This is what makes it all turn from grain, water and yeast, to something we can enjoy.  "Oscar"   is the name of my brewery.

First let me explain the reason for the system design. I wanted a system that allowed me a high level of control over the entire process without having to have vessels of hot water being balanced on some sort of perch or frame overhead.  (I don't like the thought of scalding water above me) To do this, it needed to be a single level system. Since there would be no use of gravity for transferring liquids, 2 pumps would be required, one to move liquids from any tank to another and a second one to supply sparge water to the Mash/Lauter Tun while the main pump transferred sweet wort to the brew kettle. To make all this work, 2 manifolds would be required. One to act as the supply for the main pump which would be connected to each vessel and a second manifold to act as a return for any vessel. There are three 15 1/2 gal converted kegs, (from left to right) that consist of the Brew Pot, Liquor Pot and Mash / Lauter Tun. The whole thing is about 7' long and is mounted on four 5" casters to make it easy to move, even when full. By following the links at the top of the page, you can see how they fit into the system a little better.

Ok, Now For The HERMS Part.

This system operates on the H.E.R.M.S. principle, which is a Heat Exchanger Recirculating Mashing System. What makes this different from a conventional Infusion Mashing System, is that you can apply heat to the mash without having to add hot water, diluting the mash or applying direct heat to the tun and having the potential to scorch the grain. To make it all work, you need some sort of heat exchanger and heat source. On my system, the heat source is the Hot Liquor Pot (Center Vessel) which sets over a 170,000 BTU propane ring style burner. Inside the Liquor Pot is a Heat Exchanger comprised of just over 30' of 1/2" ID soft copper tubing that was formed by using a Argon tank as a mandrill and simply making tight wraps.

Ok, that's the Heat Exchanger part of the system, now to make it recirculate, a pump and manifold or manifolds is needed.  The Heat Exchanger has a ball valve to control the flow rate for different heating requirements for the mash as well as to prevent compaction of the mash bed. Once mashing is complete, hot water from the liquor pot can be pumped through the Heat Exchanger via the main pump to eliminate the loss of sweet wort trapped in the system and then the Sparge can begin.

This system requires CIP (Clean In Place) where chemicals are used to clean and sanitize. With hard plumbing, you can't just dump things in a bucket of bleach water for sanitizing. All of these are explained in the links specific to their relationship to the components of the system.

Well, here it is, my latest version of Oscar. Due to my travel schedule with work it took a lot longer to redesign this thing than I had planned but I think it turned out pretty well. The first test brew was done on the weekend my first grandson was born and everything worked the way it was supposed to.

This whole thing was torn apart and re-assembled with a few things in mind, reducing the total footprint of the brewery, eliminating the parts that ether were unnecessary-necessary or seldom used and to have the ability to accurately repeat brewing sessions. Over-kill, probably but for me building systems are probably as much fun as the brewing itself, ok except that you run out of beer while you are in the rebuild stage.

Some of the changes made in the updating of the system are:

These changes will be discussed in the relative areas of this site.

As of May 2004, I have added 2 PID controllers for the liquor pot and mash tun for better control. One of these PID's is used for monitoring and controlling the temperature of the of the HLT, by means of a platinum sensor mounted in the outlet side of the HERMS coil. The other PID is just an expensive temperature monitor for the Mash Tun and controls nothing at this time. When I originally started working on this design, I had the heat exchanger and a bypass loop. The controller for the Mash Tun was intended to switch a 3-way valve to ether send the wort through the heat exchanger or the bypass loop, when temperature requirements were met. After a lot of thought and a trial run, the bypass loop was removed and all temp is monitored by one controller. Now the mash liquor temperature never exceeds the intended mash temperature even during ramp ups. By doing this the enzymes are not denatured and efficiency is improved.

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