Using An Urn

[ausdb]

I got a brand new 30L 10amp Urn of ebay for $150, just for heating my water, i found the thermostat markings are inaccurate 85C on the knob is actually 75C, so other than that spot on.

My Birko is pretty much the same as that!

 

[notung]

so other than that spot on.

Point taken, thanks. I'd be looking at some sort of thermometer/temp controller then also...

 

[Millet Man]

I have been having a look at a few types of urns, and considering shelling out for a new one to use as a HLT. Many of them claim to have thermostat control (or 'simmerstat' which I understand is a no-no). My question is whether their thermostats and heat setting dials are accurate and easy to control. Some seem to have a single knob with only high, medium and low markings. Ideally I'd like an 30-40L urn with a sightglass also. Are there any brands which seem to be better quality for temperature control? I don't want to buy one of those mashmaster HLT controllers if I can avoid it...

Jomack sound allright. Which ones would you rate?

I have 2 x 20 lt and a 10 lt all Birko's. As others have mentioned the dials are inaccurate but you just need to recalibrate with a thermomenter and remark with a texter. No need for an additional temperature controller - that's just a waste of money.

Tomorrow I'm buying myself a new 30lt urn for Fathers day for $276 as the 20 lt units are too small for a kettle for 20lt batches.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[pbrosnan]

No need for an additional temperature controller - that's just a waste of money.
Cheers, Andrew.

Well that kind of depends what you are using it for. I have a MM unit that switches my HERMS heat exchanger on and off based on the wort temp at the mash tun. Besides that the temp control units are far easier to use with regard to set points and provide finer settings. I suppose it depends how much you want to spend but if your thinking of a HERMS then a controller is a very useful bit of kit.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Just a note about urns and sight glasses - not sure if its common to all urns, but I imagine it might well be.

The sight glass on mine comes off the tap assembly, and what happens, is that as soon as you open the tap, the pressure drops in the whole assembly, and the level that the sight glass reads, drops dramatically. As soon as you snap the tap closed again, it goes back up to the water level.

Not a drama if all you want is to see how much water you have left in the thing, but I was hoping to use the sight glass to measure the amount of water into my mash tun. I can, but its matter of pour - stop to take water level - pour some more - stop to take water level .... I cant just keep the tap open till the level drops to "x" and close it off.

I suspect that I will end up drilling another hole in the urn and installing a proper ball valve and pick-up tube. The current tap can just be an auxilliary and serve the purpose of holding the sight glass.

Can anyone think of a solution that doesn't involve relocating the sight glass away from its current location or fitting another tap?

Thirsty

 

[Millet Man]

Well that kind of depends what you are using it for. I have a MM unit that switches my HERMS heat exchanger on and off based on the wort temp at the mash tun. Besides that the temp control units are far easier to use with regard to set points and provide finer settings. I suppose it depends how much you want to spend but if your thinking of a HERMS then a controller is a very useful bit of kit.

Good point. For fine control on a HERMS yes it would be worth having a more accurate controller but I think notung was looking at getting an urn for a HLT so calibrating the right setting (75C, 80C etc) with a thermometer would be close enough. I use a SS stock pot for a mash tun and sit it in the urn, and use the urn as a water jacket to insulate / maintain constant temperature and it does the job beautifully as long as I know what to set the urn on to hit say 65C.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Millet Man]

Just a note about urns and sight glasses - not sure if its common to all urns, but I imagine it might well be.

The sight glass on mine comes off the tap assembly, and what happens, is that as soon as you open the tap, the pressure drops in the whole assembly, and the level that the sight glass reads, drops dramatically. As soon as you snap the tap closed again, it goes back up to the water level.

Not a drama if all you want is to see how much water you have left in the thing, but I was hoping to use the sight glass to measure the amount of water into my mash tun. I can, but its matter of pour - stop to take water level - pour some more - stop to take water level .... I cant just keep the tap open till the level drops to "x" and close it off.

I suspect that I will end up drilling another hole in the urn and installing a proper ball valve and pick-up tube. The current tap can just be an auxilliary and serve the purpose of holding the sight glass.

Can anyone think of a solution that doesn't involve relocating the sight glass away from its current location or fitting another tap?

Thirsty

The sight glasses on all my urns are separate to the tap so that's not a problem, might just be your brand. You may be right about having top put in a separate tap outlet.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[ausdb]

Just a note about urns and sight glasses - not sure if its common to all urns, but I imagine it might well be.
The sight glass on mine comes off the tap assembly, and what happens, is that as soon as you open the tap, the pressure drops in the whole assembly, and the level that the sight glass reads, drops dramatically. As soon as you snap the tap closed again, it goes back up to the water level.

My Birko has a separate sightglass fitting, the old Langco had the sightglass as part of the tap but the tap was busted when I got it so I ended up putting a separate sightglass fitting on it myself. TB Sorry I cant help with any ideas other than to drill a hole in the urn and put a separate sightglass fitting in, I got mine from JG Thomas in Bayswater WA but I am sure other people would stock them.

I mark on the side of the urn with a black marker pen the water levels I need for a brew then wipe it off with a metho soaked rag the next time I go to brew or just use them again if the batch size is the same

 

[notung]

Has anybody had experience in replacing the taps on hot water urns. I am (still) casually looking into urns for use as a HLT, but I see that a stainless ball valve looks like it would work way better than the supplied taps. Are they built to simply unscrew on many models? Thanks. (Thought I'd reawaken this thread rather than starting a new one...)

 

[Bribie G]

Buying a 40L ten amp urn in a couple of weeks for BIAB. The Birko brand is a tad under $300.
At commercial swill prices of forty bucks a slab it should pay for itself fairly quickly.

I'll be posting pics of my first brewing session in the AG forum.

I saw on a thread that the tap on a Birko can be replaced by a ball valve as the hole is the same, and will take standard ss fittings, apparently. Will post when I have looked at my own urn.

Cheers.

 

[Goofinder]

Haven't replaced the tap on mine, and don't really see a reason to yet. 19mm hose fits snugly over the tap after heating it up a bit and the tap can stick open and comes apart easily for cleaning.

I tried once to get it off (when it was clogged with hops and I hadn't worked out how it came apart) but didn't have any luck.

 

[crundle]

Sorry, hope I am not hijacking the thread, but is it ok to use an urn as both a mash tun and for boiling the resulting wort?

I am looking at getting into AG in the new year, and hope to keep my equipment as simple and minimal as possible.

I want to make batches up to 19-22 litres for kegging, so hoping to get a 40 litre urn if possible, or at least 30 litre.

cheers,

 

[jonocarroll]

AFAIK the insulation on these urns isn't as good as it could be - it would surely lose more heat than a converted esky - but I guess you could use whatever heat source you have to try to keep it stable.

Edit: removed useless statement.

 

[Goofinder]

Sorry, hope I am not hijacking the thread, but is it ok to use an urn as both a mash tun and for boiling the resulting wort?

Do you mean BIAB style or mash, then boil? For BIAB I'm pretty sure you'll need 40L, but BribieG should be able to tell you more about that. For a 'traditional' mash, it wouldn't be much fun to clean between sparging and boiling. Also, I'm not sure about how big the threshold on the thermostat is before the element kicks in so your mash temp might go up and down a bit if you rely on that.

As far as keeping your gear minimal, I just have a 30L urn and use an existing esky for a mash tun. The tap in my esky is removable and has a hole the right size to fit a piece of 1/2" BSP all thread through. It now does double duty and takes up no more space than it did before.

My 30L urn filled (a tad over 31L) boils down to about 26L after an hour long boil which is enough after shrinkage and losses to trub to get me 22L into the fermenter.

 

[crundle]

Sorry, thought I had put that in, but didn't. I plan to do mashing, then boiling, but from reading your post, it makes sense to use an esky for the mash tun, and just use the urn for heating up the water in the first place, then boiling the wort at the end.

Much to learn.... Much to learn....

I don't think I have been this excited about beer since I decided to get into kegging!

 

[Bribie G]

Crundle:

Cannibal Smurf should be getting my Urn brewday onto Youtube but has a bit of a backlog of family footage he needs to do first so for starters here's a bit of a run through, showing just the gear and obviously no ingredients happening here now

Urn: 40L Birko around $300. Get the 2400w model, the more powerful one needs a 15amp socket so you'll need to get a sparky in. The 2400 heats up just fine. Bag - 1.5 m Swiss Voile from Spotlight, a local sewing lady made mine up for me, total cost about $18



Heat up about 35L of water to 68 degrees if you are aiming for a 66 degree mash. Add grain in a THIN stream, we got some doughballs that required vigorous paddling.

Switch the urn off, no extra heating required, cover and wrap in a doonah - I've got a real feather one that I got from Woolies for about $20 during the winter - and strap it and just walk away for an hour. Mine drops only a degree in an hour.



Hoist the bag and let it drain and squeeze it as well, while the urn is heating to boiling, won't take too long. (awning pulley $5 is attached to that beam using brickie's line so it can handle 15 K no probs, just looks alarming :lol: )



Hop additions etc, suspend a hop bag (Ross about $19) and use the urn as a boiler.



I'm struggling to get my 24 litres into the bottle and going to do some tweaking and fine tuning as I fully realise that I am at the limit of the equipment for the beers I am aiming for, but for a keg brew... mate it's tailor made for you.

Hope this points you in the right direction. Oh and don't even think of a 30L , for the extra few bucks a 40L will pay for itself many times over.

 

[crundle]

Thanks for the run through Bribie,

A couple of questions to help me get my head around it all....

So there is really no sparging per se here, I gather by the time the wort has heated up to boiling, that most of the liquid has run out of the bag and anything else can be squeezed out of it?

The element in the Birko urn isn't exposed or it would burn the bag, probably makes cleaning the urn easier also?

For around 300 bucks, this could be the thing for me. As I said, I am only interested in single batches for kegging, so having it all in one would be great, and keep my wife happy in the bargain.

thanks again for the info, looking forward to seeing your brewday on youtube!

 

[Bribie G]

No sparging because you are using the full water volume up front. You end up with a really loose mash.

However for people like me trying to coax an extra few litres there is a bit of debate on raising the bag and trying to do a sort of sparge then dunk it back in. The jury is out! However if you are doing keg-sized batches it shouldn't concern you as you will have plenty of room for manoevre.

The element is exposed but you won't burn the bag because the element is switched off. I should have said in my post that you turn the urn off WHEN you hit 68 degrees, then add the grain for the mash, mix well and swaddle it ASAP.

Having said that, you need to suspend the hopsock to keep it away from the element during the boil. The resulting wort won't contain hop flowers etc that could block the urn tap so a hop sock is essential.

Cheers

Michael.

 

[Goofinder]

Having said that, you need to suspend the hopsock to keep it away from the element during the boil. The resulting wort won't contain hop flowers etc that could block the urn tap so a hop sock is essential.

I only had trouble with hop flowers blocking my tap, pellets didn't cause me too much trouble . However I've now got a beerbelly hopscreen which does a great job of filtering everything out. Also, since there's a pickup tube on there now I can get a bit more out after the boil.

 

[flattop]

I just picked up a 40l Urn from Evilbay for around $200 + delivery with concealed element, perfect for BIAB.

Edit, i think the brand is Crown....