Dedicated Herms Guide, Problems And Solution Thread

[kymba]

I'm about 1/2 way through reading this thread after a week or so of scanning during work breaks (!) but there's not much so far about using a PID to trigger solenoids. I probably will go with a smaller HE.

dubbadan, you'd probably need a ramp/soak pid like an auber. You can program the alarm/s to go off at different times / temps. Just connect your solenoid to the alarm output

 

[dubbadan]

Ok, apologies if I've misunderstood, but I think I see what you think you're trying to achieve with the solenoid valves, which is to control the heat of the MT by metering or switching on and off the flow? I'm not aware of any recirculating systems that operate in this way. You want the flow to remain constant and steady so that the grain bed forms a filter (as when sparging) giving you nice clear wort. The PID is used to switch the heating element in the HX as required to maintain or raise the temperature of the mash, measuring the temperature of the wort as it leaves the HX.

You only need the solenoids (or valves of any kind) to operate at the beginning and end of the mash when you're diverting liquid to different places.

You can control the solenoids using some kind of all in one electronic system. I believe there are people out there doing very cool stuff like this with BCS and Arduino based systems, which can also be programmed to act as a PID. However, this is way more time consuming (and probably expensive) to build than a simple PID system with hoses and valves that you manually operate as required.

No, its really just so I can leave the system to conduct a programmed mash and sparge without having to attend to it until it's time to boil. Maybe separate outlets from the mash tun would be another way to do it - one connected to the HE for recirculation and one going to the kettle. In that case I'd be using 3 pumps: recirc, sparge in and sparge out.

 

[dubbadan]

Here's a revised sketch of what I would like to do

 

[mikec]

All the cool kids are going HERMS! Now I am too.
Hopefully you guys can shed some light on a couple of niggly questions I have.

So why HERMS?
I've moved into a slightly bigger place and now have my own store room / brew room next to the garage.
So I decided no more stuffing about with buckets in pots on the stove, and trying to hoist the bloody things. I also found it difficult to get a consistent temperature throughout my pot when there was a bloody great bucket in there.
Upgrading to full 3V should give me the ability to do double batches or two brews in a single day.
Using a HERM-IT controller will hopefully make step mashing less hands on.

So, I did some trawling and picked up a 57L cooler for $155, and a cheap chinee urn for a HLT for $100. Still have my 40L aluminium pot as the kettle, which now has a 2200w element in it. When Ross gets new stock of the 70L SS pots I'll upgrade, so I can do double batches.

Made my way to Gryphon for a Herms coil, controller, false bottom, and a shed-load of stainless fittings.
Nev's service is great. In return I'm putting his kids through college.

I've spent the past few days putting it all together.

First I cleaned all the bits.


Hooked up the HLT and MLT.


Target $12 jug with HERMS coil inside, hidden behind the MLT.


I'm a bit worried about the fittings on the cooler. They're steel and heavy, while the inner wall of the cooler, which they are mounted too, is soft thin plastic.


In the build process I managed to break the brown pump due to, ahh, enthusiastic use of shifting spanners. Here you see it mounted using the silver gaffer method. More brownies are on the way.

Last night I wanted to do a test run with just water, checking for and plugging any leaks, and then giving the HERM-IT a mash run from start to finish.

I had a lot of trouble getting the pump primed and flowing.
For one thing, there is an air pocket in the hose and fittings to the false bottom. I eventually stuck my hand in and flipped it, letting the air escape. Not too keen on doing this every time - all sorts of crap could be on your hands.
Once water filled the hose from the MLT to the pump, and back out a bit, I switched on the pump. It struggled. It could barely push any more water through and in the hose exiting the pump I could see the water level as not much higher than the level in the tun. It never reached the HEX.
I had to remove my professional silver mounting system and move the pump lower, change the angles around to let air flow though, wave it around a few more times stopping and starting the pump, before water finally started flowing through the HEX and back up to the MLT.

Any tips here folks? I want to mount the pump properly and so all the moving and angling and maneuvering about is not going to work out long term. Mount it lower maybe - but then I'm increasing the head that the pump has to work against.

For the HERMS coil, buggered if I can find details or guidelines as to which direction the wort should travel. Lot's pictures in the various HERMS threads of enclosed HEX cannisters... although after examining a few diagrams I am starting to think it should be travelling UP the coil. I had it the other way around.

 

[squirt in the turns]

I had a lot of trouble getting the pump primed and flowing.
For one thing, there is an air pocket in the hose and fittings to the false bottom. I eventually stuck my hand in and flipped it, letting the air escape. Not too keen on doing this every time - all sorts of crap could be on your hands.
Once water filled the hose from the MLT to the pump, and back out a bit, I switched on the pump. It struggled. It could barely push any more water through and in the hose exiting the pump I could see the water level as not much higher than the level in the tun. It never reached the HEX.
I had to remove my professional silver mounting system and move the pump lower, change the angles around to let air flow though, wave it around a few more times stopping and starting the pump, before water finally started flowing through the HEX and back up to the MLT.

Any tips here folks? I want to mount the pump properly and so all the moving and angling and maneuvering about is not going to work out long term. Mount it lower maybe - but then I'm increasing the head that the pump has to work against.

For the HERMS coil, buggered if I can find details or guidelines as to which direction the wort should travel. Lot's pictures in the various HERMS threads of enclosed HEX cannisters... although after examining a few diagrams I am starting to think it should be travelling UP the coil. I had it the other way around.

It's having a HERMS that makes you cool!

I still have priming issues with both my march pump and little brown pump. I've plumbed my March like Morebeer sell them, with a ball valve on a T before the inlet, but even that doesn't always solve the issues. I intended to hard-mount both pumps but at this stage I'm still finding that the ability to waggle them around can help get them primed. Definitely eliminate as many bends in the plumbing as possible and keep hoses/pipes short too. Mounting it low is the way to go. I'm not an expert in fluid dynamics but I'd say your concerns about mounting lower leading to increased head pressure are unfounded. Yes, as you go lower, the pump has further to push the liquid back up, but it is offset by gravity working in your favour on the inlet side. Someone who understands this stuff better than me will probably jump in and refute that with a ninja engineering explanation.

With regard to inlet/outlet on the coil: I'm not familiar with Nev's stainless coils, but you want to plumb it so that the path of least resistance for any trapped air bubbles leads toward the outlet. If your pump has to fight bubbles, it'll kill your flow.

 

[mxd]

i fill the mlt and hlt through the pump (with a hose) on the occasional (once every 10-15 brews) I get an air bubble I cant move, I just turn the valves off on the MLT/HLT/Kettle and squirt some more water in with a hose.

 

[squirt in the turns]

No, its really just so I can leave the system to conduct a programmed mash and sparge without having to attend to it until it's time to boil. Maybe separate outlets from the mash tun would be another way to do it - one connected to the HE for recirculation and one going to the kettle. In that case I'd be using 3 pumps: recirc, sparge in and sparge out.

Ah, sorry, I did misunderstand your reason for using the solenoids. I think the Auber PIDs that kymba refers to have 2 alarm relays, so you should be able to control 2 valves with it (although maybe you only need 1 relay as both valves need to be actuated simultaneously? It would depend on how the alarms can be programmed (which in this case is based on a timer as opposed to a process variable). I've not bought controllers from Auber, but I have sent them a few questions about their products and they've been helpful, so if you can't figure it out from the manual (available on their website), shoot them a mail and they'll be able to tell you if the PID can be programmed to do what you want.

Not sure how you'd do more than one outlet from the MT. I'd think you'd want a single outlet from the MT, then a 3 way valve which could possibly be a solenoid valve. If your rig is partially gravity-fed then you should be able to design it around 1 pump, as in your diagram. Even single-tier rigs only need 2 pumps, and even then only for fly sparging.

Except for a couple of 3-way solenoid valves, a pump and various other fittings and hoses... :huh:

I sense that your goal of doing this without a lot of additional expenditure is slipping away fast

There are others on this forum that have attempted automated/semi-automated brewery builds, with varying degrees of success. I don't think any of them found it quick, cheap or easy. Personally, I'm pretty pleased with my build. Temperature (or heating output duty-cycle) of the HLT, mash (via HX) and boil kettle is all controlled from one panel (which houses an STC-1000 and 2 Sestos PIDs) from which I also manually switch my pumps. Valves and hose changes are all manual, so brewday is still very much hands-on. I kind of already wish I'd gone with some kind of embedded controller like I mentioned in my earlier post, so that I could control it from my laptop, have it spit out temperature graphs and all that, but if I had I'd still be tweaking the programming instead of making beer. It would however have been scalable and flexible so that I could add automated solenoids and other toys later on if I was feeling masochistic. :lol:

 

[mikec]

It's having a HERMS that makes you cool!

Cool wishes it could be more like me.

With regard to inlet/outlet on the coil: I'm not familiar with Nev's stainless coils, but you want to plumb it so that the path of least resistance for any trapped air bubbles leads toward the outlet. If your pump has to fight bubbles, it'll kill your flow.

That's what I was thinking. Wort should come in from the bottom, to push air up through the coil.

Round 2 testing this weekend.
Might even get around to making beer.

 

[stillscottish]

I think the big loop of hose from mash tun to pump will give you problems. My brown pump is directly below my mash tun on about 30 cm of hose. Gravity does the priming for me and although it takes a couple of minutes to purge the lines, once it's going the only problem I have is with throttling back the flow to stop compaction.

Still a little bit ghetto but there's a bunch of camlocks etc in the mail.

 

[Yob]

What have you got heating the little HEX pot Scottish? How much copper in the coil?

 

[QldKev]

What have you got heating the little HEX pot Scottish? How much copper in the coil?

He just lifts his kilt, the pot gets hot every time


:lol:

 

[stillscottish]

What have you got heating the little HEX pot Scottish? How much copper in the coil?

Small Kmart SS stock pot ($7?), kettle element from an old kettle (I knew if I kept it for 20 yrs it would come in handy one day) and the copper is just a 3m coil of 1/2" from Bunnings ($15). I get 1 degree/min ramp time.

To continue the cheap-arse theme I sealed the temp probe that came with the stc 1000 into a bit of brass tubing I had to make a waterproof probe.

Cheers

Campbell

 

[winkle]

I think the big loop of hose from mash tun to pump will give you problems. My brown pump is directly below my mash tun on about 30 cm of hose. Gravity does the priming for me and although it takes a couple of minutes to purge the lines, once it's going the only problem I have is with throttling back the flow to stop compaction.

Still a little bit ghetto but there's a bunch of camlocks etc in the mail.

View attachment 58247

:icon_offtopic:

Forced out of the house and into the pool enclosure I see
(Not a bad idea having a swim whilst watching the HEX do its thing - hot sweaty brewing be gone!)

 

[mikec]

A question for the HERMSperts.

Do you leave your pump running for the whole mash, or do you only run it during ramp times, and switch it off for the rests?

 

[mxd]

A question for the HERMSperts.

Do you leave your pump running for the whole mash, or do you only run it during ramp times, and switch it off for the rests?

I run the whole time, the idea of HERMS or RIMS is to hold the "rest" temp, the ramp is just an added bonus

 

[squirt in the turns]

A question for the HERMSperts.

Do you leave your pump running for the whole mash, or do you only run it during ramp times, and switch it off for the rests?

Run it for the whole mash. The idea is to maintain temperature during each rest. The wort flowing through the heat exchanger achieves this, with the element switching on as required to nudge the temperature back up when it starts to fall.

If you were to switch the pump off and leave the temperature controller to do its normal thing (i.e. you don't intervene and manually cut power to the element too), your element would boil the water in your heat exchanger as none of the thermal output of the element would be read by the temperature sensor , which measures the wort as it flows through the system.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

A question for the HERMSperts.

Do you leave your pump running for the whole mash, or do you only run it during ramp times, and switch it off for the rests?

Whole time as it maintains and ramps the temps.
Nev

 

[Truman42]

If you were to switch the pump off and leave the temperature controller to do its normal thing (i.e. you don't intervene and manually cut power to the element too), your element would boil the water in your heat exchanger as none of the thermal output of the element would be read by the temperature sensor , which measures the wort as it flows through the system.

+1 Yep did that by mistake and had fire an brimstone squirting out the top of my herms steam vent hole.

 

[mikec]

Got it, cheers blokes.

 

[Truman42]

Your question is a good one though MikeC as you could always switch off the pump and herms once you reached your next mash temp and just let the insulated mash tun hold the temp for you. Assuming your mash tun was well insulated you probably would only lose .5 C over a 60 min mash and less for smaller steps. This would certainly prolong the life of your pump, especially if you use one of those brown pumps like many of us.

However the reason I like to keep the pump running is to filter the wort through the grain bed. My wort goes from a murky cloudy colour to very clear by the time Im ready to transfer to the kettle.