Hey, they made my lauter tun! Orange and round. Not blue, sorry!
Cool which one do you like the most? i have a grainfather a friend gave to me and a mash and boil, i personally do not like these systems cause i cannot get a good boil
Zymatic is my first choice. I love the GF but after the mash I pump the wort to my converted keg and boil there. I’ve used the 240V GF and it boils really fast
Amen! Having sacks of both Pale malt and Pils Malt in your brewery is an important element of consistent homebrewing. Those are typically the major components in most brews and understanding how they respond in your system is helpful.
I went to BIAB and really never looked back until recently. I like to recirc with a Herms setup, so I broke down and ordered the SSInfusion Mash tun because I wanted the dual manometer to visually see the differential pressure. Overkill? Maybe, but I can afford it and my wife knows how much this hobby means to me. She also hears from the wives of my friends how much they spend on golf. I’m a piker compared to them!
After thinking about what system i wanna get, i made a total 180, im gonna get a gravity brew stand like a top tier and frankenstein it up with gear i already own. The thought of having a electric system was compelling but then i thought, i need a electrician, i need this, i need that, forget that, just going old school. i have a bunch of cool gear lying around like a ss infusion mash tun, ss 10 gallon kettle which is gonna become a HLT, all i need to purchase for this project is a boil kettle and that will be a 16 gallon bayou for 99 bucks and the stand its self, im gonna save 5-6 grand, i might add a 120v RIMS heating element later on which will be the extent of the electric in my brew house
Smart move
I have a friend that went over to RIMS because the ramptime with HERMS was not satisfactory for him. You can easily add that for a few bucks more, if you want. Cheers!
I’m not considering switching to either but I’m curious… what kind of ramp times are you guys able to get with RIMS and HERMS? (Direct fired, I have to watch it very closely to avoid exceeding my target of 2-3°F/min.) Intuition tells me ramp times would be a drawback to either system, at least from my perspective.
With 4500w, I’m typically ramping the circulating wort to the next temp step instantly. Of course, that means that there is a wave of hotter wort descending through the mash bed and the overall wort temp doesn’t reach my target for another 5 to 10 minutes. But that doesn’t really matter. It just means that some of the wort spent more time at the lower step. The temperature of the wort coming out of the RIMS heater is all that matters.
My RIMS responds very similar to Martin’s system.
How fast do you think it would take a 1650 watt element raise the temp for a step? For example from 148F to mash out? i am thinking about getting a rims package from brew hardware down the line but only if it does not take too long , does having a insulated mash tun make a difference in the speed it heats up?
I have a 1650 ULWD element in a tube and controller from Bobby. RIMS Package with TC heater and PID controller, prewired and ready to use I am very happy with it though I’ve already replaced the temp probe. However, I haven’t gone straight from 148*F to mash out so I can’t answer your question. I do multiple incremental steps which the system handles very quickly.
You didn’t specify your batch size, but if you have 8 gallons of water and 13 lbs of grain, a 1650 Watt element would give you 1.3 F/min rise as the maximum. Any losses or inefficiencies would lower this, and yes, insulation helps reduce those losses. That means that the time to go from 148 F to 168 F would be 15 minutes or longer.
I presume HERMS would be noticeably slower? I have a feeling my assumptions have been correct. “Upgrading” to any such system, given ramp times, setup, and cleanup of the various additional valves, tubes, elements, etc. (and all cleaning, for that matter, of an integrated system being pushed back to the end of the day, rather than each piece of no-moving-parts equipment being hosed down step by step as I go) could easily add a couple of hours or more to my brew day, and a lot more tedious tasks as well. I really fail to see the appeal. But I’m not other people. Oh wait, is the appeal getting rid of those annoying piles of money lying around in the way? Again, I’m not other people. That’s just how I see it.
Can’t speak to the HERMS system. My RIMS tube and element takes about a minute to clean. The pump takes about ten minutes because I completely disassemble it after ever brewday but I usually do it the next morning. I installed quick disassemble valves so they take a couple minutes. Other than that it the same Brew Bag, MLT, BK, and other equipment that I used when single infusion mashing so there’s no increase in cleaning time there.
Edited to replace “batch sparge” with the more accurate “single infusion mashing”.
That’s cool. Of course you have kind of a hybrid system, not like some of the rack-type or all-in-one, full-auto systems. The biggest difference between you and me is really just how we heat the mash. You show there’s a continuum of possibilities between cheap-and-easy Denny and The Beerery (not judging either one.) We all fall comfortably at different points on it. All just stuff worth considering in context of this thread.
I have no actual experience with either RIMS or HERMS systems, but I believe you are correct. The temperature rise calculation for a RIMS system is pretty straightforward, based on thermal mass and power. A HERMS system is more complicated, but my physical intuition tells me that it would almost certainly be slower because you have an additional mass of water to heat and you have the inefficiency of the heat exchanger to deal with.
Yes, the Herms is slower than the Rims, evidently, for the reasons cited. I measure my temp at the return to the mash by a Tee at the lid with a digital probe. What I have gone to is a manual step mash along the Hochkurz range, just bumping the temp a bit every couple minutes. I like the results. Otherwise the ramp times were about 10-12 minutes when measured at the center of the mash. Occasionally I will do a hold at single temp, such as 147-149F, and the results are generally okay, but with no mash out, I see a little difference in head retention.