New brewery- hot water demand and needed equipment

[brain medicine]

so its getting to be time to order the new system and put down a deposit. i still cant decide if i want to do the HLT from the manufacturer- wether as 3 vessel or 2vessel combi. 15bbl system, direct fire.

i'd say out of the folks ive asked for advice, half say ditch the HLT and get a nice commercial tankless unit for on demand hot water for tank filling, sparging, CIP, etc. the other half seems to be squarely in the "you can never have too much hot water" camp. which i understand, but does seem a little over the top.

as for our build out- we'll have a regular 100-200gallon water heater for both the domestic (kitchen/bar/baths) and the brewery supply, and then we're also installing a solar hot water system with a holding tank in mechanical room for the solar heat, and then a commercial tankless unit inline from mechanical room to brewery for on demand needs. (we're in CA, so year round sun- in fact, plumber says we get so much sun they have to engineer panels to not explode from steam pressure)

so i'll need hot strike and sparge water in the AM, but i feel like the washing/CIP, double batching, etc all runs heavy in the midday to afternoon hours. and the kitchen/baths etc should have a similar afternoon/ mostly evening period of heavy use. so with the solar system, i think we should be fine.

but i just worry that i'll need more hot water in the AM when i come in early to brew. should i add the HLT? the storage tank in mechanical room for solar is basically a HLT, so i think a standalone HLT is unnecessary. but i also feel like even the combi HLT isnt really necessary, given the water heater, solar and the tankless booster. at $11k for the combi design its not gonna break the budget, but i'd prefer to not spend it if not necessary. and i would like to have a bigger MT vs a smaller MT with the combi system.

anybody see anything i'm missing here? issues i havent thought of or noticed?

[jebzter]

Get a standalone HLT that is twice the size of your brew length. It is nice to be able to recover most of your cooling water for future batches. It seems you're trying to go as green as possible, and waste heat in water will be a large loss. You will generate at least 1.5x the volume of the batch in hot water.

[Junkyard]

Agree with jebster, recovering that hot water from chilling is always a plus. At our brewery we don't have an HLT due to space. Right now we use a tankless on demand water heater to supply all our hot water needs. When we expand I'm definitely planning to get a HLT just for saving hot water from the chiller for cleaning, mashing a second batch etc. could even do some kettle souring in it if I got really ambitious.

[brain medicine]

i appreciate the opinions. i do think there seems to be alot of glossing over of the solar hot water system. the idea of recapturing the heat from the HX isnt really a big deal to me, as the sun heats our water for free and according to the plumber, can easily get us to mash/sparge and likely even CIP temps. so the solar storage tank can effectively be our HLT, as long as i get a good sized one.

my big concern was having enough water to brew in the AM. but after talking with some other local brewers with a "water heater+ tankless booster" setup, everyone seems to say its not an issue in this size range. their only complaint is not having the storage to recapture hot water from HX, to conserve energy. which is not my concern.

but another good point- maybe even more relevant in CA-- is that we'd be wasting all that water if we just let it go down the drain by not having a place to put it. so even though i dont worry about heat loss (since solar heat is free), i should still figure out a way to conserve the water.

and now that i think about it, as long as i can get the mash tun cleaned up before its time to knockout, i can always put the HX water into the mash tun and keep it covered and insulated until the next brew day. i may not be able to reclaim 100% of the water, but at least a good amount of it.

there's probly more efficiencies to be gained by looping the mash tun water with the solar tank water,. etc but i after talking this through a bit more i feel like a separate HLT is not needed. between a big solar tank and mash tun, i can easily get almost 20bbl of storage. with the tankless and the solar, i shouldnt have issues with running out of hot water.

just need to be a bit more attentive to trying to conserve the water we use.

[dick murton]

Unless you have sterilised the MT and all associated pipework / hoses et that the water might run through, I advise against storing water in the MT as you WILL transfer infection to the hot water system, and if my understanding of the system you are proposing is correct, then there will be times when the water is only warm, not 80 deg C plus.

I suggest a separate hot water tank for your hot water ex wort cooler, with a separate heating system to cover those times when it is not hot enough (e.g. after a 48 hour brewing gap. I suggest you do not recycle through the solar heating system, even though in theory this water should be bug and nutrient free. And not throwing water away is normally good economic sense, both from water purchase and water volume charge of disposal, but you may possibly also run into temperature discharge being greater than permitted if you chuck loads down the swanee.

[lhall]

You should have a tank to capture all of your knockout water. The energy and the water are valuable and will save you money in the long run. How you heat that water back up to mash-in temp is another matter. A tankless hot water heater being supplied by a hot liquor pump would probably save you some money if you didn't want a steam-jacketed or direct-fired hot liquor tank. But a well insulated tank will hold temp overnight, only dropping 5-10 deg F in my experience.

[brain medicine]

i agree with all of you- but i think maybe we come to different conclusions.

at only 1500-2000bbl to start in production, i'm only brewing twice a week or so. so while recapturing the heat and the water is great, if i just have to heat it up again 3-4-5 days later then its not necessarily such a great idea. still good practice, but not ideal, especially given the "free" heating from the solar system. and dick makes a point about sanitary issues of storing the water. couple that with my feeling and common opinion that between the solar heat+storage tanks, the regular domestic hot water tank, and the on demand heater that there'll be no shortage of hot water.

so that leads me to a different conclusion- not a HLT, but a CLT is what i could really use. in my situation i have an excess of heat energy from free solar- but i'm missing cooling. so im thinking i shouldnt worry about heating, since i have that in abundance, and i should worry about cooling instead. a CLT to recapture KO water keeps it from going down the drain. and since this water never has to leave the CLT, i dont have to worry about sanitation of potable water. (dick's point about reuse) so i guess its a question of what type of CLT? i know glycol chilling is likely more efficient, but the extra $$ to upsize our glycol chiller, reservoir, etc is going to be convern vs just using a single wall tank passively chilled by our walkin cooler.

should probly circle back to jc younger and see what the upsizing is gonna require/cost.

[Starcat]

Hot configuration

You " need " an HLT whether its jacket heated or you are using a tube bundle.
You might make use of tankless " in addition " because if you are going to use tankless technology, you'd better have a back up plan that is redundant because they are definitely unreliable on a " good day " when soberly looked at from a strict Engineering standpoint.

[nickfl]

between a big solar tank and mash tun, i can easily get almost 20bbl of storage.

What size batches are you brewing? 1500BBL/yr brewing every 5 days or so sounds like 15BBL batches, if so 20BBL of total hot water capacity isn't enough. For our 15BBL system, we have a roughly 27BBL hot liquor tank, and we use most of that water each time we brew. Also, don't plan on using your mash tun for storing hot water. That's a half assed solution that you should only employ if you have no other choice, if you are in a position to find a better option, then you should. Solar heating may be free, but how long will it take to heat the volume you need? What about when you expand and want to do back to back batches, which you probably will at some point? I'm not saying solar can't do it, but you need to make sure it is sized appropriately and make sure you plumber understands the scale of your needs. A lot of plumbers may have never encountered a situation where someone needs several hundred gallons of 180F water available in 20-30 minutes... which is what you need in order to mash in. Don't ever assume general contractors, even experienced commercial ones, understand your needs. It is always a good idea to beat them over the head with the information until they are sick of hearing it unless they have extensive brewery experience on their resume.

I think you are going to regret not spending the extra money on a real HLT of some sort, even if you don't buy something new from your brewhouse supplier you should consider buying a used dairy tank or something of that sort so you have the capacity to hold an appropriate amount of hot water for your batch size.

[brain medicine]

well the thing is- based on speaking with brewers out here where we are, and one or two that have solar systems, i do not in fact "need" a HLT in their opinion. all agree its great to have, but it a choice of cost and footprint. and based on the many other folks who use two vessel systems with commercial tankless units, they do the job just fine, and are reliable. their words- not mine.

my plumber is well aware of the demands for hot water in a brewery, their family had been handling the plumbing and boiler systems for anchor steam brewery for about 20 years or so. well aware of typical demand and loads.

as for my supply of hot water, we're going to do some calc's today after he gets our rooftop measured and all the angles of solar exposure noted, but we've initially talked about 2x 200 or maybe 2x300gal insulated storage tanks that tie into the solar system, plus the regular 200gal commercial hot water heater. so we'd be looking at somewhere in the area of 600-800 gals of storage, minimum, possibly more. and those have the capability of being on a loop with regular hot water heater, so able to maintain constant temp overnight.

heat up time is based on pump capacity, as our issue doesnt seem to be trying to get our water hot enough, its keeping it from turning to steam and blowing the pressure relief on the solar system. once he does the calcs we'll know a baseline, but when i told him we'd eventually be doing double brews, he said not an issue as long as we have enough storage tank space. by monday we should have hard numbers to look at.