Mash temp drops with Herms AG fly sparge

[BDawg]

Please change the text color. Some of us old farts can't read all of the yellow text on the gray background.

[Whitebeard_Brewer]

Especially us old, and color blind farts!!

[butterman]

Please change the text color. Some of us old farts can't read all of the yellow text on the gray background.

Well from one old fart to you other old farts can you read it now that I've changed the color scheme?

I didn't realize there were so many of us old farts on these forums. Are you sure your eyesight is not compromised by an over indulgence in the liquid gold ? As a senior citizen you should no better and set an example!

Cheers
butterman

[butterman]

butterman said;

Gravity feed from the HLT is not an option with my setup. A higher stand would need to be welded up for that to happen ($$$).

Will be brewing on Tuesday. Will let you know how the setup with my mods performs, and before considering any further mods.

The whole point of my mods is to minimize heat loss in the MT at sparge time. To this end the mods obviate the need to have a partly open lid on the MT (rectangular cooler) to accommodate the sparge input tubing or the need to modify the lid for such input. By deliberate system design the MT is only meant to be open at mash-in for the purpose of any salt additions & stirring, but not at other times, except when changing over to an impromptu polystyrene sparge lid (cut with hot wire from the base of an 'el cheapo' polystyrene cooler) to enclose double cpvc sparge arms. The MT lid proper (with its built-in variable height copper mash input) is of course, of necessity, open during the sparge.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your comments, which I will take under advisement.

Cheers
butterman

Well the pre pump mixer-valve modification setup which I designed to mix together wort from the MT & gravity fed sparge water from the HLT DOES NOT WORK. I'm not an engineer and I don't know enough about liquid flows, pressures etc to know why this doesn't work but it looks like the wort recirculation from the MT overwhelms (due to rate of flow/pressure?) the gravity fed HLT water and virtually will not allow it to mix in the valve, as evidenced by the falling level in the MT, and notwithstanding a very low bleed rate of sparge water to the kettle.

So it's back to the drawing board. Probably my only option now (barring a second pump) is to gravity feed the HLT water directly into MT. This will necessitate that, reluctantly, I will have to increase the height of my welded metal frame HLT/burner stand. So I will do that in the next week or so.

Cheers
butterman

[dshepard]

butterman said;

Gravity feed from the HLT is not an option with my setup. A higher stand would need to be welded up for that to happen ($$$).

Will be brewing on Tuesday. Will let you know how the setup with my mods performs, and before considering any further mods.

The whole point of my mods is to minimize heat loss in the MT at sparge time. To this end the mods obviate the need to have a partly open lid on the MT (rectangular cooler) to accommodate the sparge input tubing or the need to modify the lid for such input. By deliberate system design the MT is only meant to be open at mash-in for the purpose of any salt additions & stirring, but not at other times, except when changing over to an impromptu polystyrene sparge lid (cut with hot wire from the base of an 'el cheapo' polystyrene cooler) to enclose double cpvc sparge arms. The MT lid proper (with its built-in variable height copper mash input) is of course, of necessity, open during the sparge.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your comments, which I will take under advisement.

Cheers
butterman

Well the pre pump mixer-valve modification setup which I designed to mix together wort from the MT & gravity fed sparge water from the HLT DOES NOT WORK. I'm not an engineer and I don't know enough about liquid flows, pressures etc to know why this doesn't work but it looks like the wort recirculation from the MT overwhelms (due to rate of flow/pressure?) the gravity fed HLT water and virtually will not allow it to mix in the valve, as evidenced by the falling level in the MT, and notwithstanding a very low bleed rate of sparge water to the kettle.

So it's back to the drawing board. Probably my only option now (barring a second pump) is to gravity feed the HLT water directly into MT. This will necessitate that, reluctantly, I will have to increase the height of my welded metal frame HLT/burner stand. So I will do that in the next week or so.

Cheers
butterman

Something you could do as a simple test without buying anything is to simply transfer the water from the HLT to the top of the mash via a pot during the sparge. This would be similar to fly sparging, but with a much more manual approach. This will help, I think, to convince you that a gravity feed (or pump for that matter) will work much better. Try this out for a single brew and monitor your temps that way.

You could also just for a test set your HLT up on a ladder or other shelf. As I mentioned above, mine is a combination of both gravity (HLT to MT) and pump (used for recirculation and pumping from MT to boil kettle). I don't have welding skills so bought shelving from the local Home Depot.

[butterman]

Something you could do as a simple test without buying anything is to simply transfer the water from the HLT to the top of the mash via a pot during the sparge. This would be similar to fly sparging, but with a much more manual approach. This will help, I think, to convince you that a gravity feed (or pump for that matter) will work much better. Try this out for a single brew and monitor your temps that way.

Yes that is what I had in mind by increasing the height of the metal HLT stand for gravity feed to the top of the MT (rather than the existing lower gravity feed to the pump). Rang a friend today and he is prepared to modify the stand by welding longer legs onto it.

You could also just for a test set your HLT up on a ladder or other shelf. As I mentioned above, mine is a combination of both gravity (HLT to MT) and pump (used for recirculation and pumping from MT to boil kettle). I don't have welding skills so bought shelving from the local Home Depot.

As you can see from above I don't have those skills either. The ladder/shelf approach is certainly a simple way of achieving the same end but since I have someone to do the welding for me now,for the usual friendly cost of a slab of beer, and I have the existing stand I think I will stay with that modification.

Thanks, mate, for your comments.

cheers
butterman