Advice On Water Volumes With 2v Setup.

[Truman42]

Thinking about doing my next brew with 2 vessels, my urn and a stainless pot instead of my usual BIAB. I was going to bring my water to strike temp in my urn then drain it into my pot and dough in. Then recirculate my water through the urn and back to the pot to maintain temps and also to form a grain bed, during the mash.

My urn is 18 litres and my pot is 20. When I put a batch size of 18 litres into brewmate it says my strike water is 24.9 litres.

But I obviously wont fit 24.9 litres into my urn. Should I split this and put half into each vessel and then dough in and keep recirculating until mash out? With grain absorption I will probably get around 17 litres in my urn pre boil. Then I could add extra to batch sparge and add this to the boil to allow for evap loss??

What are your thoughts??

Appreciate the advise. Ive read a bit about 2V brewing but just not sure using my system and volumes as most of what Ive read is for larger batches.

 

[IainMcLean]

Just off the top of my head I think you'd be looking at small batch sizes with that setup... once the first run off is in the urn and the mash is still sitting the pot you've nowhere to heat the next sparge water....

 

[Wolfy]

Adjust the figures in Brewmate.

My spreadsheet shows that for 5kg grain, you'll retain about 7-8L water, and for and a 30L pre-boil volume, that the strike water can range from 12.5L (for a thick British style infusion mash) to 16.25L (for the 'ideal' mash) to 25L (for a German style thin mash). So you should easily be able to adjust things so that the strike water will work with your system.

 

[Fat Bastard]

Just off the top of my head I think you'd be looking at small batch sizes with that setup... once the first run off is in the urn and the mash is still sitting the pot you've nowhere to heat the next sparge water....

Why not run the mash into a bottling bucket, then return the runnings to the kettle when it's free with the remainder into the urn for boiling? You can jigger around with the strike water volume in BM until the mash will fit in your kettle and just sparge to get the pre boil volume you need to split between the urn and the pot. Or just the pot. Or urn. Or howeber you want to work it.

It's similar to my batch sparge no-lift solid sided BIAB process I muck around with, but I've got a 36 litre kettle and a 8 litre urn for the sparge water.

 

[bradsbrew]

Your urn is only 18L you are never going to get a batch of 18L out of it.

But!

If you fill your urn to a bit under capacity to bring to strike temp then run off 13 or so L to your pot and mash in. Then boil the kettle and add a few more litres probably 8 of water to the urn, then it will be a matter of balancing/restricting your return ball valve so you dont send it back to your urn to quick causing overflow. Once your recirc mash is done and youve done your mash out step, take your bag out and squeeze as usual and recirc for ten at mash out temp then send 15L to the urn and the rest to your pot put your pot on the stove and turn your urn up. Split your hops accordingly for boiling etc.

I have never tried this and its just an idea. In fact I am just waving my **** in the wind. When I first started AG I done what I had to until I had 3V. My first mash tun was a 4L water cooler h34r:

Cheers

 

[Truman42]

Just off the top of my head I think you'd be looking at small batch sizes with that setup... once the first run off is in the urn and the mash is still sitting the pot you've nowhere to heat the next sparge water....

With Biab I usually end up with 16-17 litres in my fermenter because I have a higher gravity wort so dilute it down with boiled water at EOB and I dunk sparge twice during the boil using a 2 litre kettle, and use this to allow for evaporation loss adding the last bit with about 30 mins to go to flame out. So my loss isnt that great. But it can be a PITA boiling the kettle all the time and sparging twice, all while having to add the hops etc.

@Bradsbrew..Good idea but we have induction cooktop and my pot doesn't work with it. I said before it was Stainless, its actually a Big W pot so is Ali.

 

[MaltyHops]

Your urn is only 18L you are never going to get a batch of 18L out of it.
...

Actually, I think it's quite possible - through boil water topping up or over gravity
brewing. If you're happy with the immediate post-mash gravity, you could just
top up the boil some minutes before end of the boil and finish with around the
urn's capacity.

Then (though a bit of diikin around) you could store some of the mash runnings
in a cube, boil one lot of wort and transfer some of that into the (cleaned) mash
pot so the remaining wort can be boiled ... etc.

You'd have to use software like bersmith etc to calculate hopping rates for the
expected gravity.

 

[Bribie G]

Over-gravity brewing is definitely the way to go, sounds like you've got it nailed (as do CUB, Tooheys..... )

Edit: without going into too much boring detail, when I do double BIAB batch I mash #1 in urn and #2 in an esky then transfer the wort fromthe esky into the urn for a boil when the wort from #1 has been cubed so the urn is free.
The esky is nominally 37L but that means you can fit in 37L of **** up to the lid, so the actual LIQUID capacity is only about 32L

No problem, I just do #2 a fair bit over gravity and dilute the boil using spargings from #2. If I had a smaller urn like yours, I would just gradually add the spargings into the urn as it boils down. Get nice beer. :beerbang:

 

[Truman42]

What about if I was to mash with the full 24 litres that BM says as my total water required but split it between the two vessels (12 in each) and keep recirculating. Then at mash out pump what I can fit into the urn pre boil and leave the rest in the pot recirculating for my first sparge? So similar to what bradsbrew said but instead of pulling the bag and boiling the pot as well just keep the pot water to add during the boil.

 

[Truman42]

If I had a smaller urn like yours, I would just gradually add the spargings into the urn as it boils down. Get nice beer. :beerbang:

Thats exactly what I do, my first sparge goes in pre-boil and takes my volume from 12 to 16 litres. Then my second sparge goes in during the boil but with no less than 30 mins to go. But I really need something bigger than a 2 litre kettle to use for sparge water. Have another 18 litre urn at work but it needs some work.

 

[MaltyHops]

What about if I was to mash with the full 24 litres that BM says as my total
water required ..

Isn't the 24L mainly to account for the boil off in order to end up with 18L?
(ie. for brewers who want to minimise work - put it all in one pot and boil
once).

Then as long as you can get enough of the sugars out of the grain, you've got
some flexibility in how much strike water to use. Plan for how much volume you
end up with re. OG & IBUs.

 

[kelbygreen]

is any one else confused or did I browse over this to quick?? you want you volume to be 18lts?? thats fine but you have a 18lt pot? so to get 18lts and say you get 10% evaporation and 2lts trub loss thats 1.8lts for the evap and 2 lts for trub so you need 22lts there abouts in the pot before you boil. Now you need room for boil overs so you would need about 28lt pot to do a 18lt batch.

Also have you thought of the grain?? you split it between 2 vessels and thats 12 lts in each of just water. Not sure how much grain you got or how to work out how much grain takes up in a vessel. But I mash in with about 28lts of water with 11+kg of grain and when I mash out (about 20lts) my 70lt MT is just about as full as I would ever want it. So at a guess 1kg of grain will take up almost 2lts??

 

[Truman42]

is any one else confused or did I browse over this to quick?? you want you volume to be 18lts?? thats fine but you have a 18lt pot? so to get 18lts and say you get 10% evaporation and 2lts trub loss thats 1.8lts for the evap and 2 lts for trub so you need 22lts there abouts in the pot before you boil. Now you need room for boil overs so you would need about 28lt pot to do a 18lt batch.

With Biab I usually end up with 16-17 litres in my fermenter because I have a higher gravity wort so dilute it down with boiled water at EOB and I dunk sparge twice during the boil using a 2 litre kettle, and use this to allow for evaporation loss adding the last bit with about 30 mins to go to flame out. So my loss isnt that great.

 

[kelbygreen]

Fair enough but why would mash in volume be so high? or are you mashing in with full volume? If you put your MT volume into BS it will tell you if you will overflow it with the mash schedule.

These are the reasons I went to full volume 3v. I was trying to rack my brains to come up with things that would work and half the times they didnt or I just could never get the efficiency others claim to get from BIAB. Not sure if they calculate it different or I am doing something wrong but still only get 75% with 3v and step mashes and fly sparging but better then 62% I had with BIAB. I know what I get and my systems worked out to that so thats all that matters.

Thats all that should matter to you truman, if your happy with what your doing dont change it, if your not happy then look into other methods. I never liked BIAB from the start although I never done it in its true form only maxi BIAB and then used a bag in a esky as a manifold so to say that was biggest waste of time lol

 

[Truman42]

Im actually getting really good efficiency with BIAB. Usually around 80-85%. But Im not always happy with the final outcome. My first ever brew I did (The stone and wood clone) in my 20 litre pot, tasted great but I didnt sparge and only ended up with 9 litres. Since using my urn a black IPA I did turned out great and that was a high gravity brew with a 5.2 kg grain bill, but the rest always seem to have a taste I don't like.
Not always the same either, so I wanted to try something different and see what my results are. I thought now that I have a pump doing a recirculated mash and filtering might help improve things. And its fun to experiment. Its all learning..

I have read on here that BIAb and squeezing the bag during sparging doesn,t extract tannins like some thought it did, but if I take out that procedure and batch sparge instead of dunk sparge I can at least rule that out.

I was going to mash in with the full volume split between the two vessels so 12 litres in each and recirculate that from the pot to the run while the urn hold stemp and allows me to increase the temp at mash out. Then pump to the urn to fill at pre boil and use whats left in the pot to batch sparge to add during the boil. Probably not standard procedure but I suppose we all try different things and see what works with the equipment we have.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate the help and advice.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

What about a bucket in bucket lauter?

see my sig for pics.

I can add the sparge runnings as the boil is going. This would work well for you and the lower volume of your urn. But It'd take a fair period of time to do.

Goomba