would need to draw from lower down to ensure you can easily empty the vessel. 
If this is the case how will you need to place a valve on the outlet to allow time for the vessel to actually fill first.

Cheers Stu


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## schooey (17/2/11)

This is not a conical, it's a 90L stock pot. I had a brief look at the whirlpool at Murray's, and it has a reasonably flat bottom, so I figured on the HB scale of things the stock pot would be fine. I plan on having a take off point at the very bottom, fitted with a three piece valve, for draining.


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## Malted (17/2/11)

schooey said:


> I plan to pump wort from the Braumeister into this vessel after the boil and once in there, recirculate with the pump to whirlpool. There are a few motivations; It will give me the height I need to then run through the plate chiller back down into the fermenter in the fridge without having to lift hot wort, and still keep the braumeister at a height where I can get the grain basket out under a 9 ft ceiling. The other is I can add some whirlpool hops and a few other things... as well as leaving a lot of the kettle trub in the braumeister and get a second bite of the cherry with the whirpool vessel.



But I thought the idea of the Braumeister was to be able to have a single vessel system? 

Speculative only:
Could you put in a side outlet with a pick-up tube and an auxillary tangenital inlet (I spelt it right but thought it looked funnier this way) back into the Braumeister (from an external pump since the meister draws from under where the cone would form?) to whirlpool into it and then once the trub cone forms, suck from either the tangential or other side outlet? 
Or maybe as some suggest, trub isn't so bad as it will settle in the fermenter with the yeast when it drops out?
At any rate, it sounds like you need a march pump to go with your brew wenches (I'd hardly call it brew porn because you seem to own all the brew porn stars). :icon_drool2:

(edit why not whirlpool with a manual stirrer post boil, let the trub settle, suck the first bit out i.e. the trub and discard it, then pull the flow out through the chiller? You can redirect where the inbuilt pump goes to can't you, maybe I have this wrong? Maybe it just goes back up through the malt pipe and you can't change that?


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## donburke (17/2/11)

i received my goodies from beerbelly today, the one on the left is a pickup tube, the one on the right is a whirlpool outlet, and i am not quite sure if i put it in the compression fitting the right way, its longer on one length of the bend than the other, and i have the long end in the compression fitting


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## schooey (17/2/11)

Malted said:


> But I thought the idea of the Braumeister was to be able to have a single vessel system?



For a lot of people, primarily it is..... but a man loves to tinker 

A lot of the time, I will only have the time to do a NC brew and I will cube straight from the braumeister. This new vessel will give me a bit of flexibility to do a brew, chill and ferment straight away as well as adding some whirlpool hops and a few other things if I have the time to.




> (edit why not whirlpool with a manual stirrer post boil, let the trub settle, suck the first bit out i.e. the trub and discard it, then pull the flow out through the chiller? You can redirect where the inbuilt pump goes to can't you, maybe I have this wrong? Maybe it just goes back up through the malt pipe and you can't change that?



No you can't direct where the inbuilt pump goes without a mod and a fair bit of frigging about. And as I said above, this will allow me to do what I want to do with limited space and headroom, without lifting boiling wort above my head.


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## Thirsty Boy (18/2/11)

if you are going to have a separate whirlpool, then there a couple of little tricks you might try to make it "very" effective at doing its job.

A ring in the bottom - whirlpools sweep matter in from the edges and into the center, a nice way to keep the stuff in the center when you are draining off, is a sump for it to fall into, or a ring to contain it - a perfect ring would slope gently from the edge so the currents could sweep the particles up a sort of a ramp and then they fall off into a holding ring, basically a raised sump, but with lots of nicely dispersed drainage holes to let the wort out.

and you could include a Denk ring to break up the small eddy currents that interfere with the efficient gathering of particles into the center - basically its a flat ring of mesh about a third of the way up the liquid height.

and i would consider having the whole thing on about a 3-5% slope towards the outlet. That should be a small enough slop to not interfere with the cone formation, but enough to nicely channel wort to your pick-up tube and give you a little extra volume.


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## schooey (18/2/11)

Cheers TB, some good food for thought there and a bit more research to be done...


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## kevin_smevin (18/2/11)

Here's a handy little website to calculate your flow rate http://www.1728.com/flowrate.htm. Solve for velocity, plug in the diameter of your inlet and then measure the amount of liquid that comes out in 1 minute and plug that in the flow rate section. It will then tell you your velocity in m/s. If you go faster then 3m/s you end up breaking all of your trub into smaller particles that dont settle well.


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## QldKev (18/2/11)

schooey said:


> So I found this big pot... h34r:
> 
> ...and I'm thinking of turning it into a whirlpool vessel. I have a few questions;
> 
> ...




Your new pot already looks dented 

QldKev


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## schooey (18/2/11)

Thanks, but being a Mech Eng with a history in pumps and hydraulics, I got that bit down pat..

Using a March 815 PLC and 1/2" tube should give me a velocity of around 2.7 m/s with losses


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## kevin_smevin (18/2/11)

schooey said:


> Thanks, but being a Mech Eng with a history in pumps and hydraulics, I got that bit down pat..
> 
> Using a March 815 PLC and 1/2" tube should give me a velocity of around 2.7 m/s with losses



I find i get alot less then that. I cant remember what exactly but its below 2m/s. Alot of 1/2" barbs have in internal diameter much smaller then 1/2" which would bring the velocity right down, as would any elbow in the system. If you can get 2.7m/s, thats pretty much spot on for a whirlpool.


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## mschippr (11/7/11)

What height is best for the whirlpool fitting in a standard "keg type" vessel for an average single batch?


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## adryargument (11/7/11)

donburke said:


> i received my goodies from beerbelly today, the one on the left is a pickup tube, the one on the right is a whirlpool outlet, and i am not quite sure if i put it in the compression fitting the right way, its longer on one length of the bend than the other, and i have the long end in the compression fitting
> 
> View attachment 44135
> 
> ...



Looks good,
However with larger pots like mine (98L), i find that if you have a 90 degree fitting between the inlet and the whirlpool fitting then it will position itself somewhere near the side of the kettle at a 30 degree angle.

Mine is at about the 40L mark in the 98L kettle, and is angled downwards a bit.


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## domonsura (13/7/11)

adryargument said:


> Looks good,
> However with larger pots like mine (98L), i find that if you have a 90 degree fitting between the inlet and the whirlpool fitting then it will position itself somewhere near the side of the kettle at a 30 degree angle.
> 
> Mine is at about the 40L mark in the 98L kettle, and is angled downwards a bit.



Sorry 'adryargument', but I tested the best position of these tubes quite a bit before I started adding them to vessels and breweries and angling the tube downwards will continue to disturb the hop cone un-necessarily during whirlpooling, even in a 98 litre kettle. Angling slightly upwards (as it is designed to be positioned) will cause debris to remain suspended until it falls into section in the middle of the kettle, where it no longer has the velocity to remain in suspension, and will therefore drop to the hop cone at the bottom.

This whirlpool fitting is also *not* designed to be used with a 90 degree fitting, and doing so will reduce the velocity of the liquid entering the vessel to the point that the whirlpool is not effective. It is specifically designed to extend into the kettle to where the liquid will ALWAYS be travelling at a slower velocity than it does closer to the vessel wall, so the liquid entering always has something to 'push' to increase the whirlpool velocity. The max velocity of the whirlpool will only ever match the velocity of the liquid exiting the whirlpool tube, so if it is positioned too close to the wall of the vessel, it limits the potential speed and therefore overall effectiveness of the whirlpool.

Around the 40 litre mark _is_ a good position for the inlet in a 98 litre kettle though.


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## domonsura (13/7/11)

donburke said:


> i received my goodies from beerbelly today, the one on the left is a pickup tube, the one on the right is a whirlpool outlet, and i am not quite sure if i put it in the compression fitting the right way, its longer on one length of the bend than the other, and i have the long end in the compression fitting
> 
> View attachment 44135
> 
> ...



That tube is two different lengths so you can swap it around to suit a vessel of different size if required Don, further into a larger vessel, closer to the side for a smaller one.


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## donburke (13/7/11)

domonsura said:


> That tube is two different lengths so you can swap it around to suit a vessel of different size if required Don, further into a larger vessel, closer to the side for a smaller one.




i have the inlet at the 60L mark of a 98L pot, parallel to the horizontal, and it works a dream,

my fixed coil must a have positive effect on the whirlpool, the trub gathers very neatly beneath the coil, even with 1/2kg of hops in there !!!

the coil has 5mm gaps between turns and sits 40mm above the base of the pot

i'll take a photo of the trub next brew, but this is how i have it configured


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## yardy (13/7/11)

nice setup don :icon_cheers:


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## Tony (13/7/11)

schooey said:


> This is not a conical, it's a 90L stock pot. I had a brief look at the whirlpool at Murray's, and it has a reasonably flat bottom, so I figured on the HB scale of things the stock pot would be fine. I plan on having a take off point at the very bottom, fitted with a three piece valve, for draining.



I remember you and I wandering off to eye spy it! The simplicity of it was amazing! 

I think he said he draws clear wort from the vessel while its spinning.

I have a 90 liter pot i bought to make a kettle but i have been thinking exactly what your thinking mate. Boil, pump to wirlpool and recirc and run the super clear wort through a plate chiller.

Keep any pics coming mate.... im with ya on this one!


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## adryargument (13/7/11)

domonsura said:


> This whirlpool fitting is also *not* designed to be used with a 90 degree fitting, and doing so will reduce the velocity of the liquid entering the vessel to the point that the whirlpool is not effective. It is specifically designed to extend into the kettle to where the liquid will ALWAYS be travelling at a slower velocity than it does closer to the vessel wall, so the liquid entering always has something to 'push' to increase the whirlpool velocity. The max velocity of the whirlpool will only ever match the velocity of the liquid exiting the whirlpool tube, so if it is positioned too close to the wall of the vessel, it limits the potential speed and therefore overall effectiveness of the whirlpool.



Cheers for the heads up, i will swap it around and give it a test this weekend :icon_cheers: 
I did double my whirlpool effect by angling it down, hopefully i can triple it with your tried-and-tested method.


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## domonsura (13/7/11)

adryargument said:


> Cheers for the heads up, i will swap it around and give it a test this weekend :icon_cheers:
> I did double my whirlpool effect by angling it down, hopefully i can triple it with your tried-and-tested method.



I don't know that you'd notice any other effect other than perhaps a more 'together' trub cone - there's a limit to what you can achieve with an inanimate tube sticking into the side of a pot  It's the angle either way that does it because it causes more resistance against the incoming liquid, if you have it dead flat or not 'vertically angled' the whirlpool is dismal to be sure. So you get a good whirlpool action with it pointed either way, up or down (to a point), but I noted a more spread trub cone with it down than I did up. (To be honest when I started I thought it would be the opposite - I thought the current would 'sweep' debris back off the floor and back into suspension but it wasn't the case). Too close to the floor and it stirs everything up and achieves nothing. I spent two weeks testing different positions and angles with water in a 98L pot, squeezing dye into different positions to observe the currents and watching what happened to bits of debris of different size while the whirlpool was running - also experimenting with different sized tubes and tapers, and also the shape of the outlet can make a difference creating eddies and whorls. Think 'cause and effect'. The biggest conclusion I came to is that it's not worth over-analysing beyond the point at which it is doing the job effectively for the individual brewer, so I'd have to say if your way is working for you, keep doing it that way 



donburke said:


> i have the inlet at the 60L mark of a 98L pot, parallel to the horizontal, and it works a dream,
> 
> my fixed coil must a have positive effect on the whirlpool, the trub gathers very neatly beneath the coil, even with 1/2kg of hops in there !!!
> 
> ...



That fixed coil is neatly done, I would imagine it would do a really nice job of slowing things down in the centre, everything would just drop down ...very cool! :icon_cheers:

ps. sorry about double posting, I never could figure out how to quote more than one post into a reply... <_<


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## balconybrewer (24/7/11)

hi domo,

do you still custom bend inlet tubes for kettle whirlpooling?

cheers


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## sim (16/8/11)

domonsura said:


> This whirlpool fitting is also *not* designed to be used with a 90 degree fitting, and doing so will reduce the velocity of the liquid entering the vessel to the point that the whirlpool is not effective.



Hey Domonsura,

so, to avoid slowing the liquid down the outlet pickup must be straight or matching 45 degrees (like the WP inlet piece). is the HopScreen s-bend tube fine because it bends 90 degrees but bends back 90 degrees (and balances out)?

Do you think a T-piece outlet (imagine 2 hop screens) will also reduce the flow speed, or behave the same as a straight outlet :ie 2 pickups at half speed = full speed.

hope that all makes sense. im redesigning my boiler pickup. i whirlpool with a pump at the moment, and currently have an sharp elbow compression style pickup - which i suspect is the culprit for a few of my pumping/whirlpooling problems.

Cheers,
sim


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## sim (24/8/11)

Bump, Anyone? i might have confused the thought...


sim


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## pk.sax (24/8/11)

Sim, simple physics says if you make something change direction 90 degrees, it loses all it's momentum in that direction and must be accelerated to move in the new direction. Basically, all the velocity of the liquid is lost as soon as you make a 90 degree bend and then it is dependant on the power of your pump to recover from that. Some of this can be recovered if the inside of the bend has false angled surfaces, using newtons third law. I doubt that is the case with normal elbow/T bends.


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## squirt in the turns (19/10/12)

I'm resurrecting this thread after starting one earlier about my whirlpool woes. domonsura and others have suggested that the distance that the return nozzle sticks out into the pot is important, but I can't see any guidance about exactly how long it should be. I can see that donburke went with the short end in the compression fitting in the end, and that's in a 98L vessel. Mine's a 70 L, but is as wide as it is tall. Not sure if/how that affects things.

In the spirit of schooey's original diagram:



I'm talking about the distance x. Is there a rough mathematical correlation between the pot diameter (in this case, 450mm) and x? Also, is the angle Θ affected by x, or is it always 30?

My return tube will most likely be made of a short bit of soft annealed copper, so will be curved instead of the straight-bent-straight model Beerbelly supply (unless I try to straighten it a bit). I'm assuming this will be fine as long as the wort exits the tube at the correct angle? Although it probably makes any answers to my above questions harder to implement.


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## Online Brewing Supplies (19/10/12)

Angle of attack is 17 degrees and speed should be 5m/per sec as it leaves the nozzle.
I cant work it out for you but this is the standard, less crap in the kettle the better.
Nev


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## squirt in the turns (19/10/12)

Gryphon Brewing said:


> Angle of attack is 17 degrees and speed should be 5m/per sec as it leaves the nozzle.
> I cant work it out for you but this is the standard, less crap in the kettle the better.
> Nev



Thanks Nev. Not asking anyone to do the maths for me, just wondering if there's a resource someone can point me to to work it out myself, or give me a ballpark guesstimate based on their own experiences.

When you say less crap in the kettle is better, do you mean less bulk in terms of fittings and stuff sticking out into it, or less trub?


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## Helles (19/10/12)

Hop socks youll have half the trub
And about the same bitterness and flavour from hops


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## Cocko (19/10/12)

Wow,

Its always the way around here, a very timely bump on such a topic.

Am about to drill my [expensive] kettle and add a whirlpool tap and inlet....

Would love to hear from members using an input whirlpool in to their kettle? :unsure: 

Is it worth it? Does it work?


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## Online Brewing Supplies (19/10/12)

squirt in the turns said:


> Thanks Nev. Not asking anyone to do the maths for me, just wondering if there's a resource someone can point me to to work it out myself, or give me a ballpark guesstimate based on their own experiences.
> 
> When you say less crap in the kettle is better, do you mean less bulk in terms of fittings and stuff sticking out into it, or less trub?


Less fittings, The stuff i quote with out the quote marks is from KUNZE Technology of brewing and malting, great book, I hear there is a torrent out there.
Do the right thing and buy the book I did.
Nev


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## donburke (19/10/12)

Cocko said:


> Wow,
> 
> Its always the way around here, a very timely bump on such a topic.
> 
> ...



yes it does work, but so too does 15 seconds with a spoon

i only see benefit in doing this if you are chilling with an immersion chiller, where it would be a down right pain in the arse to keep stirring your wort during the chilling process


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## Cocko (19/10/12)

donburke said:


> yes it does work, but so too does 15 seconds with a spoon
> 
> i only see benefit in doing this if you are chilling with an immersion chiller, where it would be a down right pain in the arse to keep stirring your wort during the chilling process




Legend, cheers. Makes perfect sense.

Along that line tho, if NC'ing wouldn't recirculating to whirlpool also add to cooling the finished wort due to it being pumped out through external hoses etc?

Even though it will end up in a cube? The reduction in temp is more rapid.

I am thinking enough to stop hop utulisation but still hot enough to be able to take advantage of the cubing/no chill process?

Thoughts?


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## donburke (19/10/12)

Cocko said:


> Legend, cheers. Makes perfect sense.
> 
> Along that line tho, if NC'ing wouldn't recirculating to whirlpool also add to cooling the finished wort due to it being pumped out through external hoses etc?
> 
> ...



sure you'd have some heat transfer through the pump/hose, but quite frankly, its bugger all

if i no chill, i run the pump for 5 minutes after switching the flame out, then switch the pump off and rest another 5 minutes, temp is still only just below 100, maybe 98 or 97

i believe you get around half the utilisation at 90 degrees and then half again at 80 degrees


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## Cocko (19/10/12)

donburke said:


> sure you'd have some heat transfer through the pump/hose, but quite frankly, its bugger all
> 
> if i no chill, i run the pump for 5 minutes after switching the flame out, then switch the pump off and rest another 5 minutes, temp is still only just below 100, maybe 98 or 97
> 
> i believe you get around half the utilisation at 90 degrees and then half again at 80 degrees



Ok, so if you decide to no chill a batch, do you still run a whirlpool through your pump and kettle or use a spoon?


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## donburke (20/10/12)

Cocko said:


> Ok, so if you decide to no chill a batch, do you still run a whirlpool through your pump and kettle or use a spoon?




funny you should ask, i sometimes do, othertimes i use my kettle as a hlt and my hlt becomes my kettle and i use a spoon (fixed coil in the kettle doesnt let me use a spoon)


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## squirt in the turns (20/10/12)

Gryphon Brewing said:


> Less fittings, The stuff i quote with out the quote marks is from KUNZE Technology of brewing and malting, great book, I hear there is a torrent out there.
> Do the right thing and buy the book I did.
> Nev



Cheers, I'll check it out.


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## Fat Bastard (24/10/12)

Has anyone had much success using a little brown pump for this? I've done some experimenting with an over the side wort return angled at approximately the right angle and outlet through the pickup with a one-off success in a lightly hopped Aussie pale ale.


I only had the return just below the surface of the wort. From what I'm reading deeper is better, possibly between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way up the wall to the surface?







To date, this is still the best trub cone I've had in my 36 litre kettle, Just haven't been able to replicate it!






I've got a couple of s/s compression fittings and have bent up the return and pickup out of some stainless 1/2" tube. I'd prefer not to have to buy another pump. I suspect the positioning of the return is the big thing here, and not so much the velocity of the whirlpool. Have the gurus arrived at any some of consensus for the positioning of the pickup and return? A google image search brings up all sorts of wierd and wonderful whirlpool inlet designs!

Cheers,

FB


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## Fat Bastard (25/10/12)

Just another thought (and a bit of a bump), given that I have an element sticking through the wall creating turbulence, should I drill the hole for the outlet at the same level so I don't create additional turbulence on top of this? I've also added a Beerbelly pickup and hop blocker, so the new set up will be picking up from the other side to the pics.

Cheers,

FB


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## Thirsty Boy (29/10/12)

i'd stick with having the outlet .25-.33 of the way up from the bottomof the pot to the expected top of the liquid. Thats going to give you your best "spin" and with all that shit sticking into your kettle, you're going to need as good a spin as you can get.

As for angle.... kunze etc are assuming an inlet flush with the side (ie a hole in the wall), not anything sticking out into the pot at all. So as wayne was explaining, the whole pushing against the faster or slower moving portions of the liquid thing kicks in and the angle does some of the work of the extension into the kettle. My feeling is that if you build a homebrew version with a lump of pipe sticking out into the pot, you're going to be better off trying to emulate what Wayne found with his experimentation in actual homebrew kettles, than you are trying to go with the reccomendations from the brewing texts for large commercial vessels that aren't built the same way.

Me - I'm a 15 seconds with a spoon kind of a brewer.


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## Online Brewing Supplies (29/10/12)

Yep spoon me its a lot easier .
Nev


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## Yob (29/10/12)

Gryphon Brewing said:


> Yep spoon me



I like you Nev... but not that much


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## mfeighan (29/10/12)

big spoon or little spoon?


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## Online Brewing Supplies (29/10/12)

Big spoon for 50L+ , small chef spoon for -50L
Nev


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## mfeighan (29/10/12)

personally i like the big spoon


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## Fat Bastard (29/10/12)

All you lot'll be getting is the wooden spoon.

I've never been able to make a manual whirlpool in my kettle work properly. I seemed to get best results from a half inch dowel but never got anything approaching a trub cone. More like a sloppy pile stretching across the base of the kettle.

Anyway, test drove the whirlpool yesterday. The pickup looks a lot higher than it actually is, it's probably only 10mm higher than the element and I placed it where I did as I figured with the drain pickup and element there's already be a heap of turbulence in that spot.

With the little brown pump and the guesstimated fitting positions and angles, I got quite a promising pile of tealeaves in the centre of the kettle. It looks like this may just work! It took about a minute to get to this point.


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## Online Brewing Supplies (29/10/12)

You have two things working against you , your kettle has too many things in it that will slow down the flow and the brown pump is not able to push the wort fast enough.
Nev


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## seamad (29/10/12)

I get a pretty reasonable trub cone on my setup ( page 3 ,link in sig).
The pickup is angled down to touch the base of the urn and the outlet parallel to the base. I now run the march pump one minute before turning urn off, add brewbrite and run for five minutes then close input stopcock, and either run straight to cube or through the hop rocket and chiller. Wort leaves the urn at @94 C. If nochilling leave upside down for ten then five upright then into pool.
Used to use a spoon when doing biab in the urn, but get a better cone with the pump for some reason.


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## Fat Bastard (29/10/12)

Gryphon Brewing said:


> You have two things working against you , your kettle has too many things in it that will slow down the flow and the brown pump is not able to push the wort fast enough.
> Nev



Yeah, I know! But as I had some success with the old and very basic setup up the thread aways, I thought it was worth pursuing, otherwise I would be going straight to a March Pump. I was definately up against it with the old setup, I found that because the pickup was the same I drained through, it picked up heaps of trub from the bottom of the kettle and that would block the dry break fittings I was using. This one has no drybreaks and no hard turns in the circuit, so at the very least, it should be some sort of improvement. I certailnly didn't get such a defined circle of tealeaves when I did the same experiment with the old set up! 

I guess it will be a case of suck it and see. Unfortunately I won't be able to trial it properly for a good few weeks yet when I have the brewstand built.


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## Thirsty Boy (30/10/12)

FB - just looking at your picture.

It might help to flip one of either your WP inlet or outlet around to face the other way. I might be bleary eyed from having just woken up (night shift) - but it looks like the way its currently set up, while your outlet is pushing the wort in one direction your inlet is pulling it in the opposite direction.

No idea really how much impact that would have... but it seems to me it would be better to have them both moving the wort in the same direction.


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## Fat Bastard (30/10/12)

Seems counter-intuitive doesn't it?

The theory is that having the open end of the tube facing into the whirlpool will cause more turbulence than facing away. I believe it was mentioned somewhere in this thread.

The pump can't suck any harder than the speed of the whirlpool once it's up to speed, and you can't compress the wort, so the open inlet acts like a solid, flat faced bar in the stream.

Some have also mentioned it's less likely to suck trub in having it facing away from the flow.

Will it make any difference in my case with a kettle full of pickups, hop blockers and elements? Probably not. It'll be easy enough to flip it and find out!

Cheers,

FB


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## Fat Bastard (4/3/13)

Ok, so I had a crack with the brown pump a couple of times, and got results varying from better than my worst results with the spoon to a lot better than with the spoon or the previous set up, Unfortunately the brown pump gave up the ghost, so I got a hold of a March 815. This pumps much harder than the little brown, so much so that I had to slow it down to avoid a huge wave forming on the kettle wall. The result was a trub cone of sorts, but not as good as I've had previously. What I _think _I need to do now is bring the pump outlet nozzle closer to the wall of the vessel and make it as short as possible so the stream hits the wall at a shallower angle. I may need to use a right angle or 45degree fitting with an appropriately angled nozzle to achieve this, but given that I've got plenty of flow now, I can probably afford to lose some velocity.

Will report back my findings.

Does anyone have any more picsof their set ups and results to share? I'd be interested to see them.

Cheers,

FB


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## Hoptimus Prime (16/8/13)

Interesting thread guys,
I've come accross some 1/2" stainless pipe and plan to make a pick uptube and whirlpool inlet. I have a 50l robinox stock pot with an electric element. Is there a specific length and degree angle the whirlpool should be and placement of it in the kettle?


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## hockadays (18/8/13)

FB,
Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.

This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.


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## krausenhaus (18/8/13)

hockadays said:


> FB,
> Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.
> 
> This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.


Man, that baffle is exactly what I need. Sick of standing there with a long spoon scraping my bazooka screen clear as the hop cone starts to fall. 

How did you make it and how is it attached?


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## TidalPete (18/8/13)

hockadays said:


> FB,
> Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.
> 
> This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.


So that baffle just sits there under it's own weight hockadays?
Interested as I use a 70-litre Robinox too but chill & whirlpool by recirculating.


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## Fat Bastard (18/8/13)

hockadays said:


> FB,
> Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.
> 
> This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.


15 seconds? Seriously?
Of all the manual attempts I made, it was more like 10 minutes solid thrashing ( well starting slow and building up from there) and by far the worst were with a spoon. The best ones were with a plain half inch dowel, the back end of the spoon being too thin to push the wort effectively. 
The best attempts were no better than the pump can do, and took longer and required more effort.

I'm beginning to think that beautiful, solid trub cones are a function of pot diameter than anything else. I've never been able to get one that doesn't slump as the wort around it drops in my 36 litre kettle, and that seems to be common with many other users of kettles around that size, as well as keggle users.
I think there are a few advantages to using the pump too, not the least of which is that you can leave the lid on and not lose hop aroma to steam, or have bugs fall in! 
I seem to have the process pretty well dialed in now, flame out, lid on, open the valves on the kettle to prime te pump, wait 5 minutes or so until the majority of the break drops out, start the pump with the throttle valve barely open and increase over 5 minutes or so until its as open as it can be without splashing, turn it off, throw in the aroma hops, wait until they've dropped ( 5 minutes or so ) and open the valve to the plate chiller. 

It works well enough for me, and cleanup isn't so bad as I use the pump to recirculate hot sodium percarbonate solution through the system afterwards.


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## hockadays (18/8/13)

15 seconds or so definately less then a minute. The baffle is tack welded at 4 spots on each side. I had originally wanted a return but with all the plumbing etc to put a whirlpool return in, I would spend my money elsewhere. I don't use a spoon either, I use a ss flipper.
Cheers


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## TidalPete (18/8/13)

Not sure what you mean by "ss flipper" hockadays?
A Google search turns up some sort of a switch-blade knife. --- https://www.google.com.au/#bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=7b38e75ab18cac32&q=brous+ss+flipper 
Googling beer + slipper does not help either. 

Can you please elaborate on that baffle build & how it is held down to the bottom of the kettle?
Have my own ideas on this but keen to hear what you have done.

I have long since modified my whirlpool tool for height above kettle bottom & the angle from kettle side re another probably forgotten thread. Just interested in another way to avoid sucking out the trub. :beer:


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## Fat Bastard (18/8/13)

I'm thinking of something like this:





I was thinking about baffles for the bottom of the kettle a while ago and thought that a cheapo stainless bowl rim with about an inch or so of the bowl left on would work. Is that how you did yours hocka?
Probably no good for my kettle with the element there, but an idea for another day,


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## hockadays (19/8/13)

My flipper is a ss slotted thing that you would flip a meat pattie with. The baffle is a 20mm strip of stainless bent to the same shape as the bottom of the kettle, it's just tack tig welded to the bottom of the pot. Pretty simple really, it works really well.


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## Parks (19/8/13)

Fat Bastard said:


> I'm thinking of something like this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I have one of those exactly and you can get a ripping whirlpool in 15 seconds, easily.

Having said that I am like you FB - could rarely get a cone to stay put.


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## hockadays (20/8/13)

Here you go guys, hopefully this clears it all up. Also the my flow my counterflow chiller is is not real fast. The whole batch of 45L takes about 30mins to drain to the fermenter. Remember if your chilling with an immersion chiller the you will never get a cone because of the cold break. It took me going to a counterflow chiller to confirm this.


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