TETB new mash/sparge setup

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Posting this partly for my own reference and partly in case it's of interest to anyone else.

With my old setup I used to sparge from the Burco by hoisting it up. But that:

• was a bit of a faff
• was probably an accident waiting to happen, and
• meant I couldn't start heating for the boil until all the sparge had run through.

So here's the new setup (I've removed the insulating jackets so it's easier to see what's going on):

Mode	Valve A	Valve B	Valve C	Valve D
HERMS	SHUT	SHUT	OPEN	SHUT
Fly Sparge	OPEN	Part OPEN	SHUT	Part OPEN

So in practice, I heat the sparge water to about 70 deg C and then transfer it to the HLT just before sparging; then I turn the kettle up and let the heat exchanger put the last few degrees on it before it goes into the sparge head.

I'm thinking I could also dump some sodium percarbonate in after the grain basket has come out and do a bit of clean-in-place.

PS: The sharp-eyed may notice that valve 'B' is in a slightly different place in the photo than in the schematic. I'm still undecided which is the better option :-)

 

[AnimatedGIF]

I never cease to be amazed at your projects @The-Engineer-That-Brews !

 

[dtashmore]

thanks for the link, interesting.
do you have any android experience? I ask as I started building a tilt hydrometer last year but stalled at the android app stage as I realized it was going to take me some work to learn it, I have put it on the back shelf until I am short of other things to do, the physical device is mostly finished just the android application with graphical display to do. I have implemented the project with a pic16f886 surface mount device on a board made at pcbway, a small gyroscope module and a bluetooth 5 module, no maths on board as this is better done in the android application, just the gyroscope reading and careful power control on the pic.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

do you have any android experience?

No, sorry I’m afraid not: I’m an Apple developer.
I built a tilt hydrometer too last year, and also another similar design; both using Bluetooth Low Energy. However I decided not to progress them for the time being because I really prefer just taking a hydrometer sample :-)