Have You Any Brewing R&d Projects Going ?

[sathid]

18m of copper! damn, how big is your heat exchanger going to be!

Is the wort going to be tube-side or shell-side? I'm guessing tube-side?


Perhaps flatten the tubes slightly to give a higher surface area/volume ratio?

 

[Simon W]

I did think about doing this to try and outfox that lazy Wy1968 from knocking off the job too early but never got past the thinking stage huh.gif I ended up just getting a big stainless kitchen mixing paddle and beating it into action ohmy.gif

How about a fermentor scale stir-plate?

 

[mika]

Been questioned on the BN. White Labs response "It'll make great yeast, but the beer wouldn't be that good"

O/All dims for the heat exchanger ~200dia flanges with a ~170mm OD pipe. Whole contraption about 350-400mm long. Not small, but not massive either. Yes Wort tube side, otherwise impossible to clean, which was the whole aim of the project.
Tubes are spaced on a ~1.5d pitch so flattening them much could cause other issues. Interesting thought though.

 

[sathid]

Sounds like a fun project.

 

[mika]

Yeah...if it ever happens

 

[Simon W]

Sounds like a water-to-air intercooler(for turbo cars).
Dunno if they're commercially made anymore tho and wouldn't be easily cleaned, but could be modified.

 

[mika]

Not quite....

Linky

Last car I know of to use a water-to-air heat exchanger was the subaru liberty, and that's going back to early 90's.

 

[sathid]

lol. If you were going to do that (intercooler), why not just buy a small shell and tube heat exchanger.
or a flat plate heat exchanger (even harder to clean).

Car intercoolers are not really suited to liquid-liquid cooling (huge inlet and outlet for starters). A car radiator would be a better match, but still, there is a reason they use shell and tube HE in commercial brewing.

 

[mika]

Thought they'd be mostly Alfa Laval Plate exchangers in brewing ?
At least that's what I've seen at LC's.

They have a rep as being easy to clean and sell like hot cakes in the food industry.

 

[Simon W]

Sorry, wasn't referring to OEM gear, some aftermarket water/air intercoolers are shell and tube heat exchangers. (Google)
But aren't as popular as the front-mount air/air's, so figured they might be difficult to find.
Yeah the air inlet/outlet are large, but I did say it would need modifying.
Wouldn't be too difficult to remove the endplates and have new ones welded on with appropriate connectors, one endplate could be made removable for cleaning. Dunno if the tube area would suit tho.
Was just an idea, figured maybe it might be easier than starting from scratch or cheaper than buying an industrial item.
Sorry I brought it up.

 

[sathid]

Thought they'd be mostly Alfa Laval Plate exchangers in brewing ?
At least that's what I've seen at LC's.

They have a rep as being easy to clean and sell like hot cakes in the food industry.

Have to check that out next time I'm at LC. I know Swan Brewery use S&T. Possibly not for all of their cooling duties however.

I've seen the alpha laval (or perhaps other brands) FPHE's on home brew websites, and have also seen them used in conversions for diesels running on vegetable oils.

I guess with sufficient filtration there wouldn't be much of an issue cleaning the wort out, I was just having bad mental images of stuck bits of hops

 

[Simon W]

Found a pic of one, whether it's a suitable size or not, dunno.
Made by/for PWR.

Edit: Ahh yeah, a bit pricey!
8"x10" is $2150! (NZ$)
Scratch build one

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

I've got two brew kettles - one is a 75litre aluminium thing I fire with one or two 2400watt immersion elements. The other is a 19litre cheapie stainless thing that I fire on my gas stove.

If I scale a recipe from 24litres to 8litres and brew it in the small kettle, the two beers are quite different in favour of the small kettle.

Hop flavour/aroma is more pronounced and 'fresh' ('bright' as someone penned here earlier today) in the smaller kettle even though other factors (mash temp, hop amounts/additions, fermentation temps, etc) are the same and others (fermenter shape, for example) are very similar.

I think it is because of the amount of heat I'm pumping into each kettle and to test this, I am building a microprocessor-controlled 'dimmer' for the immersion heaters. This will allow me to crank right down the anger of the boil in my big kettle and prove/disprove the theory.

Petty simple kit - 480V 25Amp SSR in a die-cast aluminium box with IEC 320 connectors fore and aft; I'll initially control it with a NetMedia BX-24 because it is so easy to get from stop to go, but eventually use either a crappy old BasicStamp I've got cluttering up my junk box or one of those Atmel things now I have a serial bootloader in hand.

Of course, it could be another part of my process that I either haven't identified or don't want to acknowledge, in which case I will just have to brew my way to another series of experiments... *sigh*

 

[Andyd]

Pumpy,

I love the sound of your initial proposal. When you do get around to running the test, it's be great if you could run it against a control sample.

Split the same wort in two batches, pitch one half as you normally would with a yeast, and then pitch the other on your recirculating system with the same yeast (if you're using a started, build it up and then split the same starter between the two batches). Also, wherever possible try to keep the environmental conditions identical

That way you can do a real side by side and determine if there was any benefit in your proposal.

Regards,

Andy