controlling wort collection rate

[simie]

Greetings Brewers. I have a single tier 3 natural gas burner system with two march pumps for transferring my hot liquor and another for wort to boil kettle. My problem is how to easily control the amount of wort going from the mash tun into the boil kettle. I use a march pump and a 1/2 in ball valve, but for the whole hour of collecting wort we have to constantly adjust the ball valve so we don't sparge to fast or to slow. Anyone know of a simple way to keep the wort to the kettle flowing at a constant rate? say 1 qt a minute?

Thanks in advance fellow brewers
Simie

 

[Vale71]

If we did then we'd be making lots of money on the patent. Seriously, automating sparge is one task that hasn't been succesfully automated yet, even on a much larger scale than ours.

 

[TallDan]

I've found that the blichmann linear flow valve makes it much easier to control flow rate than a ball valve, but it's still a finicky process.

 

[simie]

I’ll check into it. Thanks Dan

 

[Smellyglove]

When I did 3V a few years back I also had a regular 1/2" ball valve, and my theory was that the lesser pressure on the output, mad it flow less. So when you drain (something), you'll have less pressure as it drains, making the flow slower. I don't know if this is correct but it just "feels" like it. I'm having the same issue with the linear flow valve and a 2V system, seems like it's flowing slower the closer I get to the end of draining.

 

[day_trippr]

If the crux of the problem is matching the sparge liquor inflow vs wort outflow at the MLT, you can solve that with an autosparge valve.

I use the Blichmann ss version which allows me to have the sparge liquor pump running unthrottled leaving the autosparge valve to control the actual inflow, and which responds to whatever outflow rate I set with the wort pump.
Makes the fly sparge process dead simple: I simply set the wort pump valve to a quart per minute and sit back and read HBT until I've hit my pre-boil volume...

Cheers!

 

[Smellyglove]

If the crux of the problem is matching the sparge liquor inflow vs wort outflow at the MLT, you can solve that with an autosparge valve.

I use the Blichmann ss version which allows me to have the sparge liquor pump running unthrottled leaving the autosparge valve to control the actual inflow, and which responds to whatever outflow rate I set with the wort pump.
Makes the fly sparge process dead simple: I simply set the wort pump valve to a quart per minute and sit back and read HBT until I've hit my pre-boil volume...

Cheers!

View attachment 610193

He said he's filling the BK, so I guess an Autosparge will not work in this setting.

 

[day_trippr]

Well of course the BK is where everything ends up - with or without an autosparge.

I took "we have to constantly adjust the ball valve so we don't sparge to fast or to slow." to mean more than simply fiddling with a single valve as frankly unless his plumbing is clogging or he's on the verge of sticking the mash that makes no sense to me. I never have to tweak either pump valve once I've set the outflow rate with the wort pump valve...

Cheers!

 

[Smellyglove]

Well of course the BK is where everything ends up - with or without an autosparge.

I took "we have to constantly adjust the ball valve so we don't sparge to fast or to slow." to mean more than simply fiddling with a single valve as frankly unless his plumbing is clogging or he's on the verge of sticking the mash that makes no sense to me. I never have to tweak either pump valve once I've set the outflow rate with the wort pump valve...

Cheers!

If he do a fly sparge I guess it will work, but I see that he hasn't provided that info. In my mind I just thought that he needed to control the rate between the mash and BK, but if he's flysparging he can just control the inlet of the mash.

 

[bracconiere]

out of curiosity...do fan speed controllers work with pumps?

 

[Smellyglove]

out of curiosity...do fan speed controllers work with pumps?

If they are rated for the power of the pump, sure. But this guy is running march pumps which are 120/230V, so a fan speed controller for a 12V fan would just die, and it's the wrong AC - DC thing too, so it wouldn't actually work.

 

[day_trippr]

With "the whole hour of collecting wort" I think he provided a pretty clear hint of how he's sparging, and why flow control actually matters at all...

Cheers!

 

[Vale71]

He said "to keep the wort to the kettle flowing at a constant rate" so it's pretty clear what he wants to achieve.
This is unfortunately not as easy to automate as the grain bed has a huge impact on wort flow and its effect will also change over time. It can easily get into a situation where opening a valve wider (or stepping up a pump's throughput) will actually cause the bed to compact further and wort flow to actually decrease. Any control logic, even the most sophisticated one, is not capable of reacting to a complete inversion of the control law and will just open the valve wider and wider until you'll possibly have a stuck sparge situation on your hands. Sometimes it can get so bad that you need to stop sparging in order to let the grain bed loosen up, good luck getting a PID controller (or any other controller for that matter) to ever do that. It's the one step in brewing where a human brain hasn't been fully replaced yet.

 

[bracconiere]

If they are rated for the power of the pump, sure. But this guy is running march pumps which are 120/230V, so a fan speed controller for a 12V fan would just die, and it's the wrong AC - DC thing too, so it wouldn't actually work.

i use one for my 1500 watt 120v hot plate? i doubt a pump pulls as much as it does...

 

[simie]

First off I want to graciously thank you fine brewers for your time and contributions to this thread. I know time is precious, so thank you very much for your input. We’ve been all grain for ten years, have a pretty nice home brewery and in my opinion we brew great beer as is. But as we fiddle with the ball valve I couldn’t help but think there’s something out there. But having to keep an eye out on filling boil kettle properly isn’t that big a deal in the end. Again my sincere thanks to each of you. Cheers Simie

 

[Soulshine2]

Greetings Brewers. I have a single tier 3 natural gas burner system with two march pumps for transferring my hot liquor and another for wort to boil kettle. My problem is how to easily control the amount of wort going from the mash tun into the boil kettle. I use a march pump and a 1/2 in ball valve, but for the whole hour of collecting wort we have to constantly adjust the ball valve so we don't sparge to fast or to slow. Anyone know of a simple way to keep the wort to the kettle flowing at a constant rate? say 1 qt a minute?

Thanks in advance fellow brewers
Simie

Easy fix, don't fly sparge. Batch sparge instead. Once you've mashed in at the right temperature and volume, time,got your conversion , youre just rinsing the sugars off the grist anyway- which by definition , is what sparging is.
http://brewwiki.com/index.php/Sparging
Dump the wort to your kettle , rinse and repeat .

 

[millsbrew]

I had the same issue. Switched to the blichmann rip tide pumps and they are much easier to have on the same rate (or close enough that only tweak once or twice during my sparge). With the March pumps I was constantly messing with each ball valve for the whole 45 min sparge.