Beer Forum

I have been thinking how i want to design my brew sculpture, bu have a few ?'s. I am thinking of doing a two level sculpture where the hot water tun is under the mash tun, and gravity fed out to brew kettle then pumped through a counterflow chiller after boil. My question is for sparging. I do not have a pump or sparge arm yet, so im not exactly sure on how they work, understand yes, how well no. After youve sent your mash water up to the tun, and mashed out, doesnt the pump push too much water through the sparger or can that be controlled by other means. In my ever running mind it seems that the pump would push too much water too fast through the sparger (rotary style say like phils sparge arm), and just blow all your sparge time away. I guess my question is, is there a way to control how much the pumps pump out. Does this make any sense to anyone else but myself?

A. Check into batch sparging... you might be suprised, and will save time.
B. Still want to fly sparge... just put a valve between the pump and the sparge device (arm, showerhead, etc).. be sure to valve the OUTPUT of a pump not the input.
BUB

Yeah, what Bub said. Check out:

http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/ and

http://cruisenews.net/brewing/infusion/

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

Don't listen to all these batch-sparging fanatics.

I'll answer your question:
1) you can put a valve on the output of your pump to throttle back its flow up to a manifold above your grain bed in the mash tun
2) A float switch in your mash tun can control the on/off of the pump to keep from overflowing your mash tun

Sounds like a good brewstand design to me!

Push Eject

ok , to hell with these guys.. My system I have only the HLT above the mash tun and the mash and boil kettle are on the same hight. My reason is becouse I can fly or batch sparge. I can also collect wort from the mash tun doing a fly sparge even if my pump fails. I have brewed using my pump and without. Ya never know. What ever you decide to do keep it simple and re think every step to make sure you can fit in other styles of brewing, fly/batch/decoction/step and so forth. Hell I dont know Im drunk as Im writing this.

I tried to post a link of my design drawing, but alas i am apparently too new to the network and it wont let me:(

It'll probably work now. With three posts you're not so new anymore.

[img][img]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m11/cguntzviller/sculpture.jpg[/img][/img]

Thoughts/ideas?