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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Re: HERMS: Liquid Return ("Craig S. Cottingham")
  RE: HERMS: Liquid Return ("David Houseman")
  Re: Dumb HERMS Question (Pete Limosani)
  Denaturing Enzymes with HERMS (Rick) Theiner" <rickdude@tds.net>
  Moving on up... ("Pat Babcock")
  Corny O-rings ("LANCE HARBISON")


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Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:57:58 -0500
From: "Craig S. Cottingham" <craig.cottingham at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: HERMS: Liquid Return

On Aug 13, 2008, at 09:03, "Dave Larsen" <hunahpu at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been doing some research about how to return the liquid from the
> HLT to the mash tun.  Some people use a manifold.  Some people use
> something similar to a sparge arm.  Whatever you use, it seems to me
> that you do not want to splash the liquid back into the mash tun, or
> risk HSA.  The way that I liked the best was simply to lay the return
> hose on top of the mash.   I guess there is the risk of channeling
> that way.  What way is best?  How do you get the liquid back to the
> mash tun without HSA or channeling?


I remember reading something three or four years ago about a RIMS  
that recirculated backwards. The heated wort was pumped in the  
*bottom* of the mash tun, and picked up by a manifold resting on  
*top* of the grain bed. There's no risk of setting the grain bed, but  
you do have to maintain a layer of liquid above it to keep the pump  
from sucking air. I've never tried this myself, but I figure if and  
when I get around to building a RIMS/HERMS, I'll give it a try.

- --
Craig S. Cottingham
BJCP Certified judge from Olathe, KS ([621, 251.1deg] Apparent  
Rennerian)
craig.cottingham at gmail.com



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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:27:44 -0400
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: RE: HERMS: Liquid Return

Dave,

At K-Mart, for ~$5 I bought a 12" perforated pizza pan.   This can lay on 
top of the mash or be suspended slightly above it.  Just run the return to 
the top of the pizza pan and the wort (or sparge water) drips through the 
holes early evenly, but gently.   No channeling.   Easy enough to create a 
jig to hold that at the water level and to hold the return hose in place.

Works like a champ.

Dave Houseman



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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:22:31 -0400
From: Pete Limosani <peteLimo at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Dumb HERMS Question

Dave,
You have received some excellent technical answers on what a PID is and what it 
does. If I may, I'd like to give you a practical answer from a home brewer who 
uses one with his HERMS.

The primary benefit that I get from my PID controller is that it WILL NOT 
overshoot the set temperature. The reason I built my HERMS is that I wanted 
very precise temperature control during mashing and sparging. Two posts back 
you expressed concern about denaturing enzymes. I simply wanted to make sure 
that I could confidently reproduce a recipe. The same grain bill mashed at 151* 
will not produce the same beer when mashed at 153*.

Let's say I want to mash at a steady 153*. Let's also say that after I mash in, 
the mash temp is about 150*. Common wisdom holds that one should add water 
hotter than 153* to bring the temperature up to 153* (the set point in PID 
parlance). When one does that at the beginning of the mash, it's no big deal if
its done to steady the temperature and then the mash is left alone in a well 
insulated tun. However, if your HERMS is constantly dropping 154* (or higher) 
wort on top of the mash in order to keep the set point at 153*, then you really
don't have a 153* mash, do you? What you have then is a stratified mash. That 
is why I did not design my system using the HLT as a heat exchanger--I wasn't 
worried about denaturing enzymes--I just didn't want the wort temperature to 
ever exceed the set point.

I'm not try to spark a HERMS design debate here, but IMHO an HLT with 6 gallons 
(or more) of water in it cannot react as fast as a heat exchanger with one 
gallon of water in it--given the power and heat sources available to most home 
brewers.

My HERMS has an independent heat exchanger. It is a 1.25 gallon paint can with 
30' of 3/8"copper pipe coiled inside. It is filled with water and has a water 
heater element in it. The PID controller turns the water heater element on and 
off. The thermocouple (wort thermostat) that the PID controller relies on for 
temperature input is positioned on the output side of the heat exchanger. If I 
set the set point at 153* the PID controller makes sure the wort leaving the 
heat exchanger is 153*.

In the example above (a mash in temp of 150* and a set point of 153*), my PID 
controller will keep returning 153* wort to the top of the mash, but because 
the whole quantity of wort in the mash circulates every few minutes, it only 
takes a few minutes for the whole mash to reach 153* and stay there for the 
duration. The thermometer on my mash turn is just a few inches from the bottom, 
so I see the temperature stratification disappear in a few minutes. And I never 
stir the mash!

For mash out, I change the set point to 170* and, in about 15 minutes, the 
whole mash is at 170*. It gets to 167* pretty quickly, then takes about as long
to reach 170* from 167* as is did to get from 153* to 167* because the PID 
controller slows down the heat application so that it does not over shoot 170*.
That is the magic of the Process/Integral/Derivative formulas. (It took a few 
minutes to go from 150* to 153* in the last example, but it takes ~7 minutes to
get from 167* to 170* (the same 3* difference) because prior to going from 167*
to 170*, the PID controller added a lot of heat to get from 153* to 167*, so it
really slows it down so it won't over shoot the set point of 170*). A Ranco is 
just not going to do that for you.

For sparging, I set my HLT to about 168* (I do not have exact temp control on 
my mash tun), then I run the sparge liquor through the heat exchanger and the 
PID controller ensures the sparge liquor is exactly 170* when it hits the top 
of the mash. The PID controller ensures that I will never sparge with liquor 
hotter than 170*.

Drawbacks to my PID controller?
My PID controller is programmable. I can program it for a step mash. I can tell
it to hold 128* for 15 minutes, then hold 142* for 15 minutes, then hold 161* 
for 15 minutes, then hold 170* for 10 minutes. The problem I run into is that 
there is a delay between when the wort exiting the heat exchanger reaches the 
set point and when the mash tun reaches the set point. What the PID controller 
really needs is a secondary temperature monitor so that I can tell it, "When 
the heat exchanger output temperature reaches 142* hold it there, but don't 
start counting the 15 minute hold until the secondary input temperature (from 
the mash tun) reaches 142*. So, when I do step mashes, I have to manually set 
the set point, then manually time the rest when the mast tun has fully reached 
the rest temperature.

I love my HERMS and feel disempowered when I brew with others who don't have 
one. Most importantly, in the three years that I've used it, I've brewed better
beer and have been able to very closely reproduce the recipes that really shine.

My PID controller is a Fuji PXR3. It powers a solid state relay (the PID 
controller will not directly power a heating element), and uses a thermocouple 
for temperature monitoring. If anyone has any questions about my setup, I'd be 
happy to discuss.

I'd like to finish by crediting Dennis Collins and his HERMIT for inspiring my 
venture into HERMS territory. His site has a lot of good info for anyone 
thinking of building a HERMS. http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/System.html

/Pete Limosani/  



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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:41:21 -0500
From: "Eric (Rick) Theiner" <rickdude at tds.net>
Subject: Denaturing Enzymes with HERMS

I am not sure if this was answered or not-- I'm pretty behind
 in my email at the moment.  But here's my $0.02:

It takes time to denature enzymes in addition to temperature.
Of course, the higher the temp, the less time that it takes, but 
during that time, you also have activity.  Those of you who know
 me also know that I make cleaners and surfactants and I have 
an interesting story regarding denaturing enzymes--

A company I worked with some time ago developed a detergent 
that incorporated oxygen bleach and enzymes.  (This is unusual 
because oxygen bleach will destroy enzymes, but we had worked 
with Novo to jointly develop a system that would tolerate these 
conditions.)  This detergent is sold for use in "shirt laundries," 
which are the water-laundry side of drycleaners (you know that 
your dress shirts don't really get drycleaned, right?)  The caveat 
was that the temperature of the wash bath should not exceed 140 F 
to prevent the enzymes from being denatured.

I don't know exactly how it happened, but someone started using 
this detergent in 160 F wash baths and the results were fantastic.  
We reasoned that the benefit was only due to the bleach and 
surfactant, but ran it by Novo just to check it.  They tested it on 
their end and found that it took a full 12 minutes to denature the 
enzymes, and in the meantime they were working fiendishly because 
of the added kinetic energy provided by the temp.

The moral here is that in the few seconds that the enzymes are at 
an elevated temp, there is little damage and a bit of benefit.

Sorry for the long windedness...

Rick Theiner


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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:46:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Pat Babcock" <pbabcock at hbd.org>
Subject: Moving on up...

Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager...

A solution to the hosting issue has presented itself. This solution will
improve our downline access speed (what you see) by about 533%, keep the
servers local, and reduce our connectivity costs enough that, even with
the termination fee for the remainder of the Covad contract, we still save
$140 over what would have been the remainder of that term! Woo-hoo!

By doing this, we can maintain the club sites and the preserve, though,
unfortunately, the commercial server may need to go as I believe it may
violate their terms of service. More on that later.

The transition to the new service will take place near the end of this
month. There are several dns and domain related records which will have to
change and propagate through the internet, so please bear with. I will do
my best to pop a note through the Digest just prior to making the
transition. Hopefully, this one will go much more smoothly than did the
last...



- -- 
See ya!

Pat Babcock in SE Michigan
Chief of HBD Janitorial Services
http://hbd.org
pbabcock at hbd.org





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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:14:49 -0500
From: "LANCE HARBISON" <harbison65 at verizon.net>
Subject: Corny O-rings

I have a couple of old Pin Lock kegs that were leaking due to the gas side 
poppit not springing back.  I first doubled up on the o-ring which seemed to 
help.  I then got the idea to change all of the o-rings in both my pin lock 
and ball lock kegs.  Comparing sizes the pin lock used #011 (1/16" thick, 
5/16" X 7/16") and the ball lock used #109 (3/32" thick, 5/16" X 1/2") 
o-rings.  When I looked at the difference of the two I realized the 109's 
would also fit the pin lock fittings, so I replaced the 011's with the 
109's.  I can not imagine why this would not work, but if anyone has 
experience otherwise I'd like to know it before I place the kegs back in 
service.

Lance Harbison
Pittsburgh 




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