My 2V RIMS (AdRIMS/RIHMS) Build

[Adr_0]

Well, moved up to Gladstone a couple of months ago and have been accumulating things to build a 23L version of the 2V RIMS/AdRIMS setup I had in Brisbane.

For those wondering, the Brisbane setup was great because I had a LBP that I used to transfer hot water to the mash tun, and could also recirculate with this. I considered this a RIMS setup, but going by the BYO book one look at the system tells you it's not as it's missing the immersion heater.

Anyway - there's a thread somewhere about it.

This is my build so far:


I used a $70 shelf system from Bunnings (358mm x 864mm x 1.7m), a 36L stainless pot and a 25L poly ice box. The shelf below will have the pump on it, and a shelf above (not installed yet) will have a box with 2 x STC-1000's and a knob to show me the temps in the HLT/Kettle and mash tun; the knob will be to adjust speed on the pump.


The burner is a 30MJ/hr 3-ring. I just used bits of 25mm angle and 3/6" 12mm screws to hold everything in place. It's pretty rigid. The heat shield is mostly for the soft solder stainless bit as I don't want it to melt off. See the next pic...


This is before mounting, where you can see the 3/4" stainless elbow. 2V systems need to be able to fully drain the HLT/kettle, i.e. no dead space - otherwise you need to move it somehow to remove the last bit of infusion/sparge water before you transfer the wort over. This should give me 0L of deadspace in the kettle.

I decided to drill a hole in a perfectly good Icekool esky. The theory here is to have the tube siliconed in and right against the bottom, so that I have close to 0L deadspace. In reality - if it seals... - I might have 100mL.


The manifold is a standard 1/2" with lots of cuts (about every 20-25mm).

There is a tee and a squashed bit of 1/2" tube (top of picture) which just acts as a 'jam' on the opposite end of the drain point (bottom of pic), but the tee at the drain point end isn't soldered in - so it can pivot, like so:

...but will still be firmly in place so stirring won't dislodge it.

Mount for the plate chiller, basically 1/4" booker rod with 2 x lock nuts against some 50mm aluminium angle and the frame. Fits beautifully.


And finished, with some channel and wing nuts to hold it in:


Next up (tomorrow) is the main plumbing and installing the pump (hopefully). I still have to make up a screen for the bottom of the kettle, and do my thermister probes (1/4" stainless tube).

 

[Adr_0]

The plan with the mash tun is to use a large grain bag and have the temp probe and pump return/infusion inlet line coming into the top of the mash tun. This should save bi-metal thermometers getting in the way of the bag or when stirring, which happens if it comes in the side.

 

[seehuusen]

looks good mate
do you really need a bag when you have the manifold? or is there another reason for that?

 

[Adr_0]

A couple of reasons :
Can grind a little finer
Can lift up a little towards the end transferring to the kettle
Can pull the grains out and clean everything in place after brewing

Could argue I don't need a manifold, but want to avoid channelling during recirc

 

[TheWiggman]

Good to see the evolution of another build. You mentioned you are going to 'silicone' in the hole where the drain pipe comes through - have you seen this done before? Reason being I used a silicone sealant on my system and it leeched some horrible flavours through. Got rid of all sealants, problems solved. Sealants were good for water, not for the acidic mash.

 

[Adr_0]

Hmmm... I have used Bostik high temperature 936 silicone from Blackwoods, as they didn't have the Dow Corning 736 stuff.

I passivate all my copper with citric acid, and wondered yesterday if acids would reverse the curing. I didn't think much of it but now you're making me worry....

 

[Crouch]

It's always interesting to see how people approach their builds .. being some-what of a noob to AG brewing, what does AdRIMS mean? RIMS I'm familiar with, but not that term. I'm off to grab some things for playing around with silver soldering bits and pieces. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

 

[TheWiggman]

Check out his username Crouch do a forum search for some interesting discussion on the concept of RIMS.

 

[Adr_0]

I will dig up the link tonight. Basically I claimed that recirculating the mash through a pump but using hot infusion water to raise the temp was what was probably intended by RIMS. But as there was no immersion heater, most people disagreed.

 

[Adr_0]

It's always interesting to see how people approach their builds .. being some-what of a noob to AG brewing, what does AdRIMS mean? RIMS I'm familiar with, but not that term. I'm off to grab some things for playing around with silver soldering bits and pieces. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Crouch,

There is a recent thread where I learned a few things about soldering stainless. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. Search for "soldering stainless".

 

[pilgrimspiss]

Hmmm... I have used Bostik high temperature 936 silicone from Blackwoods, as they didn't have the Dow Corning 736 stuff.

I passivate all my copper with citric acid, and wondered yesterday if acids would reverse the curing. I didn't think much of it but now you're making me worry....

Get a 1/2" copper compression fitting from bunnings with the copper olive and 1/2" thread on the other end. Then you can poke the thread through your outlet hole (use another nipple if you need more thread, or a 100mm extension piece). Then you can seal with a stainless washer and 1/2" silicone oring instead and screw a ball valve straight on.

Like this maybe?
http://www.bunnings.com.au/brass-compres-union-kinetic-15cx15mi-54116_p4700043

Cheers
Matty

 

[Adr_0]

Yeah, main issue is I didn't want a lot of deadspace in the bottom of the mash tun.

Some of these look ok, particularly the 748
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CCIQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsc.com.au%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fproducts%2Fcatalogues%2FMolykote%2520Silastic%2520Selection%2520Guide.pdf&rct=j&q=Silastic%20747%20neutral%20cure&ei=0rrVU6yJG5KC8gXR9IHQDw&usg=AFQjCNFaRB1xz2KmWFRknX1FZfB6-V82-A

Ie a neutral cure, food grade, highish temp silicone.

Thoughts?

 

[TheWiggman]

I've worked in a food processing plant before and the main driver for stainless and plastics was that it was non-corrosive. It doesn't mention it's suitable for direct food contact and the applications generally recommend are for electrical equipment. I'd say it's also probably not dangerous if you swallow it (in limited quantities of course).
Why not just try it, do a small batch and see how you go? I found with mine that you could taste it after about 15 mins of boiling. If you can taste plastic-ness then go for plan B. Whatever that is.

Or refer here: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/7922-food-safe-sealant/. Some successes over time, that's the kind of feedback I'd be listening to.

After my spate of ruined beer/life when I set my system up though I'm scared of anything that even pretends to be plastic.

 

[Adr_0]

Yeah, good idea. Some silicones take weeks to cure as well (eg Selleys 401 Enginnering). During this time it will be leaching acid quite a bit.

There are also evidently acid cure and neutral cure (methanol I believe). With our mash I would guess neutral cure is the way to go.

I am going to use whatever I settle with on my temp probes too, so I can do a quick mash and boil and see if there is any taste carried over.

Fingers crossed...

 

[Adr_0]

Well, some good-ish news for us from Dow Corning:
Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your enquiry.

Once fully cured, both the 732 and 747 should not dissolve/leach chemicals into food. Also, both are of silicone chemistry, which makes them both inert upon complete cure.

Do note that 732 is food grade FDA approved sealant (see its attached technical datasheet), so I would recommend it instead of 747.

By the way, what are the material(s) of the substrates that you are sealing?


Regards,

So it looks like quite a lot of silicones out there would be suitable. I have used the Selleys 401 before, but it takes 14-21 days to cure properly so might be best avoided. Wine and cider drinkers have patience, but beer brewers don't...

I have used Bostik 936 on my current mash tun so I have a lot more confidence now before doing a test mash - but I still will.

Silastic 747, 748, 732 and 739 would all be absolutely fine for mash tuns or temp probes by the look of it.

Sweet!

 

[Adr_0]

just for the record my question was around barley mashes or lactic cultures of ph 4.5-6 and 80-120°C. the response was as above.

 

[Adr_0]

Bit more progress on some of the electronics and plumbing this morning and through the week:

Thermistor, tiny little things. First one I did I rushed a bit and the heatshrink wasn't the best. It was fine going into the SS tube - using the multimeter it was around ~10kohms - but when it set it shorted on the tube. Bugger. Next two were much better:


And finished probes. 3.5mm plug on the end and ~3.5mm diameter 2-core wire so should be pretty solid.


Control box. All I have is 2 x STC's doing absolutely nothing except displaying the temp in the HLT and MLT. In the middle I'll have the pump speed/control. When I include 'true' RIHMS later I can put a transistor + relay in with the pump control so that it only permits a relay to close at a certain pump speed. Anyway, the box:


And I did a similar plug thingy for the LBP with a plug:

I have it on some cutting board (kitchen shop) with countersunk screws. The theory with this is to then use 3/16" bolts + wing nuts to slide it out on the main 60mm aluminium bracket out the back, shown in the next photos.


And a few showing the header and inlet lines to the pump:

3/4" line for the header, yet to insulate:

Position of the LBP will be about here:


Hopefully tomorrow I will do a dummy mash run to make sure I'm not going to get poisoned by the silicone and the kettle won't split leaks everwhere with my dodgy soldering...

 

[Adr_0]

So, bit more progress. The connection on the mash tun is pretty dodgy and has a couple of pinhole leaks. So I think I will go for the 1/2" threaded fitting and cop the ~500mL deadspace. My main concern is during a clean-in-place but it's fairly removeable anyway so I think I will cop it.

Few more pics. The control box complete, including 3 x 3.5mm plugs (2 x temp probes, 1 x LBP) and the LBP control on the front. The LED only comes on at about 10-20% speed so when I put the immersion heater/RIHMS in it looks like I will be able to use this as an 'interlock' to a relay only allowing the IH to come on when there is pump flow.


A shot showing the main valving. You can see the MT on the right but the silicone job won't cut it. Silastic 732/747/748 is all fine but there is too much flexibility in the connection. You live and learn.

The valve closest to the camera will be the feed into the plate chiller, and there is a valve (not yet installed) just past the main 3/4" isolation valve that is the chiller return, before it all feeds into the LBP. The little drain at about ankle height will comfortable get rid of grain/etc. that passes through the bag + manifold.


Header showing the connected LBP and the plug just out of shot. I will just hook up a short length of 1/2" silicone hose to the discharge, which you can see there. Middle tube comes in from the mash tun.


I did a leak test on the kettle and my soldering is ok! Unfortunately the bottom delaminated at some stage and there is a leak through there... so I will seal weld on the inside to make sure.

So next up:
- do a proper job of the MT
- filter screen in the kettle
- insulate lines
- connection lines back to kettle and MT
- clean lines and test

 

[TheWiggman]

Are you going to have a flexible line on the LBP discharge? Otherwise how are you going to go about removing the pump for stripping and cleaning?
Bummer about the silicone.

 

[Adr_0]

Are you going to have a flexible line on the LBP discharge? Otherwise how are you going to go about removing the pump for stripping and cleaning?
Bummer about the silicone.

Yeah, a short length of silicone hose, about 150mm long. The plan is to slide the cutting board up and to the side, away from the suction inlet. This would probably be ok with the flex in 1/2" copper tube on the discharge side but unfortunately my tube bender has gone AWOL. silicone hose should be fine.