New Brew Rig And Low Efficiency

[~MikE]

With the recirc I had the tun outlet and valve to herms fully open, but over time it would slow to a trickle. I'm not to sure what the flow rate should be.

i think this could be your problem, if you've run it too fast and compacted the grain bed to the point where it's restricting flow then i'm guessing it could very well be causing channeling issues.

EDIT: beaten, like a baby fur seal

 

[mxd]

Could be a stuck mash, very likely if you are new to the system.

Where there any obvious cracks in the grain bed or around the edges (pulled away) ?

I think my lasy brew was like this, cold that be too fine a crush or too quick ?

 

[raven19]

I presume with 1 pump and a single tier system you are batch sparging? I may have missed that ( :icon_offtopic: had a few lunch beers - found fat yak on tap in Adelaide woot woot!!!!!)

Back on topic - I reckon slowing the drain from MT could be the first port of call as per posts above.

Have you used the new mill with current settings to crush grain, and used it on the old brewery? (bit a backwards step now you have the new brewhaus I know).

Slower sparge and draining would be my first recommendation though.

 

[cdbrown]

Ok so there's quite a few issues I need to deal with - first is to test the PIDs again in boiling water and icey water to see if they are reading true. Slow the drill down so it's not shredding the grain but crushing it (will add some sort of feed adjuster from the hopper). Choke the valves on the outlet of the pump so there's slow recirc or draining. Measuring pre-boil and post boil gravity properly and temp of reading.

Is adding the grain to the tun prior to the water ok or should I do it the other way around and slowly add the grains, stirring occasionally ensure no dough balls?

Cheers for all the queries and advice.

edit - single tier so all pumped. Batch sparge after draining 1st runnings. Sparge is recirc through the mash for about 10mins before draining. Have used the mill previously but manually fed grains in so had the drill fairly slow, thought with the hopper it would make things easier but had to speed the drill up to prevent being choked.

 

[Banshee]

I did a couple of HERMS brews years ago and had disapointing OG aswell. I rigged it back up again last weekend and gave it another go. The FG was 1.056 which was 80% efficiency. I ran my pump at full speed for mash but to a trickle when sparging. Previously when I tried I could not run full speed as I got compressed grain bed, conclusion the grind. I add 3L water to 1kg malt. My next nission is to add an electric stirrer to the mash tun so the mash is always in motion (seen it on a microbrewery setup)and then I will have a straight pipe from heat exchange to the mash tun eliminating the need for a distribution manifold.

 

[Banshee]

Is adding the grain to the tun prior to the water ok or should I do it the other way around and slowly add the grains, stirring occasionally ensure no dough balls?

I heat up my heat exchange unit, I heat the mash water in my HLT and add that at strike temp to my mash tun and circulate to make sure that it is at the right temp after going through heat exchange. Then when happy with the water temp add my malt.

 

[cdbrown]

My liquor to grain ratio is 2.61L/kg based on beersmith. Would increasing it to 3L/kg have a noticable impact - less compact grain bed, better extraction of fermentables?

 

[raven19]

Is adding the grain to the tun prior to the water ok or should I do it the other way around and slowly add the grains, stirring occasionally ensure no dough balls?

I crush my grain into the MT them dump my water (at 60 deg) ontop - this gives me a reasonable protein rest while I stir up the mash. Then I immediately turn on the RIMS for my mash temp (62 - 68 ish depending on the beer). Works fine for me.

[Not wanting to start up the batch v fly debate again or derail this thread, but if batch sparging, the speed of draining the MT is largely irrelevant yes? (after adding sparge water and a brief stir and let settle of course)]

 

[cdbrown]

Following on with some more advice will try a split batch sparge, this time not recirc the sparge through the herms, but instead give it a bit of a stir, then let it rest for a few minutes before a slow drain to the kettle.

Cheers for all the help guys

 

[Screwtop]

I heat up my heat exchange unit, I heat the mash water in my HLT and add that at strike temp to my mash tun and circulate to make sure that it is at the right temp after going through heat exchange. Then when happy with the water temp add my malt.

For beers where I do not include a protien rest.....err.........ahh.................. +1

I crush my grain into the MT them dump my water (at 60 deg) ontop - this gives me a reasonable protein rest while I stir up the mash. Then I immediately turn on the RIMS for my mash temp (62 - 68 ish depending on the beer). Works fine for me.

[Not wanting to start up the batch v fly debate again or derail this thread, but if batch sparging, the speed of draining the MT is largely irrelevant yes? (after adding sparge water and a brief stir and let settle of course)]

For beers where I require a short protien rest I add water at around 59 - 60C to the tun and wait 5 min for temp to stabilise then add grist in about 3 equal lots, give a few turns with the mash paddle after each addition. Then begin ramp up to Sacch temp.

Have seen arguments either way on draining speed when batch sparging. Slow gave better efficiency on my system when I used to batch sparge, but it's is a pain in the butt, changed to continuous, way easier and I'm lazy :lol:

Screwy

 

[gregs]

I built a 3v herms system based on AndrewQlds system and when brewing with grain crushed through Andrews mill the efficiencies were always around 80%.

When finally acquiring my own mill with 4 rollers my efficiencies plummeted to around 60%, this was due to the speed in which I ran my mill, no matter what gap I set I was grinding to fine; it was way too fast. After slowing it down I found the crush to be nice and consistent and to my liking.

My efficiencies are now 80% - 85% depending on the brew, also when using a herms the flow through the grain bed needs to be free. And when batch sparging I aim for equal fluid out-(first runnings) equal fluid in. I do this by mucking around with the water to grain ratio in beer smith, deducting the grain weight from the mash-in water until it equals the sparge water. This will put your water to gain ratio from 3.75 to any where up to 4.25 depending on the brew.

Eg. 7.5 kg of grain, add 35.62 litres of water; 35.62 less 7.5= 28.12 litres of water out. My batch sparge in this example was 27.58 litres of water, very close to even in even out.

I hope this helps, its fixed my efficiency problems

Gregs.

 

[cdbrown]

Yes I really need to focus on slowing the mill down so instead of trying to rip through 5kg of grain and create sh1tloads of dust I'll slow things down and trickle feed the rollers. 1st runnings were tiny compared to the sparge runnings. This was using beersmiths default 2.61L/kg. I'll be increasing the ratio anyway to 3L/kg or so to help free the grain bed. Will try this step first before trying the 50/50 approach. Cheers for the response Gregs.

 

[dent]

For what its worth I run my herms 'wide open throttle' all the time for recirc and sparge.

Was the mash very bright after the sacc rest/s? Cloudiness despite recirc can indicate a lack of conversion for whatever reason.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

CD I am quite happy to come round next brew with the test gear and run the brew through with you. Just part of the local brewers support scene, could also bring some one (Dent if he agrees) who obtains great results with your type of system.
GB

 

[cdbrown]

Hi Nev,

Thanks for the offer. I'm going to have a crack at a Helles tonight using the enlightened info. If it all goes south then I'll definitely take you up on the offer.

Installed an adjustable feed to the mill last night - the piece of shelving I cut out for the hopper to fit slides nicely between the hopper and mill and covers the gap. Love it when something fits without having to do any mods.

Cheers
cdbrown

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

Good luck. Hope it goes better this time.
GB

 

[cdbrown]

Success! Target OG 1.048, I got approx 1.044. Slightly lower but there was some more wort left in the kettle so didn't boil off as much as I expected, that was due to about 15 or so minutes early on where the gas was turned down a little too much and lost the rolling boil and didn't realise. The final OG may be different but only a few points due to measuring the grav to be 1.014, taking temp which was at 80c and then taking the grav again which showed 1.018. I based it on 1.018@80c. It was about 12.30 this morning so outside temps were quite low.

I conditioned the grain before milling by lightly spraying it with warm water as I poured the grain into the hopper. With the drill at the lowest setting I slowly fed grain through. Took a while but didn't create any dust let alone a massive dust cloud I had on the weekend.

Increased the water-grain ratio to above 3 (was only meant to be 3 but pumped a bit more water in). Added the grains after adding the water which turned out a lot easier to ensure no doughballs and gave it a good mix through. Let it settle for a few minutes before opening the tun, starting pump and cracking the herms a little so there was some flow. Seems to be a bit of a juggling act trying to get the flow right as had to open the valve a fair bit to get it started and then pull it back, after a while the flow slowed a bit more so I'd stir the mash slightly only to discover it wasn't compact, opening the valve a little more and then backing off fixed - maybe some grains getting in the return? Had the soapy suds on top.

At the end of the brew I realised the mash was lower than I'd wanted - a good 5 degrees I guess. I expected the herms to keep the whole thing at 66c, but of course with the slow flow it would never be able to do it. Should I have the HERMS temp set to a few degrees higher than the desired mash temp. Maybe the strike temp wasn't correct and the cold night didn't help either. When I was doing the mash out I had to set the herms to 80 for the bed to come up to 75, also increased the flow through the herms but was there to stir it up. With the higher ratio it didn't compact anyway.

Made sure to slowly drain to the kettle and the bed didn't show any signs of cracking. Added sparge, gave a good stir and then let it sit for a few minutes before slowly draining again. Remaining grain looked nothing like the weekend - looked like the top of a cake.

Things I need to further improve - making sure the strike temp is right and has been recirced through the HERMS before adding grain - started a bit low and didn't realise till later. Adjust the herms to be slightly higher than mash (if that's recommended). mill the grain while waiting for temp in HLT or do it day before - managed to start the mash some time after 8 and didn't finish until after 12. Not being at the right temp impacted the time the most.

 

[raven19]

Sounds like a victory for the brewhaus! Yay!

Pics of the setup now its working?

Any insultation around the MT?

I would increase the flow thru the HERMS if possible, as long as you dont compact your grain bed during the mash.

Do a few more brews, and see how your efficiency % tracks. You have got me thinking that I am smashing my grains too much, rather than crushing them with the cordless drill.

 

[razz]

Well done cd, what was your efficiency this time? I find there is two things you can do when it comes to mash temp with a herm system.
1. Insulate everything as well as you can so that the mash temp closely resembles the herms output temp. If you try to get the same temp you may only become frustrated.
2. Ignore the temp in the mashtun and just go by the temp at the herms output, the liqour will be exactly the temp you want and the mash will lag by a few degrees.
I use a bit of both and wrap the mashtun in a dooner until sparging. The mash temp eventually equalises, but only at the end of mashout (78 degrees)

 

[dent]

For my system I set the dough-in alarm temp to be 57, so that after the grain is added the mash goes down to 54 or so which the PID ramps up to the target temp of 55 over the next minute or two.

I find a temperature difference of about 1-1.5 degrees between the output wort from the heat exchanger to the temperature of the rest of the mash in the tun. I think it is best to keep the flow at a maximum to minimize this temperature differential. The more flow, the more consistent the temperature of the mash will be around the whole system.