HERMS System

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gamekeepa

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So I'm moving house soon and will have a whole garage that I'm going to convert into a bar and for brewing. I'm really interested in building a HERMS set up but there's one thing I can't quite figure out.
So you eat your strike water and transfer it to your mash tun. But then when you want to start circulating your mash water through the coil in the HLT the water won't be up to temp yet as you've just ditched it all into the MT.
So.....do you need a HLT that can heat up your strike and sparge water in one go so you can circulate through your sparge water? In which case is the coil going to be fully submerged in your strike water?
Or..... do I fit an element in my MT and heat my strike water in there while heating water in my HLT?
Hope this makes enough sense that someone can point me in the right direction. Cheers.


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Loads of ways of going about it. I put all my mash water in the mashtun, all my sparge and topup water in the HLT, then heat the HLT to strike temperature while recirculating through the HERMS coil. Then just mix the grain into the water in the mashtun (fairly briskly because the mashtun has all the mash water in it at strike heat). The HLT must then cool to mashing temperature before recirculating, but doesn't cause me a problem. You also need something to calculate the volumes of water used (I use Beersmith).
 
Oh right I see. I think. So you heat your sparge water and top up water in your HLT, and by circulating your strike water in the mash tun through it you are heating that at the same time?
What volume batches do you brew? And your sparge water and tip up water fully covers your circulation coil? And what size element are you using? Lot of questions I know.


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Oh right I see. I think. So you heat your sparge water and top up water in your HLT, and by circulating your strike water in the mash tun through it you are heating that at the same time?
What volume batches do you brew? And your sparge water and tip up water fully covers your circulation coil? And what size element are you using? Lot of questions I know.
Okay, I think I can make you regret saying that! First some bedtime reading...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwzEv5tRM-5EQUhZbDNPdmV1bWc
It was covered in this thread...
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=60134
The brewery is undergoing a few changes at the moment so the documents will change in the next few months. These include super-charging the HLT and modified procedures to trim down the effort involved (the aim is to have my no-brewing girlfriend knock up a batch).

It's a big home brewery that can manage 40-70L. Would be nice if it could do 25L batches know and again.
 
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