Homebrew Beer Blog

There are lots of different ideas out there for how to deal with wort recirculating back into the mash, and how to add sparge water to the mash-tun. There are little spinning things, pie plates, copper contraptions. I use a very simple system that I got tipped from Sabco. It’s just a simple piece of tubing coiled along the inside of the tun.

There are numerous advantages here beyond just the pure simplicity. One issue when recirculating is you’re inevitably going to move some bits of grain. If you have some kind of “shower” system, it’s likely to get clogged with flour or husk material. Another advantage is aeration. Because the return is below the surface of the wort, but above the grain bed, it doesn’t disturb the grain bed, but also doesn’t splash, adding hot aeration. Yet another advantage is the coil creates a gentile whirlpool on top of the grain bed. This helps to limit channeling in the wort. Finally, such a device can offer higher flow-rates. This may not necessarily be desirable, but if your MLT can handle higher recirculation or sparge rates, being able to move greater volumes of liquid can both speed things up, and when using a HERMS help heat faster. The danger of course is faster you go, more likely you’re going to get channeling, but I’ve been able to open the pump up pretty well with no real penalty.

11/10/07 UPDATE - I swapped out my thermoplastic tubing for two feet of silicone tubing. I’m liking this much better. The issue with the thermoplastic is it was too ridged, and caused me some problems with different mash sizes. If I used the same sized mash each time, I could cut a piece of tubing to fit well, but when the mash was bigger or smaller, the tubing wouldn’t lay right. It would end up pointing downwards and mess up the show. So, I tried two feet of 1/2-inch silicone tubing and this works great. It’s soft and light enough to just lay on top of the mash, no matter the size. Another plus is it’s easier to manipulate for different positioning. If the mash was a certain size, the old tubing would end up pointing right at the tun thermometer, which caused reading problems. The tubing now lets me wrap it around where ever I want.

Here’s a couple pix:

Here we see the recirculation in progress. Note the gentile whirlpool

Here is the sparge water, which lets you see the tube better.