BCS temp overshoot in manual mode
Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 3:59 pm
I am very frustrated. I have brewed with the BCS setup 5 times now and it has worked pretty well. Today, I set everything up, mixed up the water from distilled for both mash and sparge, measured and added salts, brought the water up to temperature and doughed in. I am still using the BCS in manual mode, setting a temperature and checking the control box. Everything was going great, I noticed that the temp had gone down a bit more than usual - I has a set point of 152 and it was at 148. The burner was on, so I figured it would get back up to temp in a minute and all would be fine. I walk away for a few minutes and come back - there is steam coming from the lid of the mash tun. The burner was still on and the temp was saying 148. I opened the lid of the mash tun to find the grains being boiled. I hit the all stop button and the burner turned off, I also noticed that the temperature went from 148 to 180. I saw boiling water so know this temp was off. I then could not access the BCS and tried to reset it. It is set with a fixed IP address. I still could not reach it after several power cycles. I then checked the DHCP server log on my router and found that it was picking up a new dynamic address. I logged in to this address and the BCS seemed normal other than the fact that it had somehow decided to get a dynamic address instead of using it's hard coded one. Since the mash was probably boiling for 15 minutes or so, I decided to dump it and get new grains. I did this process again and had a similar problem after about 5 minutes - the temp setpoint was 152 and the reading was 168 - the burner was still on. I didn't want to dump to batches (about $70 worth of grain and distilled water) so I turned off the burner and set the HLT to heat the prepared sparge water to 152. A little while later, the hlt is boiling and now I have to wait for it to cool down.
I'm not sure what's going on here. I am very adept at technical/electrical things (20 years in I.T. and engineering). I have used this set up successfully in the past on several occasions. I suppose it's possible to have a bad unit but - it has been working and is only about 6 months old. Any insights would be appreciated.
Is there a warranty on it? I don't think I want to use it again and I might just switch to a ranco type setup rather than going through this hassle on a brew day.
I'm not sure what's going on here. I am very adept at technical/electrical things (20 years in I.T. and engineering). I have used this set up successfully in the past on several occasions. I suppose it's possible to have a bad unit but - it has been working and is only about 6 months old. Any insights would be appreciated.
Is there a warranty on it? I don't think I want to use it again and I might just switch to a ranco type setup rather than going through this hassle on a brew day.