Brutus 10 BYO Plans Changes?

Hi TrickyDick. I was out in the garage working on my new keezer collar as my old keezer died on me a few weeks back. So I was forced to buy a new bigger chest freezer and I was working on that. I snapped a pic as requested of my HLT burner, which is the Tejas style burner. It is quite effective.

sweet thread lot to take in

Ok


Brewing tomorrow if all goes well!
Also planning to brew wed, thurs, fri, sun, mon, wed, thu, fri, sat!!!

Now that's what I call march madness!

Nice! I wish I could brew like that this week. I'm all backed up with my keezer dying on me. I'm getting there though. I'll be back at it not this weekend, but the following one...

Planning and doing are two different things!!


Ambitious, yes, Realistic? Maybe not, but is not impossible. Have time off, ingredients, and planning logistics of brewing 10 brews in 14 days was sort of challenging and almost fun..

Will let y'all know!!

Yeast management is in my favor also! Only 4 starters, mostly due to special yeasts for a few batches

TD

What a PITA!


First off the burners behave differently when pot is on stand and when they have nothing over them.
Also my screwy furnace valves and temp controllers seem to be too "smart" for their own good, kicking off when they should remain on.


My testing the other day it seems was incomplete. Still having issues. Unfortunately, while all this was happening and I was trying to make adjustments, I failed to notice that my mash had stuck and I was conducting a mash out in the first 15 minutes. In progress of trying to save it, but I fear it's doomed. Small 6 gal batch of mild ale with about 6 and a half pounds of Maris otter and less than a pound of maize, plus a pound of crystal. I immediately stopped the burner, and pump wide open and temp stabilized to a more reasonable temp, but starch showed lots left at an hour. I added about 6 quarts of water and nearly 2 pounds of 2 row (note to self to keep some six row on hand). And mashed low 140s for an hour. Now I'm up to 152. I'm half tempted to abort.

As I am contemplating this idea, I decided to call tejas about those high quality ring burners. After a lengthy discussion, I was advised to adjust the height of the burners to 3" below the pots. Too hot to try this now, but I will report back tomorrow.

Lesson learned about watching the mash and pump recirc during mash heating steps today..

TD

Man your luck is for crap I tell you. Mine never gives me a hard time. I hope you can resolve your issues.

Hope so too.


By the way, what are folks using for starch test? Iodine yes, but what? I am using a new product, genuine lugol's solution. It's expired and can't be used for work anymore but works great in the brewery. Getting very easy to interpret tests that I never had before. Wondering if my slight reaction at then end of the day was from the inconvertible crystal malt? Or cause my goof up earlier in the day.

Reaction was slight but gonna be a bit sweet I bet. I might dilute with water at packaging since gravity is higher also

Ended up adjusting burners per discussion with guy from tejas. Still had issues. I suspect regulator bad. Inconsistent burn. Blue flame then orange and immense. Then blue again. Inconsistent.

Planning another brew tomorrow. Hopefully adjustments will help.

I posted a link to a regulator from Northern Tool earlier in this thread I think. I've been saying for years that the importance of the regulator cannot be overstated. These el cheapo Morebeer regulators like Lonnie had in the original article are just crap and don't have the ability to sustain a sufficient flow rate for three burners simultaneously. They might work fine for a single burner, but definitely not for three. You have put in thousands of dollars to this system, much less the rest of your brewing gear. To be undermined by a 40 dollar regulator is just ridiculous.

When it comes to regulators, you definitely get what you pay for.

For the starch test, I use a white plastic spoon and a drop of iodophor. Works fine and I always have iodophor in stock.

Thanks!

That regulator will not work for me. My rig connects via a 15 ft hose and brass QD to a propane spigot connected to my buried tanks. The tanks themselves I believe have regulators on them. Maybe I don't even need a regulator on my rig anymore. Dunno. Got to make some calls to find out.

Brewing again today. Hopefully with better results from the burners. Guy from Tejas might be getting another call from he. He seemed to be very knowledgeable, unlike your salesperson.

TD

TrickyDick, how have your burner issues been working out? Interested if you have made any progress...

I bought burners from tejas. They get here Wednesday. I brewed 96 gallons in last two weeks with some irritations each day on burner performance. Step mashes not possible with 11 gal batches. Burners really susceptible to winds. When adapting my rig from the "shoppers choice" 10 jet mini burners to the low pressure banjo burners, I lost a lot of BTU power. I also have intermittent spark pilots. I didn't have new compression fittings for pilot burner tubing. I re used the old parts and they leaked. I tried my hardest to make it through the last brew session on Sunday but working on those connections ended up losing a burner that I couldn't get to fire. Long story. Ended up getting through a Belgian dubbel brew on two burners, but modified the planned step mash to a single infusion with a slow ramp up to mash out temps.. Tedious.

Anyway. This weekend, I am hoping to get my new burners plumbed in and tested and ready to rock and roll! What is the spacing from the tip of the brass jet to the bottom of the kettle again that you've been using?? Gonna try to keep my Marshall 300 series regulator, as it worked well with old mini jet burners before they leaked.
If that don't work ill go to an adjustable regulator with a dial gauge.

I am not going to enjoy re-plumbing my propane manifold and burners. Probably gonna need to totally disassemble and reassemble. Previously I used the steel flex hose to get from the valve outlet to the burner inlet. I had adjustable "stirrups" the burners rested on, those are gone now, and will need to hard plumb in the burners so getting height spacing will be crucial. I used permatex on pipe joints, s removing that will also be fun. Existing manifold is stainless steel pipe, so getting burners centered well is not gonna be a fun task.

I'll post results for sure, and ouch on those tejas prices. At least my initial shoppers choice burners worked great. With tejas I'm hoping to not have the same problems, but if I do I can swap them out if needed, looking forward to better performance.

TD

Yeah i bet an ouch on the Tejas burners. 100 a pop times three isn't easy to swallow. But mine work well so I can't really complain other than price. And they are nicer built than the Shopperschoice ones.

Good luck on the re-plumbing.

I need to check the spacing and I'll get back to you. I don't recall the value off the top of my head. But I'm thinking it was around 3.25"?

Yep. My shoppers choice burners worked well, for a while. Should've gone with tejas from step one. Would've saved me huge headaches!!

Did you tap the unused hole on the ring for mounting the pilots?

Yes I drilled and tapped the nub for use with my pilot.

New burners have arrived! I'll need to plumb them in. Also waiting for new compression ferrules for my pilot burners to arrive. Looks like a trip to ACE hardware, or maybe a few trips, in store for me this weekend. Soon to be posted in the for sale section, three slightly used banjo burners....

TD

Good luck TD!

All put back together and plumbed in with new burners.
Tested but didn't tweak the valve trim screws yet for the HLT and MT burners. All in order otherwise.
Next brew day 4/21, a lager with a step mash.

Hopefully burner woes are gone!!!

Well,


Used it for first time with new original style burners. Worked good. Still getting soot on bottom of my pots. Not sure why, but its easy enough to clean off.

TD

Well I would be happy with soot versus not working at all. Like you said, a little soot is easy enough to clean off. Once I went to blue flame pilots, almost all my sooting stopped. What kind of pilots are you using?

I modified pencil tip torches from Bernzomatic and they work really freaking well.

http://www.bernzomatic.com/item.html?id=8

You take the tip from that torch and turn it out to press fit on whatever you are using for your current pilot. You'll also need to reduce your hole to 0.005" for it to work right. You can also mill off the tip of the torch and fit that on but that's more difficult I would say.

Blue flame pilots will reduce your sooting to almost nothing. But it may not be a big deal as you are cleaning the pots after you use them anyway. I cleaned soot for years so it's not a big deal.

Thanks for the suggestion.


It would be difficult to switch pilots. In retrospect I wish I had standing pilots with a manual valve to turn on or off.
I have the honeywell furnace valves, Honeywell intermittent pilots with spark ignition, and spark module hardwired into my control panel.
The soot isn't terrible, but just annoying. I even have it on my boil kettle, and that burner is controlled by a ball valve, no electronic control.
I am attaching a photo with the new burners.

TD

Ahh yes, the honeywells. That's a different story altogether. Some people swear by them. Personally I don't mind the standing pilots. They work well and are less complicated.

At least you are back up and running...

Exactly! If I had to do over again, I'd have chosen different temp controllers, and used standing pilots and a few other things, but I'm not about to do anything more at this point unless it just plain fails again.

TD

I wouldn't bother either unless you need to replace a broken item.

I just went through and cleaned my pilots as the downside of a 5 thousandths orifice is that it can plug up pretty easily. I got a stiff section of 4 thousandths tungsten wire and you can use that to clean out the orifice pretty easily.

Pencil flame pilots, almost zero sooting:

Mine looks like a fire breathing conflagration when the main burner is lit: blue, orange, yellow and red even. Its hard to photograph in full sunlight. If you can manage, I'd like to see what your burners look like when burning whenever you get around to it. I am beginning to wonder if my regulator might be sending too much pressure and I'm getting the wrong mix.
Anyway, nice pencil flame there!

TD

I'll take a pic for you here in a bit

OK here you go:



I took a pic of the boil burner, as I don't have the frame plugged in right now and I would need power to open the solenoids. That said, mine all burn the same. There are occasional blips of orange but that doesn't show in the pic. My flames are blue for the most part. I would remove your little circular shields as SS doesn't need heat shielding and you need to get as much O2 in there as possible to get a good blue flame.

Yah, I've got a problem. I'm going to remove the shielding. I think I may try replacing the regulator if problems persist.

Thanks

TD

You still using the regulator on the buried tank?

Irrenarzt said:

You still using the regulator on the buried tank?

Click to expand...

There is a regulator on the buried tank. I don't know if its adjustable or not.

I have a pipe manifold with Tees on my brew stand. There is a regulator on input side, and a QD flex hose to connect to a Propane port I had installed. The manifold regulator is a Marshall. I think I need to connect a pressure dial into my marshall to see where its at. I think just 11 inch WC is way below the resolution on any "on hand" pressure meter dials I have. I am trying to think of how to plumb in an acetylene regulator like you use to my stand. The biggest problem will be that I would need to remove the part which screws into the tank. Some regulators the input pipe cannot be removed. This has got to be part (and a BIG part) of my problem. Also, the 60k BTU banjos were not cutting the mustard in the wind and breeze with air blowing into the leaf-plate air regulator. a constant pain. glad to be back with the mini jets. Maybe I just got a bad marshall regulator. I was going to try and troubleshoot it today, but had an extreme dose of parenting to be meted out.. maybe next weekend. My burners are burning a variety of colors, even the manual ball-valve. Only thing left to check is the gas pressure...

TD

TrickyDick... what you need is a Man-o-Meter... I mean, a manometer

http://www.amazon.com/UEi-Instruments-EM151-Electronic-Manometer/dp/B000OUV2D0
http://www.amazon.com/Fieldpiece-SDMN5-Dual-Port-Manometer/dp/B000UV0F9U/ref=sr_1_6?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1367188222&sr=1-6&keywords=manometer

I have the later one, and it worked GREAT in helping me to adjust my Honeywell VR8200A Continuous Pilot gas valves!! 11 in. WC is well within their "sweet spot"!!

Namako said:

TrickyDick... what you need is a Man-o-Meter... I mean, a manometer

http://www.amazon.com/UEi-Instruments-EM151-Electronic-Manometer/dp/B000OUV2D0
http://www.amazon.com/Fieldpiece-SDMN5-Dual-Port-Manometer/dp/B000UV0F9U/ref=sr_1_6?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1367188222&sr=1-6&keywords=manometer

I have the later one, and it worked GREAT in helping me to adjust my Honeywell VR8200A Continuous Pilot gas valves!! 11 in. WC is well within their "sweet spot"!!

Click to expand...

Those are costly. How would is use that To check the pressure? Seems I'd need to disassemble and add fittings.

TD

TrickyDick said:

Those are costly. How would is use that To check the pressure? Seems I'd need to disassemble and add fittings.

TD

Click to expand...

They come with everything needed... Just connect it up to the exit port on the valve, and adjust away... I have two gas valves, and both were quite aways off, despite following the installation instructions.

Cost??? Hey... You gotta stop and think, just how cool would this tool
be in your brewery???

I would agree. 80-120 bucks is well worth it to achieve blue flame...

Irrenarzt said:

I would agree. 80-120 bucks is well worth it to achieve blue flame...

Click to expand...

I realized that I hadn't tried to adjust the flame on the valves with the new burners. I doubt I can dial it in, and on the manual ball valve control burner, there is nothing to adjust and that also burns orangey blue. I think I'm going to try putting an adjustable regulator like a welding style regulator (I found propane regs at airgas website similar to the acetylene type) to adjust the manifold pressure. The dials on those have much larger graduations than I would like and dialing in 11" WC might be tough, but I bet I could get a good flame between 1-3 psi.

I just need to figure out how to plumb on of those type of regulators into my current supply side: a brass QD port connected to my buried tank instead of a CGA-510 connection. I think that can be removed from the regulator body.
Then I need to figure how to plumb the outlet on the regulator onto my manifold.

Alternately I could plumb the regulator onto the supply QD port instead of on the brew stand, but I would hate to leave this outside where it could be damaged or stolen. QD fittings are a possibility. I think the regulator may need to be mounted upside down due to clearance issues.

Thanks for the support, I'll let you know when I get it sorted out.

TD

My concern for you Rich is that your underground tank has a low pressure regulator that may be limiting your performance. I bet if you take a small propane tank and an acetylene regulator, you'll be able to see if this helps your performance pretty quickly. You may want to kick down for these just in case to want to brew remotely, at another venue like at a Big Brew day etc.

Another issue might be the Honeywells not giving you good stoich as it seems from the posts Namako has above that these valves can be variable and possibly tunable via a manometer. I have no direct experience with this as I'm not running them but it's worth a look.

If you're running Honeywells, they are almost certainly adjustable. My VR8200A Continuous Pilot Gas Valves have a recessed pressure adjustment cap cover that protects/hides the adjustment screw. The screw itself sits on top of a spring that gets replaced when you convert the valve from natural gas to LP, hence my need to re-adjust my valves after I removed the natural gas spring... and to justify my purchase of a Man Meter to my SWMBO (yeah, I know - I MAY have "man" issues)!

Another nice thing about the manometer (fancy word for pressure gauge) is that you can also check the incoming pressure from your source. The gas valve won't build pressure, so if you're not getting at least 11 inches WC from your source to the gas valve inlet, then you know the problem is not your valve, but rather the primary regulator that's sitting on top of your LP tank, or coming out of your underground tank.

Check out pages 10-11 in the following link:

http://www.forwardthinking.honeywell.com/related_links/combustion/vr8300_vr8200/install/68_0046.pdf

TD,
Is your boil burner running yellow without a pot on it, or just with the pot on it.

If it's blue without and yellow with, you've got some breathing room issues. Drop the burner down until it burns blue. Don't be surprised if it ends up 10-14" below the pot.

I need to test it. Nearly impossible to pull this off during the work week. I'll do some troubleshooting this weekend.

TD

Sounds like there is a team effort developing to help you bro. We'll get it sorted out. Or your dime of course. Advice is free...