new system build and need input

[allclene]

Nice Idea. I was talking to a friend of mine and he kinda convinced me to turn it into a still for destilling water etc.

 

[luhrks]

You said your sight is acrylic but I hope you mistyped. It has a pretty low melting point compared to polycarbonate.

What he said. It'll end badly quickly. I'm upgrading to Borosilicate on mine simply due to heat issues.

On your sized rig with proper shielding, Poly shouldn't be an issue.

 

[allclene]

I got the tubing online not sure exactly what they are can't remember it was a while ago. I have to say though, I have ran the rig several times from start to finish and they have not had a problem yet. No leaks, melting, discoloring or anything. Were are you getting the borosilicate tubing? (just in case they do fall apart)

 

[luhrks]

For you there's a few places that sell the correct size glass kit (along with shield).

For my system I'm having to go to a glass blowing supply to get a tube long enough and then fabricate the shield.

 

[allclene]

After using the rig to brew, I have come to the conclusion that I needed a bypass valve on the filter for use with the chiller and for cleanout since the filter reduces water flow quite significantly. Here is the upgrade.

 

[allclene]

Well brewed a batch in this thing and it went flawlessly. The only problem I had was the sparge time was off a little so I adjusted the flow rate in the calibration and fixed that. Other than that even cleanup was a breeze.

 

[mrklueber]

Congrats on the brew and brew rig!! Looks impressive.

 

[allclene]

thanks

 

[allclene]

Brewing a batch of peach ale on this thing today and realized the hopper setup does not allow me to put a lid on the BK. Due to that it keeps flash boiling a little out every now and then down the side of the kettle. So I think I will not use the hopper any more and just put them in bags and drop in so I can put a lid on the thing and keep the boil issues down. The other batches I brewed I used the bags and lid method and no boil splashed out onto my burners. Going back to that method will save me a lot of cleanup!

 

[BrewingChemist]

Brewing a batch of peach ale on this thing today and realized the hopper setup does not allow me to put a lid on the BK. Due to that it keeps flash boiling a little out every now and then down the side of the kettle. So I think I will not use the hopper any more and just put them in bags and drop in so I can put a lid on the thing and keep the boil issues down. The other batches I brewed I used the bags and lid method and no boil splashed out onto my burners. Going back to that method will save me a lot of cleanup!

you really don't want to have a lid on your BK! for 1 reason, you want to boil off liquid; for another, you want to be able to boil off DMS!

 

[allclene]

I know. I just want to use it to stop boil over. However figured out the problem was beersmith when I reloaded my PC after changing the hard drive beersmith reset my equipment profile to some weird settings so it calculated that I should have 17.3 gallons in BK after sparge! fixed that problem so it should be fine next batch I do and hopefully the over boil will be a thing of the past. I also wasn't too impressed with the hop bag it kept spinning into a knot because of the constant circulation of the wort so using bags with the hops prefilled and just dropping them in seems an easier process.

 

[allclene]

well I did an upgrade to my software to include a more flexible sparge step. Now instead of emptying the MT at the same time transferring HLT to the MT, it will empty the MT into the boil kettle then empty the HLT into the MT and circulate the MT for a specified time then empty it into the boil kettle so I have a more complete wash of the grains. Actually trying it out on a brew as we speak so here's the fingers crossed that I get more efficiency out of this new setup.