Worms-biab

[Tim F]

I didnt read every post but the thing that comes to my attention.... the urn heating from the bottom during the steps,? isnt the grain bed very very hot on the bottom?
I ran something similiar on the weekend and found when my thermo read the next step of 66, i stirred the mash and then i had 69-70. Perhaps i am missing something other than the bottom of grain bed is probably at mash out temp.

Yeah that's why I suspect you'd be better off measuring temp where wort exits the urn, easy to fit it there with a t piece and thermowell and that wort will be flowing past the element so should be near the hottest point in the system. It would be really interesting to stick a probe at the wort exit, wort return, top middle and bottom of the mash and see how much they all vary - no idea what the results would be but it'd be great to know for others building a system like this.

 

[keifer33]

Looks like a sweet setup man. Id definetly get a stainless steel probe or a thermowell just to protect that little bit of plastic. Some of the shops over here have them ready to go or order on line. Also good thing not wasting water and no chilling seens we are apparently so limited for water here.

 

[joshuahardie]

Looking good.
Subscribed. I wanna see how this one pans out.

 

[afromaiko]

It could be I dont know.
I have a trivet support which is 130mm off the bottom of the urn, that is how far the bottom of the bag is from the heat source. The recirculation is 6 litres per minute which means that a complete recirculation of the 33 litres of mash water/wort takes 5.5 minutes. I made the centre spray/sparge ring with a diameter large enough to allow me to
mash or stir with my Bunnings paint stirrer.

I see they also sell 8 and 11 litres/min versions of those pumps now. Do you think going for the higher flow rate would be better?

 

[SimonMatthee]

Hi All,

Thanks Nala for the detailed info. I am in the same boat as you and have just embarked on a very similar upgrade to my BIAB system.

I've added a pump and keg king thermostat with thermowell, basically the same as you have there. I've tested it twice now and it keeps the wort to within 1C of the set temp which is a HUGE improvement on the +/- 10C plus hot spots with the urn alone.

My question is, what is the advantage of that fancy looking copper wort return? I've just got mine pumping straight back into the wort and it seems to be working well, I'm just wondering what do you gain from the even wort return you've got there?

Cheers,
Simon

PS, here is a pic of it post boil: