Variable Power Internal RIMS - That's a mouthful!

When it comes to electric brewing there has traditionally been 2 ways to control the temperature of your mash; HERMS - Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System and RIMS - Recirculating Infusion Mash System. Both have been around for many years, and as far as I know were invented by industrious homebrewers. The reason for the popularity of these two ingenious methods is that putting an electrical element directly in contact with the grains in your mash isn’t really a viable option. The solution has always been to pump the wort out of the mash tun, heat that wort and then reintroduce it back into the mash tun. All of this is done in order to maintain or increase the mash temperature. The HERMS method involves a heat exchanger coil in the Hot Liquor Tank that utilizes the hot water in the HLT to passively heat recirculating wort from the mash tun flowing through said coil. In most cases I have found the best way to make this work is by controlling the temperature of the HLT and figuring out the difference (or lag) of the mash tun based on the configuration. In most HERMS situations the mash tun will lag between 1 and 5 degrees behind your HLT once temps are stabilized. My experience with HERMS is that it’s great in the sense that it’s effective for maintaining the temp of the mash with absolutely no risk of scorching the wort. It’s also a relatively easy system to clean. The downside to HERMS is that using this method to actually heat the wort between temperature steps is sluggish as it’s impossible to introduce temperatures over 212 Fahrenheit to that recirculating wort. Not only are you waiting for the mash tun to heat, you are also waiting for the volume in your HLT to heat as well. RIMS on the other hand traditionally does use an electric element often situated in a copper or stainless steel tube that you recirculate the wort from the mash through. The element is usually controlled by a tuned digital controller that monitors the temperature of the wort exiting the tube and controls the output to the element in order to heat the wort to the correct temp. This system works well as you’re directly heating the wort in a small chamber with relatively good control. The RIMS method is arguably more equipment intensive than HERMS as you now have a tube, an element, a controller with a temperature probe and all of the necessary cables and hoses or tubing to connect all of this. The largest challenge with RIMS is that you run the risk of scorching your wort if your pump stalls or your mash sticks for any reason, although this can be avoided by incorporating a flow sensor (yet another component). Stalled wort in that small chamber alone with a powerful element can scorch very quickly. I also personally find that RIMS tubes can be challenging to clean.

So What is Variable Power Internal RIMS? We thought about introducing another acronym VPIRIMS, but I remember starting out as a homebrewer how intimidating all of those acronyms were to start with. Some of our electric brewing systems (and more to come soon) incorporate a mash heat system that we’ve blessed with this long title. We’ve essentially taken the RIMS tube and simply incorporated in into the mash tun. To make this effective we have channels built underneath the false bottom that route the wort that flows through the false bottom by the element prior to exiting the kettle via a valve. This results in fewer connections outside of the mash tun. It’s now 2 hoses, one from the mash tun valve to a pump and one from the pump to the return (Vorlauf) fitting at the top of the mash tun. It’s also a lot easier to clean because you can simply soak the element directly in the mash tun when you’re already cleaning that vessel anyway. Since you’re now basically dealing with the entire volume of the mash tun, there’s also less risk of scorching. So where does the variable power component come into play? RIMS elements have traditionally been smaller wattage elements for a number of reasons… They are easier to control, they’re less likely to scorch your wort, and they’re more compact requiring a smaller tube to contain them. Our system is unique in the fact that we use 2 separate controllers to control a very large element (6kw in our 1 BBL units). One of the controllers in simply a mash power controller that can effectively make that element very small in terms of power output. The other controller is the mash temperature controller that further controls the element (within it’s restricted power range) to precisely dial in the correct temperature of the wort being reintroduced into the mash tun. Could we have done all of this with a single advanced controller? Absolutely, but we felt that having it on 2 separate units was a lot more intuitive as you can simply use up and down arrows to adjust each controller from their home screen without navigating to various menus. So why did we want a larger element that required additional control? Because it offers you the opportunity to use that element by itself to heat strike water directly in the mash tun, which saves you time and steps. When you’re only running water by the element you can use that element at 100% power to quickly heat water to the desired strike temp. Once you have grain in the tun you can easily reduce the power (typically to around 10%) to avoid the possibility of scorching your wort and to give you excellent temperature control over your mash. Want more power to quickly transition between temperature rests? Just turn it up between 50% and 75% and make sure you have lots of flow at the pump. We did a lot of testing when we developed this system, and I’ve never seen a unit that offered faster and more accurate step mashes. In a nutshell it gives you a ton of control over your mash (and it’s not bad to clean).