2 Hours to boil on 10 bbl?

[nbrayman]

Hello,

My partner and I are moving from a very small setup into a 10bbl natural gas direct fire. We're looking like it'll take 2 hours to reach a boil. Is this common, or a problem we should look to address?

Thoughts and comments welcome

Nick Brayman
Partner
Downdraft Brewing Co.
Nick@Downdraftbrewing.com

[NHBrewer23]

2 hours to a boil on a 10bbl is ridiculous. When are you firing on the burner? With direct fired kettles, I would fire the burner once you are 1/4 of the way collected. You should be collecting over a period of 90 minutes. If you are not boiling within 30 minutes of the end of collection, I would look at when you are turning on the burner and how efficient your burner is working. You can always look in the firebox to see the flame. You should be seeing mostly, if not all blue flame. Orange is not hot enough. If you have a lot of orange tips, look at your damper and play with the airflow.

When your wort is sitting that long to come up to a boil, you will not fully terminate conversion (lowering your FG) as well as increasing your levels of DMS. Hopefully your solution is as simple as turning on your burner sooner. You can always have a mechanical technician look at your burner and determine if your gas pipe size is large enough for your burner.

[Shannon B]

Your time to boil is directly proportional to the BTUs of the burner. Here is a good calculator: http://www.phpdoc.info/brew/boilcalc.html

Cheers,
Shannon Carter

http://shannonbrewing.com

[604M]

Is you kettle insulated? That could be a large part of the problem.

[BugHunter]

A 2 hour ramp is too long

I have to agree with NHBrewer23. You should, ideally, be nearly at a boil just as your sparge transfer is finishing. We have a 20 bbl insulated steam kettle and I turn on the jacket as soon as I have enough wort transferred to cover the kettle floor. Barring any mishaps this means that I'm usually looking at a kettle temperature reading of 95C at the end of sparge and I can start my boil just a few minutes later.

This is, of course, something that we've dialed in since getting the system but you should shoot for something similar with your system.


Dustin Metzger
Pearl Street Brewery
La Crosse, WI

[nbrayman]

Thank you all for the replies. We did have a mechanical guy look at this and make some adjustments to the gas regulator which helped a bit. We also started the kettle when enough wort was collected to cover the bottom. I think our issue now is collecting to fast as our pump is rather strong and we can't dial it back. We are still working with it but I greatly appreciate all the help.

Cheers!

[TGTimm]

...I think our issue now is collecting to fast as our pump is rather strong and we can't dial it back. We are still working with it but I greatly appreciate all the help.

Cheers!

Get a Variable Frequency Drive on that pump! If you're "collecting" too fast, you're sparging too fast. Hopefully, your pump motor is 3-phase, which will allow you to use a VFD. If not, you'll need to change the motor out for a 3-phase. Don't worry if your brewery isn't wired for 3-p, as most new VFDs can convert single-phase to 3-p.

We run a C104 (4" impeller) with 1 hp motor for our sparge/vorlauf pump (20 bbl house), with a VFD set at ~32 Hz for transfer, and anywhere from 15-40 Hz for vorlauf.

As for throttling the pump with valves, I've seen what cavitation does to pump impellers and volutes... not pretty.

[BrewinLou]

If you throttle the output of the pump you should be fine. Pumps like a little head pressure, never throttle the input. We throttle our whirlpool arm with the built in valve, it is very easy to tune it. Keep opening until you hear cavitation starting then back off a little. Collecting your wort should take at least an hour or more depending on the tun design, temp of mash, grain bed depth, mill gap, and grist composition.

[BugHunter]

We use a combination of variable frequency pumps and valve restriction to manage the flow rates in all of our pumping and it works great. We have an in-line flow meter and variable frequency pump for our sparge that allows us to precisely control the flow rate going into our kettle. For the rest of our system in the Brewhouse and cellar we just use valves attached to the outflow on all of our pumps, throttling them as needed if ewe hear any cavitation or need to slow flows down for any reason. I would highly recommend the same setup to anyone.

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Dustin Metzger
Pearl Street Brewery
La Crosse, WI