RIMS/HERMs single vessel setup

[Kev888]

Heh heh - in fact probably even just a tad!

Yes, I'd been thinking about the lifting, as I'd prefer not to have internal protrusions into the grain pot, and obviously there's little room outside it.

I could have a couple of slots near the top of the grain pot, to hook something into, or maybe some very thin 'ears' going vertically to hook into, though they could challenge lid-fitting. But perhaps my favourite option would be to leave the rim on the inner pot and cut the bigger/outer one down to the right height. I could then either fix something to the inner pot's rim or seat the rim in a shallow ring, something like the green bits here:


Cheers
Kev

[barneey]

Just another thought for you to consider regarding the weight of lifting the inner pot whilst draining the wort out, by using your green wing idea could you not mount the inner pot into a fixed hole structure (rather like the pot bottom deformer you made last year). The bottom pot then mounted on a scissor car jack (or bottle) when its time to drain, simply wind down the jack until the bottom pot is resting on say 2 bearers either side of the jack? This would also give you plenty of height options. Maybe a crazy idea - but I think its called brain storming

[Kev888]

Hmm, possibly, yes. Could be useful if headrom for lifting is limited, too.
If I have various pumps and wotnot underneath, it could only drop so low - so I'd have to check if a dropping-distance added to that would make it too high in use or not.

Cheers
kev

[Matho]

Kev,

barneey has a good point about the weight of lifting the pot out, even with my small malt pipe, the lip I have on the bottom creates enough restriction to make the pot quite heavy until the liquid drains out, the braumeister doesn't have this problem I think because of the straight pipe. If you go with your idea of a pipe in the bottom then draining times will take longer so you would probaly need some form of mechanical assistance to lift the pot out. There is a guy on aussiehomebrewer called arniew that has made a braumeister inspired rig with it pumping through a small pipe in the bottom, google braubushka, I can PM him if you want and ask him about what he thinks about pulling out his malt pipe.

[barneey]

One other thing I`ve thought about, would "the suction" effect cause any problems getting the two close fitting pots apart

[Kev888]

Yes, it could slow it down - there's certainly an effect with air. But I think if I go slowly it should be okay; another good reason for having a winch of some sort, perhaps.

Cheers
Kev

[Kev888]

But perhaps my favourite option would be to leave the rim on the inner pot and cut the bigger/outer one down to the right height...

Which, having now calculated it, would mean my boiler was then just too short/small to still use in my bigger three-vessel system... Doh! Best laid plans and all that...

So, I either need to

• let the inner pot down inside the outer tank further, which would mean cutting off the stock pot's rim, or
• put something like a removable 4" thick disk in the bottom of the boiler to effectively raise the height of its base.

The latter could be challenging with all the elements and drains and wotnot going through the base - though possibly I could do simething similar to the underside of the stock pot instead - that could be quite neat actually, if I could think of a way.

Has anyone ever cut the rim off a french/german-ebay/nordic-optical stock pot before? If it stays reasonably rigid that may be far easier, but if it goes all weak and floppy it could be more of a challenge..

Cheers
Kev

[Jocky]

Ah, clearly my ideas have caused stunned admiration.. or more likely complete disinterest

But so far I've not detected any flaws in the idea, so probably some experimentation is in order; I'll have to get some fittings next week and find time to play with pumps.

Cheers,
Kev

I'm interested, keep it coming!

I too have a concern that the pumps you are looking at may not be up to the job - but I'm not sure that I know what I'm talking about, so I'll just watch this thread to see what happens!

[Kev888]

Yes its a possibility that the pumps will struggle, but i guess only time will tell. Probably quite a lot of time at the current crawling rate of physical progress!!

I'm hopeful at the moment though; I've been using them to pump out the MT and boiler and have been quite impressed for their size - only marginally slower than my totton 20/12 was. At least compared to all the other gubbins involved in this, they should be relatively easy to swap out if necessary.

Cheers
Kev

[Jocky]

My issue was what you mentioned about the pumps needing a gravity feed - your design above doesn't give you any gravity. If your pumps are ok for recirculation though then they should be fine.

[Kev888]

Ah I see - thanks very much for spotting that. Yes, although the whole weight of water is above the pump, in a relative sense there's a lack of positive head as the pressures will be 'about' the same on the inlet and outlet. I'd have to get them primed in some way, but I must admit I'd been just assuming that afterwards they'd recirculate in these conditions - I'd not actually considered that they may not, but its a very valid concern. I definately need to do some testing! Good call.

That said, I was looking at my two pots in the flesh again yesterday:

It would be 'sooo' easy to make a conventional (downwards) recirculation that I think I need to reassure myself all the compromises needed for an upwards one are really going to be worth it. Its a bit difficult for me to judge as I've not even used a conventional RIMMs or HERMS before, so I posted a thread here to try to get a feel for it.

Cheers
kev

[danbrew]

Ah, clearly my ideas have caused stunned admiration.. or more likely complete disinterest

For me, it's more the stunned admiration camp rather than the disinterested one. But's it's mainly that your ahead of where I had got to with what I had wanted to do with my set up so I can't really offer any input... I'm still stuck on why your re-circulating upwards and not down so I'm just watching and learning...!

[barneey]

"we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too"

[jonnyt]

But it's like going to the moon in a Saturn rocket or inventing a reusable spacecraft launching from a runway.

Up or down isn't going to make one iota of difference, both will make the same beer, one much cheaper an easier just like the Saturn rocket.

[Kev888]

Yes indeed; I've set my sights on ease of use (rather than cheapness or ease of build) so at least thats a kind of a ball-park to work to.

However there are still limits on how far its worth going, so I'm continuing to ponder the upward vs downward recirculation. I posted my 'does recirculation speed matter' type question on another forum too, and the thoughts there were that it may be harmful to go 'too' fast (washing out undesirables), but also that going upwards may not make 'all' that much difference anyway.

I've been going through various forums and youtube vids again looking at this, and have re-affirmed that the upper filter can still stick sometimes. Also they can get small geysers around the edge of the filter with big channels through the grain down the inner pot's walls. Of course, you can get similar things with downward recirculation too; I still think upwards is probably better, but its not quite the magic solution I'd imagined it may be..

More planning I think; if I can come up with an especially neat way to use my pots in a downward manner that may swing it, but if not I may as well persevere with the upwards one.

Cheers
Kev