Without trying to address all points made in the heating-mash conundrum, my 2c would be that it's *both* the flow rate of the pumps plus the rate/quantity of heating by the HEX/elements that needs addressing.
Both seem to be equally important - technically the overall HEX/element capacity may be more of an obvious constraint, but the flow rate of the pumps/hoses also need to ideally be sufficient to disperse the heat energy more rapidly through those massive MLT eskys. The dribble we were getting from them wasn't helping the slow ramping, that's for sure! One way you could look at it is the additional influence of the heat losses from the top of the eskys - the slower the rate, the more heat is lost out the top before it flows into the grain bed. Failing that, it just takes a freakin long time for the entire grain bed to reach equilibrium.
So basically, it'd be worthwhile improving both the heat exchange system plus the pumping flow rate.
Just out of interest, is it worth considering a dual-flow heat exchange system. What i mean is, could we get a (series of) plate chiller(s) and run the mash through one way, then have a large volume of heated water running the other way?
The reason for suggesting that is it means we can run gas systems to ramp the mash. The convenient electricity option which most of us use on our own systems seems like a major choke-point in the future as not many will have sufficient amperage to run the several large elements Wiggas et al are calculating we need. Whereas we can just keep setting up more pots with water and split feeds to supply as many kJ's as needed.
I'm assuming this system would do something like run the heating water a few degrees above the targeted temp, then we just pump both the wort & the heating fluid through as fast as possible.
Apologies if this is already covered and discarded - just spit-balling during a break at work!
----------------
Hey, FWIW, i thought the decoctions worked fine. The first 1 wasn't heated up to boiling and so did little (and neither were rested at sacch temps :unsure: ), but the 2nd one got us up to ~62°C in one step, up from ~56°C. In hindsight, we could've
planned to do a couple of decoctions to achieve the rapid ramping we were seeking. The relatively small volumes of 50-70L is reasonably doable.
So for next time, a 50L decoction (done properly - i.e.: rest at 66°C for 30mins, then boiled) should ramp one of those big eskys (with the remaining ~200L mash in it) from 55°C to ~63°C in one hit. It's actually a pretty easy step if we've got the space and the extra couple of 100L pots to do it.
Maybe it's worth looking at a completely different strategy: using decoctions to hit the main mash steps we want.
Do it old skool German-style!
Still use some HEXs like we did at Cocko's to refine/ramp an extra degree or 2 and to maintain the temps, but otherwise use gas+pots+decoctions to rapidly jump to higher temps.
-------------------
Agree, that the "Rack-it"(?) shelving setup Cocko provided was fantastic - being able to neatly set up the MLTs in one spot and then have the HLT vessels above to store the heated sparge water was great.
And maybe skip the grain hydration from now on.