Thirsty Boy
ICB - tight shorts and poor attitude. **** yeah!
- Joined
- 21/5/06
- Messages
- 4,544
- Reaction score
- 106
True - I have argued that denaturing doesn't happen that quickly and I don't believe that it does.
BUT - it doesn't really matter as long as you have a decent flow rate going on - I have had issues in the past where my flow rate dropped so low that my RIMS unit was heatning the wort up to 95C before the wort got to the measuring point. Bad brew - hard to control, on and off virtual boiling of the wort during re-circulation.... still converted and attenuated just fine.
Its a self limiting problem - it will only occur if you have a very low flow rate, and if you have a very low flow rate only a small amount of wort will run through the unit. Admittedly more of an issue with a HERMS where you have a lager mass of heating medium - but that pays back by it taking longer for it to happen in the first place.
I have also brewed with a HERMS set-up that relied on high delta T between the heat exchange medium and the wort - still not a problem because while you probably are denaturing some enzymes on the way through the exchanger - you need to exchange a lot less liquid to get a given temp change.
Everybody need to make their own decisions of course - but in my opinion the enzymes just aren't as fragile as everyone seems to think; and there are HEAPS of them to go around.
BUT - it doesn't really matter as long as you have a decent flow rate going on - I have had issues in the past where my flow rate dropped so low that my RIMS unit was heatning the wort up to 95C before the wort got to the measuring point. Bad brew - hard to control, on and off virtual boiling of the wort during re-circulation.... still converted and attenuated just fine.
Its a self limiting problem - it will only occur if you have a very low flow rate, and if you have a very low flow rate only a small amount of wort will run through the unit. Admittedly more of an issue with a HERMS where you have a lager mass of heating medium - but that pays back by it taking longer for it to happen in the first place.
I have also brewed with a HERMS set-up that relied on high delta T between the heat exchange medium and the wort - still not a problem because while you probably are denaturing some enzymes on the way through the exchanger - you need to exchange a lot less liquid to get a given temp change.
Everybody need to make their own decisions of course - but in my opinion the enzymes just aren't as fragile as everyone seems to think; and there are HEAPS of them to go around.
