Herms Coils

Are you looking for an upgrade in your home brewing station? HERMS stands for Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System. It relies on a heat exchanger or the hot liquor tank wherein a metal coil is placed. While it is common to use the hot liquor tank as a heat exchanger, some home brewers use an external vessel that is filled with heating water where the coils are immersed. With this setup, the wort is pumped through the coil thereby picking the heat from the water surrounding the coil and returned to the lauter tun.

Building your own HERMS system is a great way to regulate the temperature of the wort. This kind of project requires the use of coils. There are basically two types of coils available for home brewers, the standard and the small. The standard 25' coils are usually 15.5" in diameter or bigger and 7" high. They work with all types of kettles that have an inner wall diameter of 16-inches. The small 25' coils are 11.25" in diameter and 9.5" high and can work in smaller brew kettles that only have a 10-gallon capacity.

Creating your own heat exchange system is a challenging but rewarding project. Stainless Steel HERMS coils are inert so they don't react to the chemical properties of the wort.