Simplified HERMS + Chilling system

By day I'm a heat transfer/fluid engineer who works with all kinds of heat exchange, control, and piping systems. About 5 months ago I made the move to electric brewing, and for a while I've been toying with building a HERMS system for a challenge.

Anyway, I've always looked at the HERMS diagrams and wondered if they could be simplified, especially because my brewing space (large apartment bathroom) is a bit space-limited to have 3 big vessels sitting there all the time. So I sat down for a while today and I think I've come up with a significantly simplified (and probably cheaper?) full brew system design. Here's the diagram!

I forgot to add a legend to the pic. The circles with X's in them are all valves. The ones with 2 connections are just ball valves, the ones with 3 connections are 3-way diverter valves. The "TC" in the mash tun is a thermocouple.

Features/advantages:

• Only two vessels (mash tun and a combined HLT/BK)
• Only one heat exchanger for both heating the mash and wort chilling (I use a counterflow HX)
• Never have to move a pot, hose, or heat exchanger. Everything from grain to fermenter can be done with valves and switches. Manipulating the valves will allow you to: (1) pump hot water to the mash tun, (2) recirc wort and hot water through the HX, (3) drain hot water from the HLT/BK, (4) pump wort to the HLT/BK for the boil, (5) chill wort and send it to the fermenter, and (6) flush all the lines with boiling water to clean them.
• Only one PID controller (two if you want to control the HLT temp)

So anyway.... I'm pretty stoked about it and it'll probably become my next project. Just hoping to share the diagram, see if something like this is already out there, and get another set of eyes in case I forgot something.

Thanks for checking it out!

I like your idea.

I've been looking at doing a version of Kal's HERMS setup, but have been having second thoughts about the necessity of having a separate HLT and BK. All I could imagine was the work of trying to scrub hop residue out of the folds of the HERMS coil in my combined HLT/BK. Using a counterflow chiller as a mash heater and wort chiller sounds like a great idea. I noticed your setup has two pumps. Do you really need a pump from your water supply to the HLT/BK?

@powermd didn't know anyone had replied to this... happy to revive a dead thread. That pump controls the circulation of the hot water from HLT through the HX and back. There's plenty of water pressure from the source to fill the HLT/BK directly, either by forcing it backwards through the pump (while off) or by sending it through the HX and into the HLT/BK. Basically that small leg with the pump in it is only active during the mash, then it's turned off and valved out the rest of the time.

As it happens I still haven't built the damn thing.... moved apartments, then was too busy skiing and biking to be bothered with it. Gonna attempt it this weekend though.

I'm interested in the herms /chilling hex too. I have an in tank herms coil, but I would rather use an external cfc if it would work. Thinking about a stainless convoluted cfc. That way both paths are food safe and easily cleaned. What will you use for your cfc?

PopNLochNessMonsta said:

So anyway.... I'm pretty stoked about it and it'll probably become my next project. Just hoping to share the diagram, see if something like this is already out there, and get another set of eyes in case I forgot something.

Thanks for checking it out!

Click to expand...

Super cool system. It looks like you are only capable of doing a single sparge, not the kind of sparging that other 2 vessel systems like the Brutus 20 do. Have you tried out that style of sparge before?

Is there software than can help design these kinds of systems? I was trying to come up with a setup that would minimize the number of valves I needed, and got frustrated trying to figure it out. I'm guessing that theres software that will minimize the number of necessary paths for you.