fraser_john
Go Pies
First up, apologies, no pretty pictures or exciting links in this post!
Want to relate a little story of my RIMS, though this incident is something that has not happened in the 8 years I have been using my RIMS, it reinforced my move to HERMS per my HERMS Design thread.
This is not a HERMS vs. RIMS bash, nor is it intended that the thread degenerate into one, just my particular story. I cannot bash RIMS as it has been faithful to me for 8 years. I cannot promote HERMS as I have not yet used it. That said, now I have a better reason to promote it once I have used it.
With Kirem coming down to stay at my place, I had planned a great w/e. Go to the Food & Beer dinner Friday night in Melbourne. Brew on Saturday arvo and have good wine, beer & cigars Saturday night.
Had the recipe all prepared, a Kentucky Bourbon Ale! With American oak chips, Jim Beam Bourbon, Amarillo late hopping and a malty profile. It is going to be a great beer.
Got it all set up and doughed in. About 30 minutes into the mash, I noticed a stream of air bubbles in the wort flow. This usually indicates a very compacted grain bed in my system, so I decided to give it a stir and mix in some rice hulls.
As soon as I started stirring we noticed the wort flow contained a large amount of flour, far more than normal. After a few minutes Kirem said some thing is burning. Within ten seconds of that, there was a small pop and all electric went out in the brewery and house. This was followed closely by an awful smell of scorched malt.
Of course, my wife comes out expecting to find a couple of bodies lying on the floor, but we are all fine. My only thought is for the poor mash. When I stirred it up the smell was awful.
We decide that something had gone wrong with the element. We pulled the mash tun outside and dumped the grains. The bottom of the tun was covered by flour slurry. How could this be? After thinking about it, my last three brews were all Wyermann Pils and Wyermann Wheat based. I had not checked the crush and was using all JWM Ale with some crystal. The guess is that the JWM was a lot more brittle than the Wyermann and had generated a large amount of flour. This had settled on the bottom of the tun and blocked the outlet, what flour did get through, may have been getting caramelised onto the heater element. Time to pull the RIMS tube apart.
Got the big wrench from the garage and unscrewed the heater element. As we had guessed, the flour and some husks had stuck to the element. This created a crust around it that eventually burnt. After cleaning the element had no visible damage. There must have been enough electrical leakage whilst it was hot to trigger the GFI.
Since building my RIMS, I was suspicious that this event could occur, or, that the pump would cease and the wort boil in the tube. Based on my suspicions and a desire for automating the mash process, I was moving towards HERMS. This was going to be my last brew before the heat exchanger was delivered from stainlessstuff.net, but alas, my suspicions proved founded.
I now have a dead brewery until my heat exchanger arrives.
Want to relate a little story of my RIMS, though this incident is something that has not happened in the 8 years I have been using my RIMS, it reinforced my move to HERMS per my HERMS Design thread.
This is not a HERMS vs. RIMS bash, nor is it intended that the thread degenerate into one, just my particular story. I cannot bash RIMS as it has been faithful to me for 8 years. I cannot promote HERMS as I have not yet used it. That said, now I have a better reason to promote it once I have used it.
With Kirem coming down to stay at my place, I had planned a great w/e. Go to the Food & Beer dinner Friday night in Melbourne. Brew on Saturday arvo and have good wine, beer & cigars Saturday night.
Had the recipe all prepared, a Kentucky Bourbon Ale! With American oak chips, Jim Beam Bourbon, Amarillo late hopping and a malty profile. It is going to be a great beer.
Got it all set up and doughed in. About 30 minutes into the mash, I noticed a stream of air bubbles in the wort flow. This usually indicates a very compacted grain bed in my system, so I decided to give it a stir and mix in some rice hulls.
As soon as I started stirring we noticed the wort flow contained a large amount of flour, far more than normal. After a few minutes Kirem said some thing is burning. Within ten seconds of that, there was a small pop and all electric went out in the brewery and house. This was followed closely by an awful smell of scorched malt.
Of course, my wife comes out expecting to find a couple of bodies lying on the floor, but we are all fine. My only thought is for the poor mash. When I stirred it up the smell was awful.
We decide that something had gone wrong with the element. We pulled the mash tun outside and dumped the grains. The bottom of the tun was covered by flour slurry. How could this be? After thinking about it, my last three brews were all Wyermann Pils and Wyermann Wheat based. I had not checked the crush and was using all JWM Ale with some crystal. The guess is that the JWM was a lot more brittle than the Wyermann and had generated a large amount of flour. This had settled on the bottom of the tun and blocked the outlet, what flour did get through, may have been getting caramelised onto the heater element. Time to pull the RIMS tube apart.
Got the big wrench from the garage and unscrewed the heater element. As we had guessed, the flour and some husks had stuck to the element. This created a crust around it that eventually burnt. After cleaning the element had no visible damage. There must have been enough electrical leakage whilst it was hot to trigger the GFI.
Since building my RIMS, I was suspicious that this event could occur, or, that the pump would cease and the wort boil in the tube. Based on my suspicions and a desire for automating the mash process, I was moving towards HERMS. This was going to be my last brew before the heat exchanger was delivered from stainlessstuff.net, but alas, my suspicions proved founded.
I now have a dead brewery until my heat exchanger arrives.
