Assistance Needed for 1bbl setup

pmcint01 · Joined: 02 Feb 2015 Posts: 20

We have built a 1bbl set using 3 - 55 gallon stainless steel drums. We have followed Kal's design including the forum pages for setups of 30+ gallons or more. We have a HLT that has two 4500 Watt elements in it. The HLT has the 50' stainless coil with a 1/2" ID.
We are having problems with mash temp control. We could control the mash temp on our test batch at all so we tried it again today with just water. We had the HLT set to 157 degree which it was holding perfectly. Our water temp in the mash tun was 148 degrees. We recirculated the Mash tun water thru the coil inside the HLT for at least 30 minutes and the mashtun temp only rose 1 degree to 149. It would occasionally fall back to 148 too. The temp of the water that passed thru the coil and reentered the mash tun was 153 degrees so it was obviously being heated while running through the coil in the HLT. For some reason it was never really heating the water in the mashtun as a whole though. We confirmed the readings of the temp probe were accurate with another thermometer. We had 11 gallons of water in our mashtun.
We had several problems with air bubbles and getting the pump to prime properly. We are using the following pump:
Chugger Stainless Steel Brewing Pump Center Inlet (Comparable to March 809-SS-HS-C)
It has a 3/4" inlet and 1/2" outlet.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009Z17DJQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B009Z17DJQ&linkCode=as2&tag=theelectricbrewery-20&linkId=UDJJZ4V37KJV5275

We tested the flowrate of the pump directly out of mashtun to be about 3GPM and also running through the 50" stainless steel coil and up to the top of the mashtun as 2GPM. Is it possible we are simply not getting enough flow to heat up the water in the mashtun fast enough? I'm wondering if we should get a pump that has an 8GPM flow rate.

Any ideas would be helpful. Pictures of set up are attached.

Thank you,

Castermmt · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 10:07 am Post subject:

My 2 cents, If the heat is getting from the HLT and into the tun, then the tun has a lot of cooling area that needs to be addressed. I would insulate the tun and tun cover to hold the heat that is being lost from the large amount of area the 55 gallon vessel has.

Gameface · Joined: 07 Feb 2015 Posts: 120 Location: West Jordan, UT

I agree. I'd try insulating the mash tun.

Also, on my system the mash is ~2 cooler than the HLT. I just factor that in for my settings.

foomench · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 7:53 pm Post subject:

And for the liquid return into the mash tun, do you have a hose that connects to that barbed fitting? If the liquid is streaming through the air as in picture "Mash from test batch.jpg", I think there might be a fair bit of temperature loss there.

I second the recommendation to insulate the mash tun sides and lid. Reflectix might do it. I just have a 1500W element in my 15 gallon HLT, and when I took my rig traveling for a Big Brew Day once, I forgot the HLT lid. The HLT struggled. But I have the HLT insulated with two layers of Reflectix around the barrel circumference and a single layer on the lid, and that works for 1500W and ~14 gallons. Oh, and my MT is a cooler, so it is insulated as well.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:40 pm Post subject:

pmcint01 · Joined: 02 Feb 2015 Posts: 20

pmcint01 · Joined: 02 Feb 2015 Posts: 20

pmcint01 · Joined: 02 Feb 2015 Posts: 20

We insulated our mash tun yesterday with reflectex and that seemed to help tremendously. We were able to keep the mash temp within 2 degrees of the HLT set point for the entire mash.

Thranks for the help.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:00 pm Post subject:

Excellent. I'm glad you were able to resolve the issue. Sounds like you were loosing a lot of heat!

Kal