Lawrence Brewers Guild

I don't see how a PID will control the boil. Boilovers happen at the boiling point - whatever that is at your house.

DJ in KC wrote:I don't see how a PID will control the boil. Boilovers happen at the boiling point - whatever that is at your house.

In my case, the PID is not controlling the boil, it's just used (well, it was used, now using direct on) to bring to the boil and when close to boil, say approx 210F it will change states to a duty cycle control of 60/40 (or whatever I want) to maintain the boil.

Baron Ken wrote:

DJ in KC wrote:I don't see how a PID will control the boil. Boilovers happen at the boiling point - whatever that is at your house.

In my case, the PID is not controlling the boil, it's just used (well, it was used, now using direct on) to bring to the boil and when close to boil, say approx 210F it will change states to a duty cycle control of 60/40 (or whatever I want) to maintain the boil.

Nice!

Baron Ken wrote:Also, I've added the Blichmann AutoSparge to the mash tun to keep the level constant. No more fiddling with the pump valve.

Ok, this did not work as well as hoped.


The AutoSparge has teeth on the valve lever and the arm (see image, circle in red). Those teeth are not fine enough to produce a good setting for me.

During recirculation, I need to maintain 4 gallons of liquid in my kettle (to cover the element). I tested it with water alone (during the Fill MLT state) and after I added grain for dough in.

I needed 15.3 gallons total, but I limited it to 13 gal in the kettle to heat the strike water. I wanted 9 gallons in MLT for dough in and 4 gal in kettle. When I set the autosparge approx where it should be, the equalization of flow occurred with less than 4 gallons left in the kettle (not desired!) and more than 9 gal in MLT, so I adjusted it by 1 tooth and the equalization of flow occurred at 5.5 gallons in kettle and 7.5 gal in MLT (meaning my mash was thicker than I wanted).
I compromised by going back to the original setting and getting a little more than 9 gal in the MLT and adding the remaining 2.3 gal of total water to the kettle (note that this lowered my kettle water/wort temp and I had to reheat to mash temp).

It worked to maintain flow great during the recirculating mash. My desired water/grain ratio of 1.5 qts/lb ended up being 1.58 qts/lb with the setting of the autosparge I ended up at, so that was close enough.

I plan to grind the teeth off of the arm and just leave it rough, or knurled, and see if I can just tighten down the screw tight enough to hold it in basically any position I want it. The arm has teeth on both sides, so if grinding them off doesn't work, at least I can still use the other side.

Note however, that I did not have to fiddle with the pump valve, LOL.

EDIT: I just found this info:

The teeth on one side of the rod holder are rotated one half tooth to give more adjustment.

Doh! how did I miss that? I'll have to try again and see how flipping it over works.

I brewed my house IPA this weekend. I decided since my efficiency was around 67%-70% from previous batches to try my first party-gyle!
The IPA was a 10 gal batch with 24 lbs grain. While it was mashing I heated up 6 gal of water to around 155F in my old brew kettle (7.5 gal turkey fryer). After recirculating the mash for an hour, I ran it off into my keggle and started bringing that to a boil (BCS took over, thanks ), then closed the drain valve and poured the 6 gal water into the mash, stirred it up, vorlaufed, and drained into the now empty turkey fryer.

I got 6 gal of 1.020 wort. I steeped some various specialty grains for around 25 minutes then added 4 lbs light DME for a pre-boil gravity of 1.053. I used 0.4 oz of homegrown Zeus hops for bittering and 0.5 oz Styrian Goldings and 0.5 oz Fuggles at 15min left. I have no idea of the alpha acid content of the Zeus (I used 15% for calcs), so I'll have to see how it comes out.

Party-gyling was fun but hectic! I have 15 gal of beer in the fermenter cooler to show for my effort though.

EDIT: Oh, btw, last time I did that IPA, my efficiency was 55% for some reason, this time is was 71.2%. Guess that tighter crush may have helped. Flow during recirculation was a little slow at times (even though I added a couple handfuls of rice hulls) and had to stir up the mash.

Excellent. Having never worked with your controller, it appears that you have it close.

I must have misread your statement. If you have your control loop tuned too slow, it won't do a good job of catching process upsets and will have a slow oscillation around the setpoint or run with an offset.

Sounds like you have a nice controller and have fun with it.

Baron Ken wrote:EDIT: I just found this info:

The teeth on one side of the rod holder are rotated one half tooth to give more adjustment.

Doh! how did I miss that? I'll have to try again and see how flipping it over works.

I did some checking on the teeth and to my untrained eye, there does not appear to be any rotation of the teeth between the sides. I have emailed both Blichmann Engineering and the vendor where I bought it.

I drew a line on the image in as close to perpendicular as I could and the teeth appear straight across from each other to me. More importantly than the visual is that when I hold the 2 pieces together and then flip it over and hold them together they are still in the same position (which means the teeth aren't rotated).
Click image for larger version:
Float arm teeth



Valve lever teeth. Manual says float arm has the rotated teeth, but I took a picture of the valve piece as well.


Hoping they will just send me another float arm piece and not make my ship back the whole thing.

klickcue wrote:Excellent. Having never worked with your controller, it appears that you have it close.

I must have misread your statement. If you have your control loop tuned too slow, it won't do a good job of catching process upsets and will have a slow oscillation around the setpoint or run with an offset.

Sounds like you have a nice controller and have fun with it.

A lot of people using the BCS out of the box say the PID works great (and it appears to work ok for me as well). I will probably do the tuning procedure you outlined anyway and see if I can get a better tuning (thanks for that info, btw).

It has data logging ability, so I will probably record next brew session's temps so I can see how it behaves when it gets close to setpoint.

Baron Ken wrote:

Baron Ken wrote:EDIT: I just found this info:

The teeth on one side of the rod holder are rotated one half tooth to give more adjustment.

Doh! how did I miss that? I'll have to try again and see how flipping it over works.

I did some checking on the teeth and to my untrained eye, there does not appear to be any rotation of the teeth between the sides. I have emailed both Blichmann Engineering and the vendor where I bought it.

I drew a line on the image in as close to perpendicular as I could and the teeth appear straight across from each other to me. More importantly than the visual is that when I hold the 2 pieces together and then flip it over and hold them together they are still in the same position (which means the teeth aren't rotated).
Click image for larger version:
Float arm teeth



Valve lever teeth. Manual says float arm has the rotated teeth, but I took a picture of the valve piece as well.


Hoping they will just send me another float arm piece and not make my ship back the whole thing.

Here I go again.

While you are waiting on parts, try a rubber washer between the teeth. You will have enough friction to hold the float arm.

Remember that a float arm attached to a valve is strictly a Proportion controller. If you are removing liquid out from under the float, you will run with a lower level than the desired setpoint (Proportional offset).

Now, if you were to add Integral (I) with the Proportional (P) (which you cannot do with a float valve), the Internal (time away from setpoint) would kick in and start adding output signal to the valve to increase the level and bring the level back to setpoint. Or the other way, if above setpoint, the output signal would decrease.

The only way to control level is to match the output valve to the float valve or the opposite of matching the float valve to the other valve.

Automatic control is fun and a learning experience that will broaden the way you look at things.

The new high end electronic controllers that I work with are self tuning and learn on the fly. To a certain degree, I miss the days of a control panel with a hundred PI and PID controllers to tune.

But life is easier today, just think of your modern car with all the electronic controls working in the background. That would be a tuning nightmare!

As always, have fun with your system since it appears to be quite nice. I wish that I was so lucky since I don't even have time to brew beer on my manual system

Nice system Ken, you will get it figured out and make some of your best beer ever. Just think of it as a learning curve for your system.

klickcue wrote:Here I go again.

While you are waiting on parts, try a rubber washer between the teeth. You will have enough friction to hold the float arm.

Great idea, thanks!

John Blichmann emailed and said the one I have is an earlier model and asked where/when I got it. After calling Brewmasters Warehouse, the guy there said there were around 6 months old. But if my instructions are new (it says the teeth are rotated), then why wasn't the part new? Good question.

I'm waiting on a reply from Blichmann now. But I will try the washer.

Remember that a float arm attached to a valve is strictly a Proportion controller. If you are removing liquid out from under the float, you will run with a lower level than the desired setpoint (Proportional offset).

Now, if you were to add Integral (I) with the Proportional (P) (which you cannot do with a float valve), the Internal (time away from setpoint) would kick in and start adding output signal to the valve to increase the level and bring the level back to setpoint. Or the other way, if above setpoint, the output signal would decrease.

The only way to control level is to match the output valve to the float valve or the opposite of matching the float valve to the other valve.

Automatic control is fun and a learning experience that will broaden the way you look at things.

The new high end electronic controllers that I work with are self tuning and learn on the fly. To a certain degree, I miss the days of a control panel with a hundred PI and PID controllers to tune.

But life is easier today, just think of your modern car with all the electronic controls working in the background. That would be a tuning nightmare!

As always, have fun with your system since it appears to be quite nice. I wish that I was so lucky since I don't even have time to brew beer on my manual system

Nice system Ken, you will get it figured out and make some of your best beer ever. Just think of it as a learning curve for your system.

Thanks for the comments and info!

I didn't have a washer of suitable size on hand so I fabricated one using a dip-tube o-ring inside a post o-ring. Works great and I know it's food safe.

Not limited by the teeth now for positioning, nice!

Pics (click an image for a larger version):
Exploded view


assembled view


Installed view (note that the cotter pin is just inserted to hold it together, not bent like it should be)


What it looks like in the cooler



Outside view showing quick disconnects to the autosparge and to the drain valve (with temp probe inline)

Just out of curiosity, I noticed you are using a float valve and a single braid. So I have a question and a comment.

Are you batch or fly sparging?

The float valve is used to maintain level water during a fly sparge. If you are fly sparging with that single braid you are leaving a lot of goodies in your tun resulting in poor eff. caused by channeling. I dont see the need to use a float valve for a batch sparge. The ideal setup for your tun is to build a properly designed manifold using your tun's geometry and fly sparge with that float valve.

Blktre wrote:Just out of curiosity, I noticed you are using a float valve and a single braid. So I have a question and a comment.

Are you batch or fly sparging?

The float valve is used to maintain level water during a fly sparge. If you are fly sparging with that single braid you are leaving a lot of goodies in your tun resulting in poor eff. caused by channeling. I dont see the need to use a float valve for a batch sparge. The ideal setup for your tun is to build a properly designed manifold using your tun's geometry and fly sparge with that float valve.

I am not doing either (no-sparge).
I recirculate the entire pre-boil volume between the mash and the kettle. At the end of the mash, I just drain what is in the cooler back to the kettle. Note that I need to maintain at least 4 gallons of liquid in the kettle at all times to keep the heater element covered. I may run into problems maintaining that 4 gal requirement when I do a high SG beer in that it would be a thick mash (maybe too thick depending on grain bill). This would probably only be a problem for a 5 gallon batch. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The float valve just maintains the liquid level in the mash tun so that during recirculation I don't go below 4 gallons in the kettle.

EDIT: I suppose you could technically call my no-sparge a type of batch sparging. But I don't.

I brewed my first wheat beer yesterday. As I was brewing it started hailing for about 30 seconds or so, so the beer is aptly named: Hail of a Wheat!

I added 3 handfuls of rice hulls. I didn't have a problem with a stuck mash, but my liquid amounts were lower than I was shooting for. I forgot to top up the water in the kettle (pre-boil) after draining the cooler, so I missed my pre-boil volume by 0.5 gal and my post-boil volume by 1 gal. Funnily enough I did hit my target SGs (because my target efficiency was 70% and my actual was 64%). I ended up with 4.5 gal in the carboy.

Comments/questions:
I didn't account for water absorption of the rice hulls and I used whole hops this time instead of pellets (not much, so not much difference in water absorbed by the hops).

I boiled off more than I wanted (1.25 gal over 60 mins), so I may adjust the boil rate. I'm using a 60% duty cycle to maintain the boil and it was fairly vigorous, so I may try to tune that down some or I may just adjust my expected water amounts for next time.

My mash efficiency was a little lower than normal (64% vs 67-70%). Do wheat beers typically mash with lower efficiency?

I milled both the barley and wheat together using my normal mill spacing. Does wheat need a different crush than barley?

Thanks.

Funny name for the beer, I like it.

I still think your low eff is caused by the single braid regardless of your no sparge technique. Since you are using a pump to recirc. the entire mash without stirring the mash to suspend the sugars I think you are getting some channeling. If you have $15 and 45 min. of time, I would seriously think about a manifold. Copper or CPVC. Then you wouldn't have to worry about rice hulls again.