Adventures in brewing with a new system ...

[DrDually]

After reading this thread, I put some thought into pre-heating water. Has anyone considered using a point-of-use instant water heater? These can be seen in kitchens, restrooms, labs etc under sink and some have an output rating of 140 degrees. If placed between carbon block filter and hot liquor tank, the problems noted above would not exist...namely possible lead contamination, soft plastic or damaging carbon filter
Thoughts anyone???

[JonW]

Lot's of breweries use the instant hot water systems - including the Bruery.

[DrDually]

Lot's of breweries use the instant hot water systems - including the Bruery.

Has anyone tried using this setup at home?

[bwarbiany]

Lot's of breweries use the instant hot water systems - including the Bruery.

Has anyone tried using this setup at home?

I just did a quick search online and it looks like most of the "small" installations (i.e. a couple hundred bucks) advertise that they work for 80-100 cups of water per hour. At best, that's a little over six gallons. Since some of my strike water is up to 8-10 gallons, and thus wouldn't cover my sparge water, it just doesn't seem like a worthwhile investment... If for no other reason (for me) that I'd have to place it out in the garage and it'd likely end up being a brewing-only toy...

[DrDually]

I am thinking along the sames lines...propane really does not take much time to heat my kettles so I will stick with it

[dhempy]

Back to the new system ...

My SS hop spider arrived Friday and a few new parts from Brewer's Hardware were here Thursday. My plate chiller should be here next Tuesday so I should be ready to go again next week. I plan to re-pitch the yeast from the Club Trippel into a Belgian Dark Strong.

I opted to go with the Duda Diesel B3-23A 30 plate chiller ... it has a bit more cooling capacity / efficiency than the Blichmann and was $60 less expensive ... so we'll see how it does ... the plan is to go from the BP through the trub filter, into the plate chiller, through inline O2, out to the HLT Ice bath, and finally out to the fermenter ... will let you all know how it goes. If it goes well, I'll build a little something to hold all of those items separately from the brew stand such that I can simply roll it up, clamp on a couple of tri-clover clamps, and be in business. The challenge will be getting everything to "clamp on / off" for cleaning / sanitizing ... all connections will be TC so that will help ... I'll just have to be sure that each component is easy on/off.

I also have a hop stopper from my old system that I plan to re-purpose in my mash tun ... I tried the "hose return" in my mash tun on the first brew and wasn't happy with the way heat was distributed through the grain bed ... so I'm going to try a fixed sparge arm for better distribution and I want to keep the grains / husks that manage to get past the false bottom from clogging the arm.

Lots to do to get ready this weekend!

Dan

[dhempy]

Second brew session completed yesterday ... I'm happy to report that it went much better than the first session. I am totally sold on plate chillers now. The hop spider I purchased is much more convenient than using hop bags ... but there was still a fair amount of particulate matter in my wort. The repurposed hop stopper did a great job of keeping the grain "stuff" in the mash tun and my cobbled together sparge arm did an adequate job of distributing the returned wort. Having one session under my belt was also instrumental in hitting temps and volumes a lot closer this time.

I haven't put the new impellers in yet because if I have to do that much dis-assembly, I want to do a few other things too and I just don't have the parts yet ... but higher capacity pumping is high on my list of desirables. For yesterday's session, I placed the trub filter off the end of the brew pot, then the pump, then out to the plate chiller, back into the SS coils in my HLT (in an ice bath), into the inline O2 system, and finally, the fermenter. My ground water was around 73 degrees, plate chiller exit temp was 78, and temp in the fermenter (after I put it back into the ferm fridge) was 65. I ran everything at full bore ... with a little slow down I bet I could get to lager pitching temps. But the pump was "challenged" with that much equipment between it and the fermenter so the impeller upgrade is imperative.

I'm going to brew again Wednesday .... I won't use the SS coils this time as the recipe is a simple pale ale. I'll let the ferm chamber do the final bit of cooling.

Dan

[dhempy]

Started the re-plumb of my system today .. adding 3 electric valves (which arrived today) to make the processes more efficient in terms of fluid movement. I did the 809==> 815 impeller upgrade ... wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm also adding a couple of manual 3 way valves that will facilitate the cleaning process as I had one hard-plumbed section that didn't really drain.

I am waiting for another relay board for the valves to complete the re-plumb ... it should be here within a week or so. While I'm working on the electronics I need to add the capability to plug it into the network without having to fire up the entire system (which makes the Hobbs meter turn unnecessarily) ... a DPDT switch and a little wire should solve that for me. I already have an external Ethernet port ... I just need to power up the BCS and the internal switch so that networking is alive ... this will allow me to work on the BCS programming from my workstation versus the touchscreen.

A new set of HERMS coils should also be here by the weekend which will definitely improve the fluid flow during mashing / mashout / and even cooling operations.

More later ...

Dan

[dhempy]

Did the first brew with the replumbed system last week ... much better. The new coils and new impellers made a huge difference in fluid flow efficiency. The newly fabricated sparge arm is pretty cool too. If I can upload the short phone video somewhere, I'll post a link here. I still have to tweak the BCS programming to accommodate the new plumbing and altered processes and I may have induced an issue with my 24v system ... BUT I'm going to brew again tomorrow (Saturday) and we'll see how it goes. So far, I am enjoying touch screen brewing.

Dan

[nevery]

So far, I am enjoying touch screen brewing.

(dick. )