Currently in the latter stages of a rig rebuild, and one of the issues I want to get sorted it my herms return manifold. I use a ring of silicon hose with holes drilled, which works brilliantly - here is a pic of it in action in the old tun:
I now have a return port through the side of my cooler, so I don't need to drape hose over the side and can leave the lid closed.
The issue is how to plumb the return manifold from the port hose-barb, in such a way that it can be moved up and down to accommodate different mash volumes. I guess the range would be about 5 inches at most, and the most common position would be an inch or two below the return port. In my first test brew on the rig I had a really short length of silicon hose leading from barb to maifold - about 2 inches - and the manifold was actually suspended above the wort, dripping down into it. Depending on your views on hot side aeration this might be a bad thing, but other than that it worked very well.
Tonight's moment of inspiration was that I could use a longer section of hose and attach to the far end of the manifold (i.e. reverse the manifold), which would give much more play w.r.t. height, and the angle of the T joining the manifold to the hose barb can be adjusted to suit wort level. A further moment of inspiration - a few pints in - was that I could attach floats around the manifold and have it float on top of the wort (the ultimate self-adjusting mechanism), with perhaps a couple of different lengths of tubing on hand (use the most appropriate length for the mash volume).
Anyway, just a couple of ideas. I thought I'd throw it up just in case the hive mind can think of something better. I have polyethylene high density foam block on hand - I have no idea if this is food safe, but it is apparently good up to 100C. A few small collars of this and I'm sure the manifold would float nicely..
Please help me improve my return manifold
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Re: Please help me improve my return manifold
if the lid is on tight then i cant see much of an issue ? I cant see much oxygen getting in as it would only have whats in the deadspace to play with , not that i think its a bad thing, as fly sparging introduces a fair bit of 02 i reckon.