Beer Forum

I would like to ask a few questions about the brewing process using a HERMS setup.

I am currently brewing all grain using converted coolers and a turkey fryer. I use a 3 tier gravity setup with a continuous (fly) sparge process to collect in my BK over the course of 60 to 90 minutes.

I am trying to plan for the changeover to a one burner, single tier HERMS setup. I have designed a 2 pot system that also uses the HLT as Boil Kettle (BK) in order to make use of the HERMS coil for chilling (recirculate ice water through coils).

I have one march pump, and unless I am missing something I think I can do this with the 2 keggles and only one pump. Where I am having some "issues" in my planning is the sparge portion of the process. It might be necessary to add a 3rd vessel and a second pump for the sparge process, but I prefer to avoid this if possible. This is where I am uncertain, and here is where the questions arise.

1) How do you fly sparge with a march pump and still be able to run a 60 to 90 minute sparge?
2) Does the pump introduce the possibility of oxygenation if you restrict the flow too much and how can you tell if you have air bubbles trapped within?
3) How do you vorlauf when using a pump; how do you know when the wort is clear enough to start collecting in the kettle?

Thanks in advance for your assistance, and if I have left something out please feel free to address the issue.

When I first went to all grain brewing, I only had two vessels. I would heat my sparge water to about 200F in my boil kettle and transfer it to corny kegs. Once the mash was complete, I pushed the sparge water, which had dropped to 180F or so, with CO2.

As far as your questions: 1. Throttle back on the pump output. It’s made for just that kind of thing. 2. You won’t get enough oxygen that it matters. 3. Slowly recirc the wort as to not disturb or over compress the grain bed by restricting the pump output. Clear is clear. Go by sight or you can do a starch test.

Tasty

Thanks for the quick reply Tasty.

So if I understand correctly, I am not going to fly sparge but instead recirculate very slowly for 60 to 90 minutes. Is this correct?

I try to collect the full boil volume from the runnings in my BK rather than topping off with additional water, so how should I compensate for the lack of a sparge water addition in this case...perhaps a larger mash out addition at 168F and recirculate through my HERMS coil for the duration to stop conversion?

I have had this March pump for almost 2 years and I have yet to use it for anything other than recirculating ice water through my immersion chiller...what a waste.

Thanks again for the expert advice and keep up the excellent work on The Session and CYBI. You guys are awesome!

As for fly sparging, Tasty is saying to pump slowly out of the Mash Tun and fly sparge using water pushed out of a corny keg w/ CO2. You might also choose to sparge using gravity again by using your cooler the same way you do today. The difference is that you would have a two tier system.

On my system I have two march pumps and fly sparge on a single tier without a problem. I've only brewed on the system once (I just built it) but my sparge lasted a little over an hour by throttling the flow on the pump from the mash tun to the boil kettle. Add a ball valve on the output (NOT the input) of your March pump if you haven't already.

Also, doing HERMS, you are essentially doing your vorlauf every time you recirculate wort through the HEX coil, when you recirc up to mash out you should be good to go.

~widget