Slow Down Auger?

[Bainbridge]

We've got a Chore-Time flex auger and it does too good of a job, our hydrator clogs up if we run the spray too fast. We'd like to be able to slow the auger motor down and I'm wondering if anyone out there's rigged up a rheostat or something to control the speed of their auger?

[schmogger]

Get in touch with these guys and they will let you know what to do and if it is possible.

http://www.farmerboyag.com/

[CPESystems]

What kind of motor is on the auger? How many HP and single phase or 3 phase. If it is 3 phase you could install a VFD quite easily.
Don
CPE Systems Inc.
800-668-2268

https://www.cpesystems.com

[Bainbridge]

Ah I think that's what it was. Our slide gate on the grist case got a little banged up in transit and it sticks something fierce. So we've been running with it jerked fully open. Didn't even think about the grist case side of things. Think I'll go to town on it and see if I can bend it back into shape a bit so we can open it halfway. Otherwise I'll look into a VFD. Thanks everyone.

[BeersmithMT]

One more possibility - You can also check the length of the tube on the anchor & bearing assembly (where it feeds from the bin/mill into the auger). Both Chore-Time and GSI say that you can increase the flow rate of the auger by cutting down the length of the tube (allowing more grain to flow into the unloader assembly and in between the coils of the auger). Maybe someone had previously shortened the tube, and replacing with a new full length one would slow down the feed rate.

[BrewinLou]

Thats exactly how I slowed ours down. Pushed the slide gate in on the bottom of the hopper. Just a little bit will slow it down a lot. Ours was jamming up the case right above the hydrator and popping the breaker on the auger motor. Works fantastic now.

[Bainbridge]

Pulling up an old thread

So in an effort to get our mashing more repeatable and orderly we've started recording all sorts of variables. Got flowmeter rate and totalization, temperatures of water and mash, dead space volume under the grates, all sorts of things.

One interesting piece of data we've recorded is the time it takes to auger the grain out of the grist case. With the auger slide set where it is we're getting between 30 and 38 lbs/min, which is a surprising variance. Even more interesting, it seems to correlate to two factors.

The first is the total grist weight. Bigger beers seem to auger in faster for some reason. I can only suspect the weight feeds the auger faster, maybe compacts the grist a bit more too.



Now with 100% more graphs!

The other interesting correlation is that malt type seems to matter too. Both the Kolsch and Fresh Hop seem to auger more slowly, and are brewed with Weyermann and Great Western Washington Select 2-Row, respectively. The other beers are predominantly Great Western Pale Ale 2-Row, and other GW malts, though Sol Patch and the Winter Ale have a sizeable portion of Gambrinus ESB. This data was taken over 36 brews and averaged where necessary and each beer type seems pretty consistent with itself and not just across weight categories. Yet today we got 36lbs a minute on a batch of Kolsch, so this seems to say that mill gap settings seem to matter too. (We've tweaked it a bit, periodically getting it back into parameter with our shaker tray set.) But to jump from slowest to second fastest ever seems...odd.

I bring this up, first because I just think it's kinda interesting, and second because I'm wondering if anyone else out there deals with this in some way? I'd imagine a 26% difference in milling rate would be something the larger brewers would have issues with.

[TGTimm]

Long ago, we attempted to meter the malt being delivered by our 3.5" Flex-auger to the mill by using a timer. After some experimenting, timing, and weighing, it turned out that the malt delivery rate was not linear over time, nor repeatable for the same amount of time. I did this with one malt and one auger. The auger would deliver x lb/min for a while, 0.6x lb/min for a bit, 1.8x lb/min.... Finally gave up on it and built a weight-controlled system. Not so applicable to your case, but the weird variance in delivery rate might explain some of the variance you see.

[Bainbridge]

An interesting point. It would make sense that the malt would flow fastest at the beginning when it had more weight pushing it in. Without a load cell on the grist case though I can't check that rate, unfortunately. (We've got this setup where the mill mills directly down into the grist case, then gets augered over to the mash tun.)