100L HERMS Design - Your comments please

[BrewStew]

2 questions, looking at the design, should the water in side be at the top, I understood it's better in at the bottom and out at the top, or doesn't it matter?

The design of this is supposed to be a sort of mobile design. as i rent at the moment i want to be able to have it an all in one system without having to rely on fixing things to walls or have stuff hanging ie i dont want permanent wall fixings. I thought about having a hose connector on the system "board" so i can just plug my garden hose to fill the liquor tank, and later plug that same hose into the chiller, then pack the hose away type thing

edit i just reread your question... having the "out" at the top would need a bit of syphoning to prime the pumps. so i'm having it come out of the bottom so the liquid just falls into the pump to self prime

Also when batch sparging using Hermes, what's the method? After the completion of the mash, I assume all of the heated sparge liquer goes into the mash tun at once and then recirdec. via the Hermes system. At what stage do you divert then to the fermenter? Are you looking for clarity of the wort and taking hydro. readings whilst the wort is circulating?

Your correct about the batch sparge via the herms stepping up the mash temp as you which as set intervals, then when it's done it's time simply switch the valve to the boiler without turning the pump off and voila i suppose you could add a bit of clear piping on the return line so you can see when it's clear, but after all that recircing something would have to be pretty wrong if it wasn't clear by then. I've got two pumps on that design because i like fly sparging, so i'd need one to pump the liquor in and one to pump the wort to the boiler, incase you were wondering

Sorry more than 2 questions.

np

 

[jonnybeer]

Gravity fed to prime the pump, obvious really, should have looked a bit harder.So what are you looking to gain from using Herms? And why not hard plumb the i.c. surley it's no different to plunging it in the kettle 15 mins. before the end of the boil.

I'm asking because i've all the kit to upgrade to 10g brews and only want to do it the once.

Hope you don't mind.

J.B.

 

[BrewStew]

Gravity fed to prime the pump, obvious really, should have looked a bit harder.So what are you looking to gain from using Herms? And why not hard plumb the i.c. surley it's no different to plunging it in the kettle 15 mins. before the end of the boil.

i'm not really looking to gain anything, but to see how it affects the beer. if there's an improvement, then that's just a beneficial side-effect of my tinkering i'm the sciency type, plus i love tinkering and fabricating new things :)

as for hard plumbing the IC. that was my original plan, but if i want to minimise the risk of the verdigris i figured i'd have to make that in stainless steel... which would be more costly than a plate chiller, so aborted the idea.

I'm asking because i've all the kit to upgrade to 10g brews and only want to do it the once.

Hope you don't mind.

J.B.

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: <- that's me green with envy ask away though... if you've already got the kit, but are still tryna work out how you want to set up, i'll try my best to answer and if i cant, i'm sure someone else will be along to help out

 

[jonnybeer]

Thanks for the replys,

j.b.