Flow meter

[Spurtrax]

Does anyone know of a high temp flow meter I could put between my hot liquor tank and my mash tun? I was thinking of changing my setup so I could brew one 10 gallon batch or two five gallons at the same time.

[BadRock]

How much are you looking to spend and what kind of accuracy do you want it to have?

[mabrungard]

What is it you're trying to do? Measure flow or volume?

I have an orifice flow meter that I constructed and calibrated. It's for a 1/2-inch ID line. It consists of a few inches of 1/2" copper pipe with a copper end cap soldered on. The end cap is drilled to about 3/16 or 1/4 inch diameter (I can't remember the size) and a manometer tap was soldered into the copper pipe to measure the head across the orifice.

It worked very well and the flow measurements were very close to the textbook values for an orifice of that size. It was cheap and served my purposes.

Another option is to buy one of those tapered rotameters. They are much more expensive. I couldn't find one for less than about $60 and I didn't need one that badly.

If you're measuring volume, then a flow totalizer might work for you. Something like you see as a water meter at your house would work. Again, that would be an expensive option.

Thus, you see why I constructed my own orifice flowmeter. Its do-able and cheap! It can be tailored to the equipment and flow rate that you need.

[ajdelange]

I solved the problem by putting load cells under the legs on the stand that holds the mash tun. The plus side is that a pound of water is a pound of water irrespective of temperature so corrections don't have to be made for that as they do when using the most common system i.e. measuring the height of the liquid column.

Also works very nicely with wort. A pound of wort is a pound of wort at any temperature and W pounds of wort at P degrees Plato contains W*P/100 pounds of extract. Also its volume at room temperature will be W/(8.33*SG) - SG measiured at room temp. This also is not an inexpensive solution.

[Spurtrax]

I don't want to spend a lot but I can spend some and I want to measure volume. Basically, I would like to have a large vessel as a hot liquor tank and be able to put 5.5 gallons in one cooler and then switch the valve and 0 out the meter and put 6.2 gallons in the other one. Something like a meter for a fuel tank would work if it was food grade.

[Kbar]

calibrated sight glass........mass flow meters would be nice, but in a system where you could heat strike, infusion and mash out water to a specified temperature, then meter that into the mash tun. I think mass flow meters might be too complicated at the homebrew level. Do the pros use volumetric/mass flow meters?

[dshepard]

I solved the problem by putting load cells under the legs on the stand that holds the mash tun. The plus side is that a pound of water is a pound of water irrespective of temperature so corrections don't have to be made for that as they do when using the most common system i.e. measuring the height of the liquid column.

Also works very nicely with wort. A pound of wort is a pound of wort at any temperature and W pounds of wort at P degrees Plato contains W*P/100 pounds of extract. Also its volume at room temperature will be W/(8.33*SG) - SG measiured at room temp. This also is not an inexpensive solution.

Just curious, what are you using for load cells?

[BadRock]

The pro's use Electromagnetic Flowmeters. I rep, sell and service Endress + Hauser. These will set you back several k even for a 1/2" meter but they have an accuracy of 0.2%



Here is a little info if anyone is interested.
http://www.us.endress.com/eh/productDBs ... Open&popup