Upgrading to HERMS system

[geetee]

Hi

I'm new to this forum and after brewing small scale (25 litre batches ) I want to move up to approx. 50 litres and at the same time include some more control. At the moment everything is done manually with plastic .

I am going to buy 80 litre Thermpot for conversion with a 100litre boiler. I am used to making boilers, cutting holes and putting taps and elements in but have no knowledge of HERMS. I thought I might ask a few questions and hopefully you can answer or point me in the right direction.

1 Does HERMS make a big difference to quality of wort and beer , is it quicker or easier?

2 How does HERMS affect sparging, assume that when the mash is complete you turn of the recirculation and add hot liquor to mash out as usual? I usually batch sparge and would probably continue if this is OK?

3 What size heating coil would I need and what speed to recirculate? I was thinking a 10 meter x 10mm coil in a small 5-6 litre stainless vessel with built in Backer element. Is this about right or would it need to be longer?

Sorry if this has all been covered a few times but I am itching to get going and would appreciate a few links to help

 

[bobsbeer]

Welcome. : I can't answer your questions but I am sure someone will be along soon.

 

[Cononthebarber]

Hey there and welcome to the forum :

I can hopefully answer some of your questions...

1 Does HERMS make a big difference to quality of wort and beer , is it quicker or easier?

You won't notice a huge difference in the quality of wort or beer (except maybe a slight improvement in mash efficiency) but what you will achieve is a much higher level of consistency in your brews.

2 How does HERMS affect sparging, assume that when the mash is complete you turn of the recirculation and add hot liquor to mash out as usual? I usually batch sparge and would probably continue if this is OK?

When sparging I fly sparge by swapping the HERMS out, to feed into my boiler and at the same time running the sparge liquor from my HLT through a sparge arm into the MT. I do it this way as I find it the easiest and quickest way of sparging. You will however have no issues with batch sparging if thats what you want to do though :)

3 What size heating coil would I need and what speed to recirculate? I was thinking a 10 meter x 10mm coil in a small 5-6 litre stainless vessel with built in Backer element. Is this about right or would it need to be longer?

I have an 8mm copper coil which is around 4/5 metres recirculating through an ASDA kettle (which is controlled by my PID) thats the cheap and "no frills" way! (as per THIS post here) :lol: I think though that the length of coil needs to be in ratio to the power of your pump (i.e. the longer the coil, the harder the pump will need to work to get the wort through) you will need to consider this. My setup does 25 litre batches so it makes sense in my head that double the length of coil would suit yours of 50 litres...?

Anyway hope thats of some help and I'm sure someone else will be along in a bit to add their thoughts as well, good luck with the build :thumb:

 

[Vossy1]

Moved to this section as a query about HERMS :thumb:

 

[geetee]

Thanks Guys

I am starting to gather parts for the build and will go with 20 mtr HERMS Coil.

I still intend to batch sparge and will work this out once I have put it all together. I have two weeks holiday in August and plenty to do!

Geetee

 

[pittsy]

Hi geetee , i have recently put together my herms system . I also batch sparge and have no problems using my herms . i fine it gives me better control over temps and because i do step temp mashes it makes things so much easier while being able to mash in with the correct water to grain ratio ( before i was step infusion , started thick mash and ended up thin mash ) even though i use gas and have to manually control the heat it is very easy .
Here's a diagram of mine

 

[geetee]

pitsy

I was inspired by a visit to a brewer in Paris. Brasseirie de la Goute d'or. He makes 4 types of beer for bottling with a proper commercial rig and we chatted about how he started. He reckons that his biggest problem was consistency from small to large scale brewing so I thought it was time to ditch the plastic buckets and start some serious brewing. Eventually I would like to be (semi) commercial if its still viable in 2 years time.

Its frightening when you see some of these big HERMS setups with very detailed explanations so it was good to see your schematic, this I could understand. Now its just a question of how big, how much and how long to build it . Oh and where, nearly forgot!