Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Since I have kids, my main goal is overall brew time reduction, and set-it-and-forget-it stuff looks really nice. I tend to do 11gal batches, occasionaly 5.5gal though -- double batch is a huge time saver.

I currently have a 15G kettle w/ ball valve, blichman burner, and the huge 70qt coleman Xtreme w/ ball valve for batch sparging. Couple tables for tiers.

I picked up an electric immersion heater (anova) to save time and propane by pre-heating strike water right in my mash cooler. I see no reason why this won't be wonderful just as it is for the strike, or single-infusion / smaller beers.

For larger beers (OG and volume), it would save more time to have another vessel (insulated cooler, or insulate-able pot, or ?) in which to heat the infusion water after the mash-in, so I no longer have to dump the first batch runnings into buckets before I infuse from single kettle -- I can go straight into a propane burn right out of the first runnings, while I batch or mash-out.

I'm basically looking for considerations on what kind of kettle/cooler/etc might be a good idea to get here, that ALSO would be modifiable in the future if I wanted to go electric with a HERMS / recirculating mash type setup. What compatibility or ease-of-use things should I take into consideration on the vessel purchase -- NPT valves, pump hookups, immersion-heater-coil, etc...?

If that heater works well in a cooler then by far the easiest and cheapest route to go is another cooler as an HLT.

Maybe a counter flow wort chiller, it can double as heat exchange coil for a herms. It would also be external to the current setup

Do you have to have two pumps in order to use a counterflow in a HERMS application? I was thinking yes but maybe someone has a trick I don't know about. Immersion chiller HERMS only requires one pump if cost is a consideration.

Matt F wrote:Do you have to have two pumps in order to use a counterflow in a HERMS application? I was thinking yes but maybe someone has a trick I don't know about. Immersion chiller HERMS only requires one pump if cost is a consideration.

I think you would -- the only way to get around pumps in a double-flow heat exchanger unit is to use gravity, but that's a 1-way trip for whichever liquid isn't pumped/recirculated.
(I don't forsee myself needing counterflow, just immersion heat exchange.)

Space and setup type would be a consideration if you can do a gravity fed hlt, then single pump would be no problem, if you want a single tier setup, You could use one pump and use it to drain mash, pump more water for batch Sparge, and then pump out the rest of your wort.

Matt F wrote:Do you have to have two pumps in order to use a counterflow in a HERMS application? I was thinking yes but maybe someone has a trick I don't know about. Immersion chiller HERMS only requires one pump if cost is a consideration.

One pump would not need to be 'clean' if just using for water... although not too sure about temperature ratings on cheap pumps.

andrewmaixner wrote:

Matt F wrote:Do you have to have two pumps in order to use a counterflow in a HERMS application? I was thinking yes but maybe someone has a trick I don't know about. Immersion chiller HERMS only requires one pump if cost is a consideration.

I think you would -- the only way to get around pumps in a double-flow heat exchanger unit is to use gravity, but that's a 1-way trip for whichever liquid isn't pumped/recirculated.
(I don't forsee myself needing counterflow, just immersion heat exchange.)