We use six temperature sensors in the brewery for measuring the
- HLT water temperature
- Mash inlet temperatiure
- Mash tune bottom temperature
- Boil temperature
- Outlet temperature
- Electronics box/SSR temperature
We use 1.5″ thermo wells for HLT, mash bottom and boil, and custom built sensor probes for mash inlet and outlet (after cooler).
The reason for using custom probes is that the thermo wells ads latency to the measurement system that is not desirable for fast control of temperature.
All sensors are 3-wire PT100 sensors except for the electronics box/SSR-sensor that is 2-wire only.
The mash inlet sensor
The mash inlet is the sensor that needs the fastest response so here we use the bare PT100 sensor housing directly in the wort stream and insulate it with PTFE hose and an outer “shell” of 8 mm SS tubing. An 1.5″ TC end cap was modified to accommodate a quick coupling for an 8 mm pipe.
The outlet sensor
The cooler tubing is 12 mm so we used a compressed air ultra quick coupling tee for 12 mm pipe/hose from Camozzi that is capable of handling the temperatures (we think). The PT100 sensor housing is mounted in about the same way as for the mash inlet sensor.
