Whirlpool Vessel: Angle Of The Dangle?

[squirt in the turns]

Less fittings, The stuff i quote with out the quote marks is from KUNZE Technology of brewing and malting, great book, I hear there is a torrent out there.
Do the right thing and buy the book I did.
Nev

Cheers, I'll check it out.

 

[Fat Bastard]

Has anyone had much success using a little brown pump for this? I've done some experimenting with an over the side wort return angled at approximately the right angle and outlet through the pickup with a one-off success in a lightly hopped Aussie pale ale.


I only had the return just below the surface of the wort. From what I'm reading deeper is better, possibly between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way up the wall to the surface?

To date, this is still the best trub cone I've had in my 36 litre kettle, Just haven't been able to replicate it!

I've got a couple of s/s compression fittings and have bent up the return and pickup out of some stainless 1/2" tube. I'd prefer not to have to buy another pump. I suspect the positioning of the return is the big thing here, and not so much the velocity of the whirlpool. Have the gurus arrived at any some of consensus for the positioning of the pickup and return? A google image search brings up all sorts of wierd and wonderful whirlpool inlet designs!

Cheers,

FB

 

[Fat Bastard]

Just another thought (and a bit of a bump), given that I have an element sticking through the wall creating turbulence, should I drill the hole for the outlet at the same level so I don't create additional turbulence on top of this? I've also added a Beerbelly pickup and hop blocker, so the new set up will be picking up from the other side to the pics.

Cheers,

FB

 

[Thirsty Boy]

i'd stick with having the outlet .25-.33 of the way up from the bottomof the pot to the expected top of the liquid. Thats going to give you your best "spin" and with all that **** sticking into your kettle, you're going to need as good a spin as you can get.

As for angle.... kunze etc are assuming an inlet flush with the side (ie a hole in the wall), not anything sticking out into the pot at all. So as wayne was explaining, the whole pushing against the faster or slower moving portions of the liquid thing kicks in and the angle does some of the work of the extension into the kettle. My feeling is that if you build a homebrew version with a lump of pipe sticking out into the pot, you're going to be better off trying to emulate what Wayne found with his experimentation in actual homebrew kettles, than you are trying to go with the reccomendations from the brewing texts for large commercial vessels that aren't built the same way.

Me - I'm a 15 seconds with a spoon kind of a brewer.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

Yep spoon me its a lot easier .
Nev

 

[Yob]

Yep spoon me

I like you Nev... but not that much

 

[mfeighan]

big spoon or little spoon?

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

Big spoon for 50L+ , small chef spoon for -50L
Nev

 

[mfeighan]

personally i like the big spoon

 

[Fat Bastard]

All you lot'll be getting is the wooden spoon.

I've never been able to make a manual whirlpool in my kettle work properly. I seemed to get best results from a half inch dowel but never got anything approaching a trub cone. More like a sloppy pile stretching across the base of the kettle.

Anyway, test drove the whirlpool yesterday. The pickup looks a lot higher than it actually is, it's probably only 10mm higher than the element and I placed it where I did as I figured with the drain pickup and element there's already be a heap of turbulence in that spot.

With the little brown pump and the guesstimated fitting positions and angles, I got quite a promising pile of tealeaves in the centre of the kettle. It looks like this may just work! It took about a minute to get to this point.

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

You have two things working against you , your kettle has too many things in it that will slow down the flow and the brown pump is not able to push the wort fast enough.
Nev

 

[seamad]

I get a pretty reasonable trub cone on my setup ( page 3 ,link in sig).
The pickup is angled down to touch the base of the urn and the outlet parallel to the base. I now run the march pump one minute before turning urn off, add brewbrite and run for five minutes then close input stopcock, and either run straight to cube or through the hop rocket and chiller. Wort leaves the urn at @94 C. If nochilling leave upside down for ten then five upright then into pool.
Used to use a spoon when doing biab in the urn, but get a better cone with the pump for some reason.

 

[Fat Bastard]

You have two things working against you , your kettle has too many things in it that will slow down the flow and the brown pump is not able to push the wort fast enough.
Nev

Yeah, I know! But as I had some success with the old and very basic setup up the thread aways, I thought it was worth pursuing, otherwise I would be going straight to a March Pump. I was definately up against it with the old setup, I found that because the pickup was the same I drained through, it picked up heaps of trub from the bottom of the kettle and that would block the dry break fittings I was using. This one has no drybreaks and no hard turns in the circuit, so at the very least, it should be some sort of improvement. I certailnly didn't get such a defined circle of tealeaves when I did the same experiment with the old set up!

I guess it will be a case of suck it and see. Unfortunately I won't be able to trial it properly for a good few weeks yet when I have the brewstand built.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

FB - just looking at your picture.

It might help to flip one of either your WP inlet or outlet around to face the other way. I might be bleary eyed from having just woken up (night shift) - but it looks like the way its currently set up, while your outlet is pushing the wort in one direction your inlet is pulling it in the opposite direction.

No idea really how much impact that would have... but it seems to me it would be better to have them both moving the wort in the same direction.

 

[Fat Bastard]

Seems counter-intuitive doesn't it?

The theory is that having the open end of the tube facing into the whirlpool will cause more turbulence than facing away. I believe it was mentioned somewhere in this thread.

The pump can't suck any harder than the speed of the whirlpool once it's up to speed, and you can't compress the wort, so the open inlet acts like a solid, flat faced bar in the stream.

Some have also mentioned it's less likely to suck trub in having it facing away from the flow.

Will it make any difference in my case with a kettle full of pickups, hop blockers and elements? Probably not. It'll be easy enough to flip it and find out!

Cheers,

FB

 

[Fat Bastard]

Ok, so I had a crack with the brown pump a couple of times, and got results varying from better than my worst results with the spoon to a lot better than with the spoon or the previous set up, Unfortunately the brown pump gave up the ghost, so I got a hold of a March 815. This pumps much harder than the little brown, so much so that I had to slow it down to avoid a huge wave forming on the kettle wall. The result was a trub cone of sorts, but not as good as I've had previously. What I think I need to do now is bring the pump outlet nozzle closer to the wall of the vessel and make it as short as possible so the stream hits the wall at a shallower angle. I may need to use a right angle or 45degree fitting with an appropriately angled nozzle to achieve this, but given that I've got plenty of flow now, I can probably afford to lose some velocity.

Will report back my findings.

Does anyone have any more picsof their set ups and results to share? I'd be interested to see them.

Cheers,

FB

 

[Hoptimus Prime]

Interesting thread guys,
I've come accross some 1/2" stainless pipe and plan to make a pick uptube and whirlpool inlet. I have a 50l robinox stock pot with an electric element. Is there a specific length and degree angle the whirlpool should be and placement of it in the kettle?

 

[hockadays]

FB,
Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.

This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.

 

[krausenhaus]

FB,
Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.

This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.

Man, that baffle is exactly what I need. Sick of standing there with a long spoon scraping my bazooka screen clear as the hop cone starts to fall.

How did you make it and how is it attached?

 

[TidalPete]

FB,
Seriously I have tried many version of returns etc, and the best method on the home brew level is 15 sec with a spoon. Only reason I wouldn't d this is if you plan to whirlpool and immersion chiller path of which you won't end up with a clear trub cone anyway as all the cold break will sit on top of your cone.

This photo was today with 200g of hops and 15secs spooning..I have a baffle approx 20mm hi holding the cone back. Boiler is 70l robinox pot.

So that baffle just sits there under it's own weight hockadays?
Interested as I use a 70-litre Robinox too but chill & whirlpool by recirculating.