MaltAndMayhem
Member
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2021
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- 18
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- 7
I recently conerted my garage brewery to a 3 vessel HERMS. I've produced three beers on it so far, of which two turned out good but the last turned out quite horrible. Not sure what to pin that on, could be excessive sparging(with too heavy flow), possible infection from fermentation bucket(it does not seem that way tho) or severe overcarbonation(I had it on 1 bar at 20 degrees, due to a regulator fault).
I set up the vessels so that each of the three vessels have their separate pump. Boil kettle and hlt kettle both have Topsflo TD5 pumps, Mash tun also has TD5 pump but with pwm control, meaning I can control the flow of it. Brilliant. I usually recirculate the entire mash, just to keep the temperature in the mash tun up to speed. I see this is not really necessary, as the temperature will stay remarkably stable even with it off. When I finish my mash steps as well as the 77 degree step, I transfer the wort to the Boil kettle. When the mash is dried up, I transfer the sparge water from HLT, through the herms coil(same pipes as the mash tun recirculates through) and back into the mash tun. I have a self made hose manifold that "evenly" distributes water in the kettle. Last beer, the failed one, I went a little hard at it and sparged through in only 5-10 minutes. I usually use 30 minutes and take it slow, but the wife was nagging on me to do something so I had to finish up and go to boil quickly..
How do you sparge on a HERMS? I am a bit unsure on how to do it most efficiently. I am on a Brucontrol system and my plan is to incorporate full automation in the future. I am also not sure if the last beer is ruined by tannines, since the HLT pump is spraying it pretty heavily when sparging. I'm attaching smaller hoses and a ball valve to control the flow one of these days.
I set up the vessels so that each of the three vessels have their separate pump. Boil kettle and hlt kettle both have Topsflo TD5 pumps, Mash tun also has TD5 pump but with pwm control, meaning I can control the flow of it. Brilliant. I usually recirculate the entire mash, just to keep the temperature in the mash tun up to speed. I see this is not really necessary, as the temperature will stay remarkably stable even with it off. When I finish my mash steps as well as the 77 degree step, I transfer the wort to the Boil kettle. When the mash is dried up, I transfer the sparge water from HLT, through the herms coil(same pipes as the mash tun recirculates through) and back into the mash tun. I have a self made hose manifold that "evenly" distributes water in the kettle. Last beer, the failed one, I went a little hard at it and sparged through in only 5-10 minutes. I usually use 30 minutes and take it slow, but the wife was nagging on me to do something so I had to finish up and go to boil quickly..
How do you sparge on a HERMS? I am a bit unsure on how to do it most efficiently. I am on a Brucontrol system and my plan is to incorporate full automation in the future. I am also not sure if the last beer is ruined by tannines, since the HLT pump is spraying it pretty heavily when sparging. I'm attaching smaller hoses and a ball valve to control the flow one of these days.