I thought I'd pretty much decided on how to do my electric brewery. Went from RIMs to HERMS, 240V to dual 120V circuits(long story), and to single pump, two level brewing.
But here is the rub. Right now, I do simple infusion mashes in a 10 gallon cooler, adding near boiling water to do mashout, then batch sparge with 170 degree water. Beers are always right on target(consistent), clear, 80% brewhouse efficiency. I'd continue with my current system if it were not for constant moving between two floors and 3 locations (one outside). If I go all electric, I can brew in the same room I clean and store stuff in, and not lift carboys and move water around.
I only do 5.5 gallon batches. I have two 20 Amp GFI circuits available, so it's a 2000 watt for the HLT and two 1500 watt elements for the Boil (locked out so both HLT and boil can't be on at once).
It became clear that 2000 watts will ramp a RIMs or HERMs system pretty slow. This means, I assume, more alpha-amylase production during the ramp for mashout(edit - is this true?)
, as 2000 watts will probably not get big grain bills with lots of water up to 168 F very fast. No control!So now I'm questioning the use of HERMs at all. To do HERMs, I'd need to make a heat exchanger, install an HLT stirrer, add more valves and piping, and change my manifold for fly sparging. If I want mashout, I'd stop recirculation while I up the temperature in the HLT, recirculate with that higher temp to compensate for the lag in the 2000 watt element, and maybe do cold water additions to the HLT to get temperatures back down for recycling. Is that how it's done? All this and more brew time to get the same quality beer? Or am I missing something?
So what I'm thinking is to infusion mash, use the boil kettle to get mashout water hot and the HLT to get sparge water to 168. Then essentially "batch sparge with mashout", but using recirc instead of a manual vorlauf.
What do you all think? I have to confess to never fly sparging or brewing a beer with recirculation, so my vision may be cloudy...
But here is the rub. Right now, I do simple infusion mashes in a 10 gallon cooler, adding near boiling water to do mashout, then batch sparge with 170 degree water. Beers are always right on target(consistent), clear, 80% brewhouse efficiency. I'd continue with my current system if it were not for constant moving between two floors and 3 locations (one outside). If I go all electric, I can brew in the same room I clean and store stuff in, and not lift carboys and move water around.
I only do 5.5 gallon batches. I have two 20 Amp GFI circuits available, so it's a 2000 watt for the HLT and two 1500 watt elements for the Boil (locked out so both HLT and boil can't be on at once).
It became clear that 2000 watts will ramp a RIMs or HERMs system pretty slow. This means, I assume, more alpha-amylase production during the ramp for mashout(edit - is this true?)
, as 2000 watts will probably not get big grain bills with lots of water up to 168 F very fast. No control!So now I'm questioning the use of HERMs at all. To do HERMs, I'd need to make a heat exchanger, install an HLT stirrer, add more valves and piping, and change my manifold for fly sparging. If I want mashout, I'd stop recirculation while I up the temperature in the HLT, recirculate with that higher temp to compensate for the lag in the 2000 watt element, and maybe do cold water additions to the HLT to get temperatures back down for recycling. Is that how it's done? All this and more brew time to get the same quality beer? Or am I missing something?
So what I'm thinking is to infusion mash, use the boil kettle to get mashout water hot and the HLT to get sparge water to 168. Then essentially "batch sparge with mashout", but using recirc instead of a manual vorlauf.
What do you all think? I have to confess to never fly sparging or brewing a beer with recirculation, so my vision may be cloudy...