HERMS & Chiller Advice

[segallis]

I need some opinions on an equipment purchase. I am converting to electric brewing and will be buying a single 5500W vessel for my HLT, HERMS and BK. I use a 120 Qt cooler for my mash MLT. My single heater approach is this:

• Heat mash strike water in BK, then pump to MLT.
• Heat sparge water in BK which also holds my immersion coil. I recirculate my mash through this coil as a HERMS.
• For mash out, I transfer the sparge water to a second pot, temporarily, so my BK is empty for lautering - possibly with a 1500W bucket heater to prevent heat loss in the second pot. (yes, I realize this one extra step of transferring the sparge water, but I do not want to pay for and store yet another 20 qt pot)
• Lauter into the now empty BK. Sparge from the second, temporary holding tank.
• Boil
• Use the same immersion coil in the BK to cool the wort.

I am buying the Spike BK, but they have a HLT version that has a SS coil mounted inside. The main difference between my immersion chiller approach and their HERMS approach would be the SS coil would remain in place during the entire boil.

So cleaning is my main concern. With my immersion chiller, I take it out, hose it off, put it back in the BK and pump PBW as CIP for 20 or 30 minutes in the BK. It is also easier to carry out to my garage and use my air compressor to purge the water from inside the coil.

So what is your opinion as to the immersion coil vs built-in HERMS coil for this process?

Thanks,
-Greg

 

[d3track]

If the coil ports on the kettle in a high+low configuration, liquid should drain via gravity nicely. Then you should be able to run your same CIP process as your immersion chiller. The SS coil should be just as easy to clean as the kettle then, at least in my hypothesis.

 

[acidrain]

Without running cold water across the coils, the cooling water will heat up and you will effectively balance the two vessels in temp. Also, as the cooling water heats up, you will have slower and slower cooling.
Depending on how much volume there is, and not accounting for heat loss, it would look something like this:
5 gallons of boiled wort is 212F
5 gallons of cooling water it 50F.
Ending wort and cooling water temperature is 81F (212-50 = 162. 162/2 = 81F)
The only way around this is constantly running cold water into the LT, and since you would be adding cold water to the already warmed water, it's not a very efficient way to cool the wort.
It would be better to just use an immersion chiller.

If it were me (and I own and use a plate chiller), I would go with a counter flow chiller and pump perfectly chilled wort directly into your fementor. Takes maybe 15 minutes, and to me, anything that reduces my brew day is a win.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

You could mount the recirculating coil in the pot lid, then transfer the pot lid from the HLT during mashing to the boil kettle for chilling purposes, using quick connects to change from the wort recirculation lines to chilling water.

I was planning something along those lines, then did a BIAB batch on a whim and never looked back. If space is a concern, single vessel no sparge BIAB works really well, less to clean, and efficiency is great, especially if you have a grain mill.

 

[segallis]

Sorry for any confusion. The HERMS coil I was referring to would work exactly the same as my immersion chiller. I run tap water through the coil intil the wort reaches close to tap temp, then I use my cooler mash tun filled with ice water pumped through the coil in the BK to get it to pitching temp.

So chilling isn't an issue for me, only cleaning a fixed coil in my BK (ie a HLT used as a BK), vs cleaning an immersion coil.

 

[segallis]

5 gallons of boiled wort is 212F
5 gallons of cooling water it 50F.
Ending wort and cooling water temperature is 81F (212-50 = 162. 162/2 = 81F)
.

Actually, it's 212+50 = 262. 262/2=131 for both ending temps. So ya, you need to run tap water, not recirculate.