129 replies to this topic

[BlKtRe]

1. When I actually brew, I must always use the pump with the HLT to limit stratification. After the water hit the set point, the temperature drifter another 5 degrees due to the placement of the temp sensor at the periphery of the HLT. I don't think a pump will completely reduce the delay, but if I can anticipate it, I can set the temperature controller to a degree or two below my actual desired temp. I'll have to play around with this though.

 

 

 

I added a return valve thats setup like a whirlpool arm in the BK to my HLT. I have the RTD on the out valve and monitor the mix there. You will be surprised how much stratification you will actually get. I whirlpool my strike/sparge water until I see water moving in rotation over the element. I've got the pump speed and HLT/MT(RIMS) PID's dialed in pretty good against each other. 

[ChefLamont]

I think the best thing to do with an electric brew system is to invite your friends over to drink the beer it makes. 

[gnef]

I added a return valve thats setup like a whirlpool arm in the BK to my HLT. I have the RTD on the out valve and monitor the mix there. You will be surprised how much stratification you will actually get. I whirlpool my strike/sparge water until I see water moving in rotation over the element. I've got the pump speed and HLT/MT(RIMS) PID's dialed in pretty good against each other. 

Yea, I anticipated some stratification, and already installed a return port at the very top, bought more silicone tubing, and have it drape into the HLT. I already had the hole cut in the HLT for the temperature sensor (It was originally for a sight glass, but I never used it, and then I set it up with my old temperature probes when I was on propane, and it happens to be the right size for the temperature sensor for the controller), so I can't have it on the outflow. The only way I would be able to do that is to change the fitting to a bulkhead with a 90 inside the HLT, and then a Tee with the temperature sensor on one side, and a new valve on the other. I'll think about it more to see if changing that port around would be worth it (I should have all the fittings on hand, and if I don't, Amazon has stainless fittings for very reasonable prices).

 

I think the best thing to do with an electric brew system is to invite your friends over to drink the beer it makes. 

Ha! I would invite you over more often if I thought you had the time! (are you still really busy?)

 

That is one thing I thought of though - my limiting factor has been time, which moving to electric helps to alleviate, which should allow me to brew more often. This means I will have an even greater glut of beer, and I will be moving through grain faster, and grain is getting more expensive! I wish for the days back when candian 2-row was less than $30 a sack with shipping! 

[BlKtRe]

I knocked off a good 2 hrs on a 10g batch switching to electric and that includes cleaning of elements and everything put away clean.

[ChefLamont]

I cant remember if you told me or not, but will there be a timer function on the HLT? That can save a lot of time.  As you may remember, I like to brew in the morning.  If I could fill the HLT the night before and set a timer and get up to ready strike water, that alone would knock off 30 minutes to an hour.

[HVB]

I cant remember if you told me or not, but will there be a timer function on the HLT? That can save a lot of time.  As you may remember, I like to brew in the morning.  If I could fill the HLT the night before and set a timer and get up to ready strike water, that alone would knock off 30 minutes to an hour.

I have all the parts sitting in my brew room to add that to mine.  Just have not done it yet.  I plan to have a selector switch for manual or automatic and a DIN mounted timer.

[gnef]

I cant remember if you told me or not, but will there be a timer function on the HLT? That can save a lot of time.  As you may remember, I like to brew in the morning.  If I could fill the HLT the night before and set a timer and get up to ready strike water, that alone would knock off 30 minutes to an hour.

I did not install one. The plan for me to save time is to actually start at night, mash overnight, then do the boil in the morning. Being able to split the brew day is the biggest advantage of going electric for me.

I knocked off a good 2 hrs on a 10g batch switching to electric and that includes cleaning of elements and everything put away clean.

What is your cleaning method/system? What have you found to be the best for cleaning the element?

 

I am undecided about whether to remove the element each time for cleaning, or to try to clean it in the kettle, or to try to do a CIP type of system.

[djinkc]

I cant remember if you told me or not, but will there be a timer function on the HLT? That can save a lot of time.  As you may remember, I like to brew in the morning.  If I could fill the HLT the night before and set a timer and get up to ready strike water, that alone would knock off 30 minutes to an hour.

 

I have a Ranco firing the SSR for the EHLT.  When I prep the day before a garden variety lamp timer turns on the Ranco around 5:00AM.

[gnef]

Well, I've made more progress, and have finished the control panels and all electrical as far I can tell. Tonight I silver soldered the boil kettle. I wasn't sure if I had enough solder left, but I tried anyway, and it was just enough. I did a quick leak test, and it looked good. I also did a boil test using the stilldragon controller, and it worked quite well. This also helped me test the vent hood and condensation. The vent hood worked well, though it didn't capture 100% of the steam, it was more than enough in my mind. There was definitely condensation dripping, and I setup a tupperware container zip tied underneath the fan to catch it.

 

The problem that I I found was with the temperature controller on the HLT. I did a longer test and compared temperatures with known good digital thermometers. At first I thought the controller or probe was bad as it was around 20 degrees too low. After moving things around and testing the probe directly in the water, I came to realize that the small size of the temperature probe was causing issues. All my other temperature probes have longer metal probes that measure at the tip, so it is further in. The probe on this controller is really short, so it doesn't go in very far, and I think it was averaging the temperature of the water with the fitting that it was in. So, now I'll need to get a thermowell so that I can get the probe further in to the water itself to get a good reading.

 

Other than that, everything seems to be working pretty well. I also used the pump while plugged in to the wall switch, and it worked well.

 

The stainless valves should be coming on Monday, so I may start the plumbing then, and I also need to go to home depot to figure out the best piping to go from the sink to the waste pump. 

 

Things are looking pretty good so far though!

[gnef]

I thought I'd update with some photos:

 

I've put the sink where I want it, though I haven't plumbed it yet:

You can also see shelves I just built along the wall which will house most of my coffee roasting equipment. I have some wall control metal pegboard that I will mount immediately to the left of the shelves which I will use for small brewing items, and then the three valves in the picture below will be directly beneath the metal pegboard, and then the water filter housing will be mounted on the wall to the left of the valves beneath the metal pegboard (I know this may be hard to visualize, but once I have everything up, it will make more sense).

 

I've also started sweating some copper:

 

I'm going to put street elbows on the camlock and garden hose connectors, as this will be against the wall, and I realized that it would be a pain to try to connect and disconnect hoses if they are as they are in the picture.

 

I also received the thermowell today, and installed it. I haven't done a leak test yet, but I plan on doing that soon, and then retesting the temperature reading. I plan on using thermal grease on the inside of the thermowell with the temperature sensor, so I hope it transfers heat well and gives a good reading.

[gnef]

I installed the thermowell, using thermal grease on the inside. There is still drift at lower temperatures, but I noticed that once I got to over 160F, the drift was right around 1F, so I am not worried about it at all:

 

I also received the metal pegboard today, and started working on more of the copper sweating for the cold and hot water lines:

 

At this point, all I have left is to connect my water lines to the mainlines, check for leaks (I really hope I don't have to fix any leaks at this point...), and then plumb the drain for the sink, and connect the water lines for the sink. I hope to have some time at home to work on those things, but we'll see how life goes.

 

I hope to be able to do a wet run through with just water to see how things flow, and then soon after to do a 5 gallon batch as a first real test. 

[gnef]

Well, I am nearly done now!

 

The hot water lines worked well with no leaks. The cold water lines that were soldered also worked great with no leaks.

 

The problem was with the stainless valves I bought inexpensively from China. I couldn't get them to seal well, and I even saw one weeping water through the wall as if it were sintered and porous.

 

Needless to say, I will be removing those valves, and replacing them with lead free brass solder valves. There will be threads after the valves, but since they won't be under constant pressure, I am not worried about them if they eventually leak a small amount. I hope to take care of that last bit of business tonight, and then start with the tests just with water but as if I am making beer.

[djinkc]

Looks good so far.  You'll be happy when it's done.  We want to move in the next year or less.  I'm not looking forward to setting it up again.

[gnef]

Looks good so far.  You'll be happy when it's done.  We want to move in the next year or less.  I'm not looking forward to setting it up again.

I don't want to think about moving. I really hope to die in this house. Haha.

 

I hope to finish up the repairs tonight and get some tests going.

[3rd party JKor]

I love the fold down mill.  That's a great idea!

[gnef]

I love the fold down mill.  That's a great idea!

Thanks! It was the best that I could figure for my needs. I needed to move it from its previous spot to make room for the upright freezer that was in the way of this build, and I didn't have any other good spot for it. I realized having it on the wall would make milling easier, and I could just fold it up when not needed, and it would be out of the way.

 

Overall, I think the setup is exactly as I wanted, and I am very pleased with it so far. I will know more after brewing on it, and I may tweak some things as I go, but I won't know until i start working with the setup.

 

How concerned should I be with scorching the wort using these high density elements?

 

I am actually thinking of doing a test with the first batch by making a cream ale, and using 100% of the boil element to get up to a boil. I figure this style would be the most telling if scorching were an issue, and give me a better idea of how aggressive I can be on the power.

 

Also, having all the energy go into heating the liquid really makes the HLT get up to temp fast! I couldn't believe how quickly it was able to get up to different temperatures.

[HVB]

I remember a test done on hbt with different elements and no scorching. I brewed for years with a folded 5500w element from Lowes without issue and some of those beers were light and low hopped where I think I would have tasted a scorching issue.

[gnef]

I remember a test done on hbt with different elements and no scorching. I brewed for years with a folded 5500w element from Lowes without issue and some of those beers were light and low hopped where I think I would have tasted a scorching issue.

That is great to hear! I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to utilize the full power of the element. I think I'll still do the test with the cream ale to see how things go on my system, but you have given me hope that it will be ok!

[gnef]

Well, I've finished the first batch. I decided to keep it simple with a 5 gallon batch of cream ale. I actually don't really like the style that much, but it is a simple and cheap one to start with just in case if I need to dump it!

 

Also, even after feedback about not to worry about scorching, I wanted to do my own test to make sure to remove any lingering doubts.

 

I started last night to heat the strike, mill, mash in, and fill the HLT with the sparge water. All of that from turning the first valve to putting up the mash paddle was just at 30 minutes.

 

Then, today, I started heating the sparge water that was already filled in the HLT, vorlaufed, and then transfered to the BK, sparged, then started the boil. Every heating step essentially took around 15 minutes, which was pretty amazing. It took 15 minutes to heat the sparge water to 185F, and then just over 15 minutes to get to boiling.

 

I timed the work I did today, and from switching on the HLT to turning off the light after cleaning was 2 hours 10 minutes. I started cleaning at around 1 hour and 46 minutes to my recollection, so cleaning took a very long time today, and I did make a mess of it. This is when I really wish I had a floor drain, and I could just wash everything down there. I had to use a towel at the end to wipe up some of the mess I made.

 

So total time that I had to be there was right around 2 hours and 40 minutes, which astounds me, especially given that I did make a number of mistakes. This really opens some possibilities for me in terms of being able to brew around my family schedule. I think I'll be able to manage it so that in the future after getting home from work, I'll be able to spend the 30 minutes to mash in and get the sparge water ready, and then after the kids are put to bed, I do the rest of the brew day in two hours.

 

The first mistake I made was last night. I started milling, and I had forgotten to remove the lid to the mash tun, and was milling onto the lid. Haha. I couldn't believe I did that. When I was brewing with propane outdoors, I had to wheel the mill out, and would always remove the lid to the mash tun before putting it under the mill, so I had forgotten to remove the lid after I had just put the mill down from the wall.

 

I also forgot to close the valve after mashing in, and there was some backflow before I caught it.

 

While cleaning, I had forgotten where I had put the exit tubing from the pump, and I started pumping leftover wort all over the table. At one point, the silicone tubing also slipped out of the fermenter while filling, but I was right there, so that wasn't too big of a mess.

 

Part of the cleaning issue is that I am trying to get everything over to the sink. I am wondering if I need to have a more permanent plumbing setup to make this easier - mounting tubing on the wall with camlock fittings, with tubing routed up the wall, across the joists, and down to the sink. Now that I am thinking more about it, I could get more copper pipe, mount it to the wall, with a camlock by the brew stand, and a simple exit to the sink, maybe some tubing for the last bit so that I don't have a copper pipe jutting into the sink area.

 

Man, it looks like a mess when I am chilling though, I have a small pot that I use to recirculate star san through the dual counterflow while I am in the boil. I have the march pump hooked up, I have a hose coming from the wall for the first chilling stage, with another hose going to the sink to drain the hose water coming out of the chiller, then I also have a sump pump in a bucket of ice water with a hose going in to the second stage, and another hose recirculating back into the bucket. Trying to disconnect these and purge out the liquid at the end took me a while to figure out to minimize spilling, and even then there was a lot of water on the ground at the end. Haha.

 

[HVB]

Always a learning curve, at least it all works.

Oh, nice fermenter