BrewZilla 4 - maintaining temperature

[Leard]

I am utterly baffled by the number of people that seem to have had an easy time with setting their PID and getting consistent temperatures during mash. I've had nothing but an absolute nightmare on every brew I've done. I played around with the PID and ended up setting numbers way lower than I've noticed anybody else use, and I still kept overshooting my temperature by at least 0.5C on water only. And that doesn't matter because as soon as I start brewing with it, it just get insanely out of whack temperatures. A 66C brew is allowed to plummet to 61C on the BT thermo, but be 70C+ on the BZ internal thermo. This obviously then means that the whole thing ends up massively overly compensating and overshooting past my target temperature to 69C. What the **** am I supposed to do? How are so many people able to achieve consistent temperatures?

My PID settings are:
P: 0.355
I: 0.0020
D: 0

I swear to go I had an easier time on my old Peco boiler than I have had with this £450 piece of ****.

 

[tondy79]

Were you monitoring the temperature at the top and bottom of your mash with the peco?

I get decent results by running the pump and stirring frequently for the first 10-15 minutes or so after mashing in to circulate the liquid around and get to a somewhat consistent temperature throughout the vessel as quickly as possible, and once that temperature parity between the BT thermometer and the built in thermometer is reached then everything tends to be fairly smooth (though I have had to manage problems on occasion).

When I brew with a friend of mine on his Klarstein we rely on the built in temp and tend to have an "out of sight out of mind" approach to the temperature elsewhere in the vessel, which I have to say seems more relaxing (but not necessarily more accurate!)

For overshoot, a half degree wouldn't phase me but perhaps this is a bad attitude on my part!

 

[Twostage]

I am utterly baffled by the number of people that seem to have had an easy time with setting their PID and getting consistent temperatures during mash. I've had nothing but an absolute nightmare on every brew I've done. I played around with the PID and ended up setting numbers way lower than I've noticed anybody else use, and I still kept overshooting my temperature by at least 0.5C on water only. And that doesn't matter because as soon as I start brewing with it, it just get insanely out of whack temperatures. A 66C brew is allowed to plummet to 61C on the BT thermo, but be 70C+ on the BZ internal thermo. This obviously then means that the whole thing ends up massively overly compensating and overshooting past my target temperature to 69C. What the **** am I supposed to do? How are so many people able to achieve consistent temperatures?

My PID settings are:
P: 0.355
I: 0.0020
D: 0

I swear to go I had an easier time on my old Peco boiler than I have had with this £450 piece of ****.

What have you got the hysteresis setting at ? Mine is 0.3.

What batch size ?

Do you have the pump on ?

 

[dcbrookes]

I swear to go I had an easier time on my old Peco boiler than I have had with this £450 piece of ****.

The BZ4 is not a piece or ordure as you say, but it does seem to have a steep learning curve. I have done well over 50 brews on mine, and this is what I do.

1 Turn off the PID and forget about it - it is more trouble than it is worth.
2 Use the insulating jacket.
3 Make sure your strike water is at the correct temperature (about 5C above desired mash temperature).
4 After doughing in, leave everything for ten minutes, switch to the BT thermometer and turn the power down to 600W.
5 After ten minutes give the mash a good stir and begin circulating, gently at first (I use a home made manifold to avoid chanelling).
6 Gradually increase re-circulation volume as the mash viscosity changes.

Using this method I get my mash temperature consistently within half a degree and I normally get efficiency of 85%.

 

[tondy79]

The BZ4 is not a piece or ordure as you say, but it does seem to have a steep learning curve. I have done well over 50 brews on mine, and this is what I do.

1 Turn off the PID and forget about it - it is more trouble than it is worth.

Always interesting to read how others are using the system, might give your process a go to see how I like it!

What do you have your hysteresis set to?

Cheers!

 

[dcbrookes]

What do you have your hysteresis set to?

0.3C

 

[Twostage]

Used mine yesterday, heat 100%, PID on, settings similar to the above, pump 100%. It stayed within hysteresis.

One thought that occurs is does your wort from the recirculator flow close to the temperature probe ?