Gravity feed works, but I want to go to something better. I'd like to get some information on different pumps and where you've bought them from. Maybe you found something that works great. I have some fish tank pumps I was thinking of trying, although I'm really not sure if they pack enough punch. Just some thoughts or experiences would be great to hear. Hope it would help others as well, not just me. Cheers!
If you want to move hot wort, you need to go with a food grade pump. Magnetic drive to that there is no chance of oil contamination, and no bearing or seal to hide nasties. Look for the flow rate you think you need. Look for the pressure head it can handle in feet. I have a March with the old head design, brass. A chugger with the high flow SS head and impeller is a newer purchase.
Chugger pumps are great. They function just like March pumps, but for 75% of the cost. I would recommend getting it with the SS head. One or two times removing and reattaching your elbow and ballvalve fittings will strip out the plastic. Personally, I recommend going with all SS and camlock quick disconnects for your tubing; it is much easier than barbed fittings and hose clamps. Pond pumps work for other functions in the brew house like cycling cleaning fluid through keg lines, cycling ice water through chillers, making soothing bubbly sounds in the background on brewday.
Mine tends to seize pumping boiling liquid (or should I say it airlocks), the March does not. I still haven't got that worked out. I need to make a stand for it so that the outlet is pointing up.
I'm looking to use the pump to fly-sparge, and then to use it for pumping through the chiller plate. It's going to go from the boil into a filter bed of hops, then I'll pump it from there through the plate chiller and into my fermentation container. I'm going to buy an oxygen tank to introduce the oxygen into the cooled wort so I don't have to worry about getting contaminants in there by oxygenating it by other methods.
I would echo these thoughts. I have a chugger pump to push my wort through the chiller, and it has worked flawlessly for me. I have the SS head and would be gunshy on plastic. I use a pond pump to recirculate ice water through the plate chiller, which I prefer many times over my old method of simply running hose water through it. The chiller works so much better when recirculating ice water, and obviously that is doubly true in the summer when ground water temps rise.
This is the po-man's pump to recirculate hot wort: http://www.amazon.com/temperature-1...pebp=1436844258785&perid=1QSGD84KPF6NRCEPH3RH It is ridiculously small (2.5" x 1.7") but with a price to match. First impression wasn't much . . . but two years later it's still pumpin' along. Gravity feeds my chiller and this little guy recirculates wort back to the kettle.
That looks like a great sparge water pump...not positive I would feel safe (leaching plastics) using it with acidic 210F wort since it says safe for water & oil...but it does say food grade, so again, not sure. I have a march pump that is about 8 years old and still works beautifully...it running like 50% of my brewday since I run a RIMS tube during the whole mash and use it for all my cleaning.
I'm glad someone did it. I was expecting that joke earlier Thanks for the replies. Back to research. If you have any more comments please feel free to leave them. I like that little pump, it would be great for sparge water. That's actually kind of what I was looking for. I don't need high pressure for sparge as my sparge arm is a copper tube that pretty evenly drips water onto the grain bed, it just doesn't quite keep up with the sparge out like I'd want it to, (I always want better) so I wanted to see what a little pressure would do.
Why would you be removing these fittings? I installed SS QDs when it was new and never removed them. No risk of stripping or cross threading anything. FWIW, my March pump has a brass head. I retrofitted it with a high flow impeller a few years ago.
I originally used brass fittings to save $, and only did a single line out. I had issues with cavitation so I went to a T on the outlet with a bleedvalve and switched it all over to SS.
