Question on HERMS

[StevieDS]

I've just been doing a little research on herms and have a question.

It may be a silly question and I may be missing something obvious but is there any reason why I couldn't use my immersion chiller as the coil in the herms system if I stick it in the hlt?

 

[dennisdk2000]

You will want to be able to maintain a certain temperature in the mash tun, whilst towards the end of the mash, you'll need your HLT for heating your sparge water. Having said that, there are systems that do exactly as you suggest, e.g. The Electric Brewery. Personally, I'd go for a dedicated heat exchanger, but then I'm hardly an expert on this!

Dennis

 

[brewtim]

I've just been doing a little research on herms and have a question.

It may be a silly question and I may be missing something obvious but is there any reason why I couldn't use my immersion chiller as the coil in the herms system if I stick it in the hlt?

I'm sure it will work, after all it is how a HERMS coil works, try it with water first, see if you can maintain mash temps.

:thumb:

 

[evanvine]

The smaller the volume of water in the HERMS the more responsive it will be.
It takes a lot longer to alter the temp of 20 litres than it does with 2 litres!

 

[StevieDS]

Ok so basically it would work but not really ideal cos of the large water volume :hmm:
More copper pipe being ordered soon then

 

[pittsy]

Ok so basically it would work but not really ideal cos of the large water volume :hmm:
More copper pipe being ordered soon then

Even if volume wasn't an issue and all was well it would be a pain to keep messing about with it and seeing as making a herms pot (if on gas ) is very easy . Once built it's an easy brew day without hassle (mostly ) , using your hlt would create new grief every brew day that ain't there now (pissing about lifting it in and connecting to the wort etc then removing and so on imo.

 

[craigite]

I tried pumping wort through a coil in the HTL a few years ago and it did allow the stabilisation of mash temperature, however it did not allow for fine tuning or easy raising of mash temperature due to the difficulty in raising the temp of the HLT quickly.
I then built a smaller coil and put i into a budget kettle and that worked so well I still use to to this day. I can maintain temperature to within 0.5°C and can raise the mash temp by 1°C per minute. I would recommend the budget ketle wethod. :thumb:
Also, it freed up the HTL so I could have the sparge water ready without having to wait for mash to finish.

 

[evanvine]

Exactly my point craigite, thanks for the back up!