Ditching the 4V HLT & HERMS and going 2V RIMS heating questions

[droid]

Hi everyone,

Happy Monday! hehe

Having sold my old brewbench I've been looking at stainless benches for a while now. Not cheap and not small if it is to handle 3 X 114ltr pots.

Today I saw a cool arsed custom stainless trolley thing which would hold two 114ltr pots side by side. Which led to the thought of going 2V. The apparent advantages would be:

• cost of the bench is cheaper
• the footprint is smaller
• one less pot to clean
• one less heating element
• less a bunch of fittings

It would still be recirc and all electric but the question is, what are the best ways to heat the sparge water? Could it just be done with a RIMS stick? I see small electric instant hot water systems with temp control - could that work?

My concern is heating 60ltrs of tap water (14-22dC) to sparge temp with a RIMS? I'd like to do it with something small and compact. How do I do that? How are you doing it? How do I work out how slow the sparge would be to facilitate heating the water? The trolley has an under shelf and I have two pumps.

It would be nice to have a neat and clean 2V system on a trolley. Wot say yee?

 

[Mardoo]

On demand hot water heater rated to 80C would be ideal. Bit more exxy than the 55C ones.

 

[malt junkie]

agree with Mardoo, off set against a 114L pot and heating said pot, your not too far behind and it's more versatile, there's a thread somewhere and they were using the demand system to also run the herms.

 

[Adr_0]

What's your element size in the RIMS tube? Getting that temperature is really a matter of throttling your flow back.

A 3600W element should be able to get sparge temps at 0.5-1lpm. If you're fly sparging that's probably a sensible rate, but I appreciate it's not ideal for batch sparging.

A 7200W element should get you to 1.5-1.8lpm. You could push to 2lpm or more, then trim the rest on recirc.

Just options...

 

[Adr_0]

And those low flow rates are only really sensible for water and if you have your temp probe right on the RIMS tube...

 

[droid]

I don't have any RIMS, I do have HERMS (I think it's sold) but I can't see how it would be able to heat the water 60-65degrees from inlet to outlet, so was thinking RIMS

The water would be coming from the tap, through some sort of heat exchanger and be spraying out 80degree water or thereabouts. If it coupled as my recirc hex then that'd be **** hot. I need a little stainless instantaneous hot water system, which is probably some sort of RIMS I spose and as you say adr_o, choke the flow rate till it hits the number.

 

[Adr_0]

I'll have to show you my RIMS setup. It's basically...

In parallel:
Valve from kettle to suction header (3/4 SS tube)
Valve from mash tun to suction header
Drain/fill point, valve sits horizontal, to fill sparge water
All this then goes:
-KK pump with speed control
-RIMS tube with element, RTD probe soldered into blank plate
-tee, the ball valve to mash tun and ball valve to kettle.

You might be after something similar. I had it all in copper and its worked wonders, but changing over to 316 tube for a few reasons.

On my setup, I could put a hose straight on the drain/fill point in the suction header. My only hesitation would be chlorine and mineral profile...

EDIT: for 114L you basically want a 10,000kW element in your recirc loop anyway. You should be able to go 2-2.5lpm of sparge water. Fine for fly, or 15min to fill each batch sparge. Simple and cheap.

 

[malt junkie]

gas hot water on demand plus one of these and your good to go. You could even switch up and chill with the same HX.

 

[Adr_0]

gas hot water on demand plus one of these and your good to go. You could even switch up and chill with the same HX.

Only issues with that are cost and complexity...

 

[droid]

Thanks guys. If I went gas would it be wiser to have gas fired kettle as well? That would change the bench setup but I have a 4 ring burner...it be nice to have it all very minimalist and compact if poss

 

[malt junkie]

Only issues with that are cost and complexity...

Not really maybe $300 more than HLT with burner and built in HX. Yeah the setup looks complex but not a great deal more than a standard HX set up. And less than 10 min to strike and mash in 80L.

 

[Adr_0]

Not really maybe $300 more than HLT with burner and built in HX. Yeah the setup looks complex but not a great deal more than a standard HX set up. And less than 10 min to strike and mash in 80L.

How much is a gas on demand setup with adjustable temperature?

 

[Adr_0]

Thanks guys. If I went gas would it be wiser to have gas fired kettle as well? That would change the bench setup but I have a 4 ring burner...it be nice to have it all very minimalist and compact if poss

Gas boost its good, particularly with a 5-15kpag regulator (set to minimum).

 

[malt junkie]

or if you want cheap and fast just build a flash boiler not complex.

 

[malt junkie]

or there is this I posted a few years back.

sizzrimsv31.jpg

Found this on a yanky forum, it was setup with a low density 4500w element. with valves 1,3,and5 closed and 2and 4open it's a normal rims. With 1,2 and 3 open and 4,5 closed, it works as an instant water heater, for strike and and sparge. Obviously you would need some serious power to run it here, though I was thinking perhaps two rims tubes in series might do the job

 

[mofox1]

deleted... self censoring.

 

[Camo6]

Cats out of the bag now MB.

 

[malt junkie]

Cats out of the bag now MB.

my stalker aint a brewing nut of that I'm certain.

 

[Adr_0]

Do it with one pump and one element. Burner on kettle for strike/boil.

 

[malt junkie]

Do it with one pump and one element. Burner on kettle for strike/boil.

20161017_173347_HDR(3).jpg

batch sparge only though.