Show us your brewrig

[tinnyhaha]

Hi,

Yep! I'll post some pics over the next couple of days.
The coil turned out 2mm over my target size of 300mm but I found the control I have over dimensions is amazing.
The coils are perfectly parallel and uniform as you can see in the attached pic but my concern is that the tude becomes distorted in section.




Cheers

Tinny

 

[spog]

"distorted in section" not sure what you mean,just to satisfy my curiousity please explain.

cheers..spog...not pauline hanson (please explain)...

 

[tinnyhaha]

Well Pauline.......ahh. sorry spog, the section of the actual tube is oval rather then round as expected.
I would like to add that the 15mtr. coil had been supplied with tube that was slightly oval already and it increased as the coil became smaller in diameter.



Cheers
Tinny

 

[dicko]

Put my first brew through yesterday.


Was aiming to brew a robust porter however I think it is going to end up a bit more like a baltic porter now.


Was meant to finish the boil around 1.062 however I must have boiled way to vigourously (I thought this was the aim) as there was a fair bit of foam for most of the time and i ended up with an og of 1.072 and around 16 litres of wort so instead of a 6%ish porter i think its now going to be more like 7.5%.

Hi Brocksmith

You could have topped up the fermenter with cool boiled water to get back to your required gravity and volume...

Btw good looking rig..

Cheers

 

[browndog]

So I have done 5 runs on the new rig now and am starting to get the bugs ironed out and some familiarity with its pecadillos. There are pics of the rig a few pages back if you want to see it. I had to make a couple of major changes to the way it ran due to a bit of a lack of foresight on my behalf. The first major issue was the way I set the herms up, I set it up using two PIDS, one controlled the temperature of the HX, the other (set in on/off mode) monitored the mash temp and turned the pump and HX PID on. Pretty obvious with hindsight that the HX was going to have horrible lag as when the mash got up to temp and shut off the HX, the HX would then cool down until the mash PID called for it again. So I did some rewiring and made the HX PID operate independant of the mash PID with the mash PID only energising the pump. So now I have the HX running at 70C and say with an initial mash in temp of 59-60C the HX has the mash up to 66C in about 15 minutes.....perfect. Major issue two was the plumbing. I set the mash tun up with a 12inch false bottom, the tun will hold about 12kg of grain with 2.5L per kg of strikewater for a double batch. As per normal after circulating to clear the wort, the wort would then be pumped into the kettle. I found that grain particles were gathering in insideous groups in the plumbing just waiting to be pumped into the kettle, doing a double sparge didn't help the fact. The solution? a 3ft piece of 1/2" tubing that I simply stuff into the outlet in the tun (see pic). Then I removed the redundant T Piece, tap and S/S tubing simplifying the system somewhat.
So with those bits sorted it was time to fix the other stuff, much to my chargrin, false bottoms on kettles don't work, I don't know why I thought it would. Over the years I've tried every conceivable method of kettle pick ups and hadn't tried a false bottom so I'll leave it at that. It sucked too much hop through and blocked the plate chiller and when you regularly brew with 300g of hops this is a bugger. I ended up putting in a T piece with a couple of bent tubes running to the sides the kettle (see pic) This works OK but I may play with it a bit more. Fixed some leaks and added some support for some of the plumbing. My efficiency is running about 72% at the moment, down 10% from my old system and that is due to the losses involved in big pots and using lots of hops, I can live with that.
What's left to do? I'm not happy with the performance of the two 2400W elements in the kettle, even though the pot is 500mm wide, I'd like to see a stronger boil and I reckon I may get this by using heavy duty flex in place of some of the cheap $5 leads I have wired into the system. I've yet to develop a cleaning regime that flows nicely and cleaning has taken me from 30 mins to an hour on different brews.
What do I like about it, well as anyone with a herms knows, you dial in the mash temp and walk away, there is no adjusting strikewater for winter or summer temps, no having to add cold or boiling water to the mash to make adjustments and having the ability to do a double batch is magic. I guess also as a dedicated tinkerer there is a certain satifaction you get when something you have made from scratch looks good and works as it was intended and the thing makes awesome beer !! how good is that!





cheers

Browndog

 

[NickB]

Looking good Tony! Keen to try a beer from your system in the new year! Might even have to join the IBUs as I'm moving out that way soon.....

 

[browndog]

Looking good Tony! Keen to try a beer from your system in the new year! Might even have to join the IBUs as I'm moving out that way soon.....

woohoo, where abouts mate?

 

[Adam Howard]

How come you don't just energise your HX element based on the outlet wort temp from the HX? You seem to have overcomplicated the whole temp-controlled recirculated mashing thing. Thirsty Boy sent me a very enlightening PM after I chucked up a post saying I wanted to control a HX via mash temp and not wort temp.

Also on the topic of kettle draining, I'm looking into getting one of THESE

As you can see by the photos you can get a 100% kettle drain with negligible hop and break matter through a chiller and into a fermenter even with 650g of hops in one batch! I'll be ordering a custom one based on the outlet height of my ball valve on the kettle.

 

[Screwtop]

Put my first brew through yesterday.

Now that is a perfect open mash post sparge, no sludge covering the grist, no channeling !!!!

Screwy

 

[Screwtop]

So I have done 5 runs on the new rig now and am starting to get the bugs ironed out and some familiarity with its pecadillos.

cheers

Browndog

All these years and I still read every one of your posts Tony! There's always something to learn! Have made many alterations to Inspectors Pocket Brewery over the years also. The proof is definitely in the pudding eh!!!!!

Regards,

Screwy

 

[NickB]

woohoo, where abouts mate?

Assuming the bank does what it's supposed to, Collingwood Park

 

[browndog]

How come you don't just energise your HX element based on the outlet wort temp from the HX? You seem to have overcomplicated the whole temp-controlled recirculated mashing thing. Thirsty Boy sent me a very enlightening PM after I chucked up a post saying I wanted to control a HX via mash temp and not wort temp.

Also on the topic of kettle draining, I'm looking into getting one of THESE

As you can see by the photos you can get a 100% kettle drain with negligible hop and break matter through a chiller and into a fermenter even with 650g of hops in one batch! I'll be ordering a custom one based on the outlet height of my ball valve on the kettle.

Thanks for the link, that does seem to the ducks nuts but I think the trade off would be a fairly slow run off, there's always a trade off. Regarding the HX, now I have a probe inside the HX that keeps the HX and the exiting wort at the temperature I want. I reckon I have created an ideal system and I am more than happy if people can shoot holes in it because I've tried and can't. For starters, if you are only measuring the outlet wort temp then you really have no idea what is happening inside your mash, you can't tell because you don't have a probe in there measuring the temperature right. All your nicely heated wort (which I assume you would have your HX set to your mash temp) so you are assuming all the wort exiting the HX at say 66C is making your mash a homogenous 66C. By having a probe in the center of the mash I know exactly the temperature in the center of the mash, no guessing, and with the added benefit of knowing the temperature of the HX, there is no worry that the wort could be heated to enzyme denaturing temperatures. All in all, it is just an extra level of control and rather than overcomplicate things, just makes it easier to control the process.

 

[browndog]

All these years and I still read every one of your posts Tony! There's always something to learn! Have made many alterations to Inspectors Pocket Brewery over the years also. The proof is definitely in the pudding eh!!!!!

Regards,

Screwy

Indeed Michael and we are well overdue for a beer or two mate.

 

[pike1973]

Assuming the bank does what it's supposed to, Collingwood Park

It would be great to get another brewer in our great little club, I'm sure you would be welcome.
Adz.

 

[NickB]

Yeah, I'd feel like a traitor to BABBs though.....

Maybe I can be in both. And GOLDClub....and PUBs... And....

 

[sponge]

Looking good Tony! Keen to try a beer from your system in the new year! Might even have to join the IBUs as I'm moving out that way soon.....

Assuming the bank does what it's supposed to, Collingwood Park

There's another IBU's...?

Who wudda thunk it?!

 

[NickB]

Ipswich Brewer's Union I believe....

 

[Adam Howard]

Thanks for the link, that does seem to the ducks nuts but I think the trade off would be a fairly slow run off, there's always a trade off. Regarding the HX, now I have a probe inside the HX that keeps the HX and the exiting wort at the temperature I want. I reckon I have created an ideal system and I am more than happy if people can shoot holes in it because I've tried and can't. For starters, if you are only measuring the outlet wort temp then you really have no idea what is happening inside your mash, you can't tell because you don't have a probe in there measuring the temperature right. All your nicely heated wort (which I assume you would have your HX set to your mash temp) so you are assuming all the wort exiting the HX at say 66C is making your mash a homogenous 66C. By having a probe in the center of the mash I know exactly the temperature in the center of the mash, no guessing, and with the added benefit of knowing the temperature of the HX, there is no worry that the wort could be heated to enzyme denaturing temperatures. All in all, it is just an extra level of control and rather than overcomplicate things, just makes it easier to control the process.

Well the way I had it explained to me is that measuring the 'mash' in a recirculated system is only measuring the temperature of the grain bed. Once the enzymes are solubilised they are in the wort and not the grain/mashbed. Due to the recirculation the temperature of the mash will always lag behind the temperature of the wort coming out of the HX and because the enzymes are in the liquid that is recirculating you want the outlet temp of the wort to be the governing controller of temp because heating that to the required step temp will be ensuring the enzymes are operating at the temp you want. For instance, basing the energising of an HX on mash temp will overheat the wort coming out of the HX much higher than your desired step.

I have a Mashmaster thermometer in my tun but control my HERMS vessel via wort out temp. I find that when it ramps to the next step the temperature of the grainbed lags a few minutes behind the temperature of the wort, this isn't a big deal because I've made sure that the hottest the wort is going to be is my desired mash temp.

Not saying what you're doing is the wrong way at all, it just seems overly complex.

 

[mxd]

Fridgemate will end up running the HLT.

hey Adam,

becareful with the fridgemate running the hlt, I released smoke from mine as they "may" not be made to switch 10 amps, you may need to put a SSR between the fridgemate and the hlt power point.

 

[QldKev]

Well the way I had it explained to me is that measuring the 'mash' in a recirculated system is only measuring the temperature of the grain bed. Once the enzymes are solubilised they are in the wort and not the grain/mashbed. Due to the recirculation the temperature of the mash will always lag behind the temperature of the wort coming out of the HX and because the enzymes are in the liquid that is recirculating you want the outlet temp of the wort to be the governing controller of temp because heating that to the required step temp will be ensuring the enzymes are operating at the temp you want. For instance, basing the energising of an HX on mash temp will overheat the wort coming out of the HX much higher than your desired step.

I have a Mashmaster thermometer in my tun but control my HERMS vessel via wort out temp. I find that when it ramps to the next step the temperature of the grainbed lags a few minutes behind the temperature of the wort, this isn't a big deal because I've made sure that the hottest the wort is going to be is my desired mash temp.

Not saying what you're doing is the wrong way at all, it just seems overly complex.

This is my understanding of the process too. I control the heat exchanger by the temperature of the exit of the HERMS. I also have a probe in under the false bottom at the end of the pickup. When performing bigger steps (say 66 to 77) I've seen a lag of up to 5c. So in my case if I was using the probe under the false bottom to control the output temp I could potentially see 77+5=82c wort temps pouring into the mash. When it hits the mash bed I assume it would drop back to a more reasonable temp, but some grain is constantly being pushed to 82c and that's astringency country. I assume the mash bed half way up would be warmer than the bottom during ramping, but I still think there would be the same effect.

QldKev