Upgrading From Biab To 3v

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Truman42

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Well BIAB has done me well and produced some nice tasting beers along with the great advice I have learnt from fellow AHBers.

But other than making my own beer the other reason I enjoy HB so much is all the tinkering and gadgets you get to make, so Ive decided to try a 3V herms setup.
I have a hammerlok shelving unit to work with so will only fit two vessels on top with some space underneath, so last night I "Gimped" it all up and thought I would share it in the hope of getting some further advice, hints, tips etc?

Here is my Mash setup recirculating through my hermit HX into my new esky mash tun which sits on a small crate so it will gravity feed to the pump.

mash_3V.jpg

Then at EOB I transfer into my 20 litre pot to Whirlpool. I get a crap whirlpool with trub everywhere because of my element in the urn and find that whirlpooling in my pot gives me a nice trub cone.

Whirlpool_3V.jpg

Then finally gravity feed from the pot through the chiller and into the fermenter.

Chilling_3V.jpg

Any comments, suggestions, criticisms??
 
You will probably get arguments as to whether you are upgrading or downgrading....
 
You will probably get arguments as to whether you are upgrading or downgrading....


Wouldnt be AHB without mixed opinions and arguments would it?.. :icon_cheers:

Thanks Yob will have a read..
 
Anyone else?? Comments, suggestions, criticism appreciated.
 
What's in the Mash Tun? You want to make sure all your wort recirculates with a long and shallow grain bed.
 
What's in the Mash Tun? You want to make sure all your wort recirculates with a long and shallow grain bed.

Its a copper manifold. Inside a square esky.
 
Looks great Truman.
My set-up is nearly identical except i run my mash tun and HLT up top so that i do not have to physically move anything around once it is all hot and angry.
My kettle is gas fired ATM, hence why it is down low to the ground.
I do all of my mash and recirc up top where i can get to things nice and easy, before draining with gravity to my kettle.
The benefit is that i fire up my kettle as soon as i start draining and then i just batch sparge off.
Once the kettle is up and running it is nice and easy to start the clean up and recirculating clean water through my system.

I have just bolted a ghetto HERMS onto my system. I have a decent manifold in my mash-tun to try to avoid it getting 'stuck' when pumping. I am using some voille as well while i introduce the HERMS and pumping stuff around as a precaution.
Brewed twice this week and it is running like a gem.

I think it will work well.
 
Thanks Muscovy..I considered putting the mash tun and HLT on the top and kettle on the bottom but thought it wouldnt matter with my pump either way. I might try a water test run both ways and see which works the best.
 
How are you using the voile ?
Nev


Kinda brew in a bag in an eski with a manifold.
I started using the voile originally as it sped my batch sparging time significantly without the need for other 'processing aids'.

Since adding my little brown pump it works a treat as i can recirc at full speed with really efficient temp steps through my HEX.

I also find it is great to just pull the bag at the end of mash, drain the dregs for my starter and dump the grain in with the chickens...my no fuss clean up.

Since i started recirculating my efficiency has dropped a bit, but i feel the quality of my beers will be improved. Time will tell, I'm a week off bottling my first brew using the HERMs addition.

Truman, my only thoughts relate to not having to move stuff around on brew day. I would set it up so that you could finish a brew off manually nice and easy ..for example, if the power goes off while your pumping??? I use gravity every time i can.
 
Kinda brew in a bag in an eski with a manifold.
I started using the voile originally as it sped my batch sparging time significantly without the need for other 'processing aids'.

Since adding my little brown pump it works a treat as i can recirc at full speed with really efficient temp steps through my HEX.

I also find it is great to just pull the bag at the end of mash, drain the dregs for my starter and dump the grain in with the chickens...my no fuss clean up.

Since i started recirculating my efficiency has dropped a bit, but i feel the quality of my beers will be improved. Time will tell, I'm a week off bottling my first brew using the HERMs addition.

Truman, my only thoughts relate to not having to move stuff around on brew day. I would set it up so that you could finish a brew off manually nice and easy ..for example, if the power goes off while your pumping??? I use gravity every time i can.

When I tried using my bag to recirculate through my urn as a sort of rims setup I had major problems with a stuck sparge. But I think it was mainly due to..
Not enough strike water
no flow control on my pump.

Once I boiled the kettle 3 or 4 times and added water it seemed to flow better. But compared to BIAB where I was always around 10 points over recipe gravity, I was only a couple of points over with this one which helped for my hop additions as I didnt have to try and work out hop utilization for higher gravity etc.
And I had a hell of a lot less hot break and trub which Im sure is caused by squeezing the crap out of the bag, as was my method.
 
When I tried using my bag to recirculate through my urn as a sort of rims setup I had major problems with a stuck sparge. But I think it was mainly due to..
Not enough strike water
no flow control on my pump.

Once I boiled the kettle 3 or 4 times and added water it seemed to flow better. But compared to BIAB where I was always around 10 points over recipe gravity, I was only a couple of points over with this one which helped for my hop additions as I didnt have to try and work out hop utilization for higher gravity etc.
And I had a hell of a lot less hot break and trub which Im sure is caused by squeezing the crap out of the bag, as was my method.

I have a ball valve attached to the outlet of my little pump for flow control, I use it to help when i start recirculating or priming the pump. I have worked it so that the pump is gravity primed 99% and a little flick of the ball valve to slow things up seems to get things moving if i need to.
 
You got 2 urns?

What's the capacity on that urn? Use it exclusively as a HLT.

If you are setting up the stand etc, might be worth biting the bullet on a keggle or something and a cheap 3 ring burner to start things off. Then you can move the mash tun up there, use the pump to fly sparge and drain into the kettle by gravity. Just remember to elevate the kettle a bit of you will have issues pushing it through the chiller etc. also, if you decide to cube, kettle base just above where the cube top comes to.

If the power were to fail, you can always batch sparge ;)
 

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