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Mash Tun not Heating


Georgeous

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The inner pot refers to the area where the mash or wash sits in, the inside of the kettle.   If your tanks have the ability to completely seal the inside pot (like your still can be completely sealed) they need vacuum breakers and pressure relief valves.

The pressure relief valve is to prevent any pressure from building up inside of the vessel.  Even though your steam jacket will only max out at 15psi, you can actually create significant pressure inside the tank if you bring the contents to a boil.

The vacuum relief is to protect the tank from getting crushed like a beer can, if you accidentally seal it shut while hot, or attempt to pump out of the tank with it completely sealed (a good PD pump can pull some serious suction).

In both of these cases, we hope we can operate the distillery for decades without ever, ever, ever, seeing those valves do their job.  God willing, they never, ever do.  But for the one time you needed them, you don't want to wish you had them after the fact.  They are very, very cheap insurance.

As to why those Chinese valves shouldn't be used, even if they work perfectly fine?  Lawsuit liability should something go wrong.  Hate to say it, but the reason that the right valves cost what they do, is because they realize that if they go wrong, they are going to be in court.  Even if you don't take them to court, your insurance company will.  It's a terrible thing, and we hope nobody is ever in this situation.  But, as a responsible business owner, you need to consider the liability aspects.  This goes both ways.  Let's say someone gets injured, and that valve is part of the situation - it could be argued that you were negligent, and thus responsible, by not using the appropriate valves (yeah yeah, I know I have the wrong valve, pot calling the kettle black I guess - my inspector had absolutely no issue with it though, and it's something he specifically asked about).

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I think the chances of creating a vacuum are probably greater than over pressure. (at least on the jackets)  For example: You have a hot mash tun or still kettle that has just been emptied and the steam is closed off.  Someone takes a cold water hose and starts washing down the hot tank, causing the air in the jacket to rapidly cool and contract.  If your jacket is plumber for heating and cooling both, this is ever more likely to create a vacuum as air might not be able to come back in the outlet if you have the condensate line closed off to run cooling water.

If your not running cooling and steam in the same jacket best not to have a valve on the condensate line at all, and to make sure the condensate line has an air vent.

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Georgeous,

If your steam connections are tri clamp you must use Teflon gaskets with pressure clamps to be up to code.  I have the pressure clamps, teflon gaskets and the tri-clamp to NPT fittings that you need.  Actually I have most every type of sanitary fitting in existence in stock.  We currently have the 2nd deepest sanitary parts catalog in the US.  We sell sanitary parts across 5 different industries.  Anyway, I can do the quote on here is you like.  What is the size of your tri clamp connections?

 

Yes, inner pot means on top of the still and the ones for the jacket go on the steam jacket?  Do you have 2 connections into each steam jacket or just 1?

I put pressure relief and vacuum relief on the inner pots of my mash tuns and stills (that is not required by code) because some people do crazy stupid things like the guy who took his vacuum relief valves off of his mash tun because he thought that he did not need them then he left his manway shut but not latched (vents were closed as well) and he was circulating cooling water, through the jacket slowly overnight and vacuum occured in the inner pot sucking the manway down tight and the next morning he found his 800 gallon mash tun had imploded.  The inner pot was 8mm thick 304 stainless steel.

 

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On 1/23/2019 at 10:16 AM, Southernhighlander said:

Georgeous,

If your steam connections are tri clamp you must use Teflon gaskets with pressure clamps to be up to code.  I have the pressure clamps, teflon gaskets and the tri-clamp to NPT fittings that you need.  Actually I have most every type of sanitary fitting in existence in stock.  We currently have the 2nd deepest sanitary parts catalog in the US.  We sell sanitary parts across 5 different industries.  Anyway, I can do the quote on here is you like.  What is the size of your tri clamp connections?

 

Yes, inner pot means on top of the still and the ones for the jacket go on the steam jacket?  Do you have 2 connections into each steam jacket or just 1?

I put pressure relief and vacuum relief on the inner pots of my mash tuns and stills (that is not required by code) because some people do crazy stupid things like the guy who took his vacuum relief valves off of his mash tun because he thought that he did not need them then he left his manway shut but not latched (vents were closed as well) and he was circulating cooling water, through the jacket slowly overnight and vacuum occured in the inner pot sucking the manway down tight and the next morning he found his 800 gallon mash tun had imploded.  The inner pot was 8mm thick 304 stainless steel.

 

Paul,

photo 1 my still, there is one on top where this manifold is. the manifold has four ports 2 shut off valves i have no idea what they are for and pressure gauge and the 1.5 bar pressure gauge

photo 2 my mash tun has only the two on the side none on top. they are for the upper and lower heating jackets. 

all are triclover 1.5" 

still.png

mashtun.png

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  • 1 month later...

***********************

UPDATE

***********************

Well, I feel i should update all as you have helped us so much in dialing in our system. We did our second mash yesterday after correcting issues on our mash tun. Both upper and lower jackets are now plumbed for steam. The upper jacket is plumbed for steam and cooling water the lower only for steam. We changed the direction of our agitators to push downward and not upward. At first i was disappointed with the boiler guy as i was not there for the addition of steam to upper jacket; he used 1/2" steam lines. We tested with water and brought water from 70°F to boiling in about an hour and 20 minutes. The lower jacket he installed with 3/4 and 1 inch piping. Does not seem to be an issue. Our mash yesterday heated fast and we did a good cook. Per Tom Lenerz ( A special Thank you) from https://www.wollersheim.com/distillery/ who helped us scale our recipe to target a 1.065 mash which would yield a potential 8.58% ABV. We hit this right on the nose. Unlike the many mashes literally near a thousand i have done at commercial breweries, there is no comparison. this is an all day effort. Our system is designed to do 10-12% ABV mashes i would like to target 10% going foward so will have to figure how to scale to that. Anyway we had no issues with heat, no rubbery ring of corn only thing cooling through the jacket took a bit of time but not outrageous by any means. Natural Gas steam is the way to go hands down. The 20bbl brew houses i have brewed at using electric or direct fire on a cold day like yesterday would have been a 2 day event. 
I still have not changed my presure / air vents i sent request above to Paul i think he missed it. But, the ones i got functioned as designed and were not an issue

Again Thank you all for your help , we had a great mash day
George
Shire Distilling Co. 

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On 1/17/2019 at 9:10 AM, Southernhighlander said:

Georgeous,

We have Tube in Tube heat exchangers in stock that will crash cool 600 gallons of mash in about 1 hr. 417-778-6100 paul@distillery-equipment.com

Paul, what do these go for? i would like to see pics of what you are talking about. Also what kind of foot print and what else will i need to connect it to my system?

thanks

George

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22 hours ago, Georgeous said:

Paul, what do these go for? i would like to see pics of what you are talking about. Also what kind of foot print and what else will i need to connect it to my system?

thanks

George

George,

 

They are around $3,000.00  I don't know the exact price.  I don't do the quoting.  My COO, Susan Knapp does the quoting. if you email susan@distillery-equipment.com and ask for a quote for the 2" tube in tube heat exchanger, she will quote it for you.  You will need to loop into either your mash tun or fermenter with a mash pump and you will need a pump for pumping coolant, counterflow to the mash.  You could loop through your mash tun with the cooling jackets on and you should get a crash cooling time of less than 30 minutes.

Thank you.

Paul

Large_Heat_exchanger_1.jpg

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On 1/23/2019 at 6:21 PM, Georgeous said:

Paul,

photo 1 my still, there is one on top where this manifold is. the manifold has four ports 2 shut off valves i have no idea what they are for and pressure gauge and the 1.5 bar pressure gauge

photo 2 my mash tun has only the two on the side none on top. they are for the upper and lower heating jackets. 

all are triclover 1.5" 

still.png

mashtun.png

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.  I did not notice your above post until now.  Concerning the manifold on top of the inner pot.  I see a chines safety valve on the manifold.  Many times these chinese safety valves are combination pressure relief and vacuum relief.  I would replace the Chinese pressure relief valve with an American made 5 psi pressure relief valve of the proper capacity for the vessel.  You should also make sure that you have an American made Vacuum relief valve.  I'm not sure what the ball valves are for on top.  Is there anything inside where the ball valves connect?  Have you asked the manufacturer what the valves are for?

The Chinese Safety valves on vessels jacket must be replaced by ASME section VIII pressure relief valves of the proper PSI rating and capacity to be up to code.  I would also instal vacuum relief for each jacket.  We are Apollo distributors.  I am glad to sell you the correct valve for your needs.  Give me a call Monday through Thursday between 9:00 AM and 3:30 PM CST.  We will be leaving early Friday morning for the ADI Denver Conference.

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21 hours ago, Southernhighlander said:

I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.  I did not notice your above post until now.  Concerning the manifold on top of the inner pot.  I see a chines safety valve on the manifold.  Many times these chinese safety valves are combination pressure relief and vacuum relief.  I would replace the Chinese pressure relief valve with an American made 5 psi pressure relief valve of the proper capacity for the vessel.  You should also make sure that you have an American made Vacuum relief valve.  I'm not sure what the ball valves are for on top.  Is there anything inside where the ball valves connect?  Have you asked the manufacturer what the valves are for?

The Chinese Safety valves on vessels jacket must be replaced by ASME section VIII pressure relief valves of the proper PSI rating and capacity to be up to code.  I would also instal vacuum relief for each jacket.  We are Apollo distributors.  I am glad to sell you the correct valve for your needs.  Give me a call Monday through Thursday between 9:00 AM and 3:30 PM CST.  We will be leaving early Friday morning for the ADI Denver Conference.

so i have no idea what the valves are for either i since removed them and capped them off with triclover covers. on that manifold now are only two things one is the pressure gauge and the other is the pressure/vacuum relief valve

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On 3/9/2019 at 2:13 PM, Southernhighlander said:

George,

 

They are around $3,000.00  I don't know the exact price.  I don't do the quoting.  My COO, Susan Knapp does the quoting. if you email susan@distillery-equipment.com and ask for a quote for the 2" tube in tube heat exchanger, she will quote it for you.  You will need to loop into either your mash tun or fermenter with a mash pump and you will need a pump for pumping coolant, counterflow to the mash.  You could loop through your mash tun with the cooling jackets on and you should get a crash cooling time of less than 30 minutes.

Thank you.

Paul

Large_Heat_exchanger_1.jpg

paul, my outlets on still are 1.5" , this is 2" tube in tube chiller. is there a 1.5"?  that is awesome looking system though. i will reach out to susan for quote

cheers

 

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Silk,

Sounds about right for the total load.

Do you have a reservoir tank? That cuts the chiller size down in proportion to the amount of chilled water you precool. 

Precooling the tank with the chiller running dedicated to the mash cooling until complete will allow recovery so the chiller can be used for the still.

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2 hours ago, Georgeous said:

paul, my outlets on still are 1.5" , this is 2" tube in tube chiller. is there a 1.5"?  that is awesome looking system though. i will reach out to susan for quote

cheers

 

There is a 1.5" however you need this larger one because of the size of your mash cooker.  You will just need to use a 2"x1.5" reducers.  We have those as well.  To make sure that things will work I need to know the specs for your mash pump.  Does your mash pump have 1.5" tri clamp connections?

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21 hours ago, MG Thermal Consulting said:

Silk,

Sounds about right for the total load.

Do you have a reservoir tank? That cuts the chiller size down in proportion to the amount of chilled water you precool. 

Precooling the tank with the chiller running dedicated to the mash cooling until complete will allow recovery so the chiller can be used for the still.

i have a 600 gallon cold liquor tank that i keep at 34°F

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You need to use Float and Thermostatic Steam traps for this type of application. The one shown looks like an inverted bucket trap. I have seen and dealt with misapplied inverted bucket traps on systems where they could never work correctly and stay primed and respond. They have limited use application wise and will always be trouble on this kind of a system.

Your steam traps need permanent blow down valves installed. I am assuming your servo which appears to be in the infeed line is sized correct for the flow rate. You need air eliminators on your Steam main, and I am assuming your vessel is fitted with a vacuum breaker. Did you say you are not using a return pump of any kind? That I have never seen. Typically shutter mounted exhaut fans are not used in boiler rooms. Instead the fan should bring air into the room with a high relief zone and is generally thermostat activated and in calculation with combustion air.

Excellent info on PRVs from SH. Impressive, thanks.

There is a new Steam Blog as listed on Pro Brewer from a guy who has a good knowledge base:

https://brewingwithsteam.com/

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1 ton (of refrigeration) = 12,000 Btu/hr

50 HP chiller roughly gives you 50 tons of refrigeration at 50F supply water temperature.

Colder supply temperatures derate the performance such that 25F supply glycol/water roughly gives you only 1/2 the tons it would at 50F.

 

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5 hours ago, starcat said:

You need to use Float and Thermostatic Steam traps for this type of application. The one shown looks like an inverted bucket trap. I have seen and dealt with misapplied inverted bucket traps on systems where they could never work correctly and stay primed and respond. They have limited use application wise and will always be trouble on this kind of a system.

Your steam traps need permanent blow down valves installed. I am assuming your servo which appears to be in the infeed line is sized correct for the flow rate. You need air eliminators on your Steam main, and I am assuming your vessel is fitted with a vacuum breaker. Did you say you are not using a return pump of any kind? That I have never seen. Typically shutter mounted exhaut fans are not used in boiler rooms. Instead the fan should bring air into the room with a high relief zone and is generally thermostat activated and in calculation with combustion air.

There is a new Steam Blog as listed on Pro Brewer from a guy who has a good knowledge base:

https://brewingwithsteam.com/

Can you send me a picture of yours so I can see what your traps look like wood blowdown valves

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