Pump Selection For Whirlpooling And Recirculation.

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Fat Bastard

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I've been looking at one of those cheap brown pumps for mash recirculation on my 1V system (Think BIAB minus the bag) but I'm looking at doing a recirculated whirlpool with it as well. I run a 36 litre stockpot and until recently struggled to get a good whirlpool by stirring until I used a 1/2" dowel as a paddle.

I ran an experiment last night with a basic 1/2" 'over the side' wort return and tap pressure to get a pile of tea-leaves in the middle of the kettle, but I didn't feel that the velocity of fluid I could get from the tap was adequate to get a good whirlpool going, despite much mucking around with the outlet I arrived at the generally accepted 30 degreees from the tangent by experimentation.

Would forking out 10 times as much for a March pump improve this? What about those half price mag drive pumps Craftbrewer sell? What is Sydney tap pressure anyway?

Any advice, abuse or instructions on how to use the search application greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

FB
 
I've been looking at one of those cheap brown pumps for mash recirculation on my 1V system (Think BIAB minus the bag) but I'm looking at doing a recirculated whirlpool with it as well. I run a 36 litre stockpot and until recently struggled to get a good whirlpool by stirring until I used a 1/2" dowel as a paddle.

I ran an experiment last night with a basic 1/2" 'over the side' wort return and tap pressure to get a pile of tea-leaves in the middle of the kettle, but I didn't feel that the velocity of fluid I could get from the tap was adequate to get a good whirlpool going, despite much mucking around with the outlet I arrived at the generally accepted 30 degreees from the tangent by experimentation.

Would forking out 10 times as much for a March pump improve this? What about those half price mag drive pumps Craftbrewer sell? What is Sydney tap pressure anyway?

Any advice, abuse or instructions on how to use the search application greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

FB

tap pressure is approx 40 psi, march pump flow is considerably less
 
maybe pull up the specs for them. I know that march will have them, nev has them for the brown pump and the specs are on ross's site for the green pump so look them all up. Now there would be alot to consider I guess (no pump expert) but the out let sizes and hose sizes, the head height and few other things I guess would need to be taken into account
 
Thanks for the replies folks!

I'm not entirely sure that the raw numbers from the pump spec sheets will tell me what I want to know unless I do bulk mathematics, and I'm only a fitter & turner who got (and forgot) some dangerous knowledge at uni.

Has anyone got any experience with using pumps for whirlpooling with small (less than 40 l) pots? What diameter wort return did you use to get the velocity? How far below the surface did you go? Did you find that the wort return worked better angled upwards, and if so, by how much? From what I;ve seen in my experiments so far, it's not the velocity of the whirlpool so much as the lack of turbulence in the whirlpool that makes the difference.

Cheers,

FB
 
I used the brown pump silicon hose and a half inch slightly bent copper piece on the end and whirlpooled a single batch in a 100L pot recently and it did the job great. The whirlpool wasn't overly quick, but after 10 or 15 minutes there was a beautiful cone of trub in the centre of the pot.

I had the outlet just under the surface of the wort.

I really dont think it has to be a massive whirling mass like when your hand whirlpooling, it just needs to be consistantly turning
 
I recently broke the head of my pump and after finding a site with a replacement head I ended up ordering a second pump (which I'd been thinking of doing for a while). I looked at various options because one of the things I wanted to do was whirlpool with the pump, while chilling and afterwards to get the trub in the centre of my BK.

I looked at various options and read that Jamil Zainesheff swears by using an immesion chiller with some piping attached for whirlpooling, ie one of these:

http://morebeer.com/view_product/8868//Imm...culation_Option

I've got no doubt it's overkill but I ended up getting one of these pumps, just to make sure it does the job:

http://www.tescopumps.com/servlet/the-237/...-MD-BEER/Detail

To be frank I think when it comes to whirlpooling after the beer is chilled you don't really need to do much - I use to use a drill and paint stirrer but found that the result was no different from about 30 seconds of stirring with my brew spoon.

In a kettle as small as yours I'd have thought it's a bit narrow to get a really good result from whirlpooling. Personally I struggle to get a good result in my 56l kettle but have no problems (usually) with my 76l. You might be better off obtaining a really good kettle screen.
 
People that doubt the ability to get a good whirlpool in a small kettle definitely aren't chucking their tea leaves straight into their cups. It works, just takes thinking about how boundary layers work to suss it out.
Haven't done a pump to whirlpool, but should be great considering the flow from my pump is gentler than tap pressure, which really helps with a tall narrow vessel.
 
It is a very crappy video but I get a reasonable whirlpool with a march 809 in a 100 liter pot.

The related videos might be a bit better on the eye. Mine was pre iPhone.
 
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