System alterations

[Bryan R]

Just a note, I boil with a lid and have the ability to control boil off quite precisely (pressure sensors, flow sensors, etc) I started to see DMS be a concern with lower than 5%, maybe worth a data point.. But I am intrigued by your setup you have going here.

[Crunk]

This setup is basically the poor man's operation to my perception of what you guys are doing and what I'm also trying to accomplish I don't have $20,000 to dump into a large system so my interpretations of low oxygen Brewing in the end goal are only being hampered by my wallet fortunately I have some pretty good connections and good friends the mash agitator that I'm going to be building is from a coffee Bean dispenser the motor runs real slow but it's very powerful I'm going to hook up a variable speed dial switch to it so that I can achieve the 10 revolutions per minute during the rest. And approximately 30 revolutions per minute during the ramping. For a multi-step infusion Mash I will continue to keep the updates and pictures coming as I progress I did receive my blichmann inline wort aerator yesterday in the mail so I believe that the Nash adjective and the ventilation system on the boil kettle should be my final upgrades for a little while then I need to get down to making some beer

[Weizenberg]

Gotcha. Sorry for splitting hairs. A vac evaporator would be pretty cool though If you ever build one.... post some pics!

[Crunk]

Would I be better served by building a vac evaporator as opposed to a ventilation system

[Crunk]

I think about how to better my brewing and my equipment all day long because I'm a delivery driver and have nothing better to do than listen to the radio

[Crunk]

I just picked up my motor and fan for the ventilation system I got it for free but it's high speed low decibel squirrel cage style fan 60 hertz 3300 RPMs 116 volt that should suck the steam out of that Kettle very quickly

[Weizenberg]

I'd wait and read up about it first. Your copy of Kunze has plenty of relevant drawings and suggestions.

[Bilsch]

My opinion is, if anything, think in terms of ventilation and not actually pulling a vacuum on the boil kettle. Besides being difficult to do in that scale with a small vacuum pump the biggest problem would be what happens to your boiling point when the pressure is reduced. You could induce very quickly a boil over and make a big mess. With a constant pressure (atmospheric) you have only one parameter to control when boiling, that being heat input. If you introduce a second variable, pressure, the fun begins to keep both controlled.

Don't overthink this lodo process too much before you try it a couple times and really get a feel for what things are most important.

[Bilsch]

Another thing about pulling a vacuum, and I don't know how sciency you are, is the force of atmospheric pressure. For example if you have the garden variety 8 gallon boil kettle with a diameter of about 13.7 inches.. of you were to pull a very slight vac of just -1 psi, you would induce a downward force on your lexan cap of about 600 pounds. A few more and you could implode the whole deal shooting boiling liquid everywhere.
Maybe you already knew about all of this but I thought I'd toss that in just in case.

[Cavpilot2000]