All In One Brewery...

[James Squire]

Hello all,

Following the thread on Das Braumeister my tinkering mind has got to thinking... (Im sure I've seen this idea shot down before but cannot remember why...)

What would be the potential issues with a HLT/MLT/Kettle in one system?

Eg.

50L S/S vessel
Elect heating elements
20L Grain Basket
Tap at bottom
Pump for recirculation
Sparge arm

Please tread lightly and enlighten me on the issues with the following process...

Preheat water to mash temps
Mash thin with the basket submerged in the 50L vessel
Then raising the basket slightly above the wort level and recirculate wort with pump, rinsing with sparge arm
Begin boil
Immersion chill and dump into fermentor

Im sure there's holes in the plan being that the norm is to have the independant vessels, but the idea of only needing small amounts of room is attractive to me...

Please shoot the plan down nicely!

JS

PS. Excuse the crappy diagram....

 

[Lukes]

James,
I won't shoot it down but I think you will still need 2 vessels.
(you can't mash and prep sparge water in the same vessel).​

Check out this system from our Euro friends (you will need to google translate)
space saver brewery

it's from the brewzilla web site what has some great pics of systems

Hope it helps.


Luke​

 

[Ash in Perth]

it would be fine aside from a few small issues like these:

-It may be hard to get clear wort from simply pulling the basket out of the mash and rinsing the grain. Unless the pump is contantly pumping from the bottom to the grain bed. This would also keep the temp more constant and increase efficiency.

-Mashing thin my make it hard to make very malty beers, although there may be a way around this if it is designed well

-doesnt look quite as flashy as a 3 vessel SS setup

 

[Boots]

Scary as this may sound, i was actually thinking along the same lines recently.

I came up with:

- inner S/S mesh basket for the grain (something like termimesh or similar)
- outlet on the side with a dip tube going down to the bottom (so can be gas or electric)
- Heat strike water
- put grain basket in and add grain stir etc etc
- use the "no sparge method" i.e add all of the sparge water without dropping out the first runnings. Stir for a good 5 minutes and ricirc (leaving grain basket fully submerged)
- Lift out the grain basket (this was the problem i thought would be the real sticking point due to weight - you'd prob have to use a pully or something?)
- start the boil process

Problems:

- heating the extra water for the nosparge would mean you've still got a second vessel ... making the whole thing a waste of time !!!

and that's when i forgot about it.

EDIT: although. with a direct fire vessel (as it would be) you could add the "nosparge" water and then just heat it all up to mash out maybe ....

 

[Shunty]

I cant see a reason why it wouldn't work, provided you are willing to accept low efficiency.

You could mash at normal water:grain to avoid messing up enzyme activity, then dump in water to make up pre-boil volume, recirculate the wort, lift out the grain and start the boil.

An inline gas/electric water heater would help a lot - could even heat sparge water on the way in.

 

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

There is a brewer in Gidgegannup, WA who uses a system very similar to the one described here. He makes and sells fresh wort kits.
Recharge has used them, and maybe able to tell us more about the equipement used.
I have tasted the beer, not fantastic but not crap either.

 

[PistolPatch]

JS. I so like the way you are thinking.

As far as I can see, the question you are asking is, "Can I mash 5kg grain in 30 litres of water at around 65 degrees without detriment?"

If yes, then one vessel will be fine and you have made a brilliant breakthrough. Unfortunatley, I don't know the answer but am certainly hoping it is, 'Yes!'

Am hoping some people here do have a definitive answer. Whether yeah or nay, your thinking is very good.

Cheers
PP

 

[James Squire]

...It may be hard to get clear wort from simply pulling the basket out of the mash and rinsing the grain. Unless the pump is contantly pumping from the bottom to the grain bed. This would also keep the temp more constant and increase efficiency.

...doesnt look quite as flashy as a 3 vessel SS setup

I was thinking along the lines of constant recirc of wort to keep the temp constant and also help with clarity.

Nah, it wont look as brew 'blingy' as a 3 vessel unfortunately but it would be a lot handier...

From what I can tell, the issues are with:

-clarity, cloudy initial runnings which will hopefully be combated by recirc of wort on top of grain bed all the time creating a good filter...

and

-as mentioned by PP, is there particular reasons why you can't mash in a high amount of liquor...

-efficiency...

Still yet to be completely blown out of the water on this... :beer:

Cheers to that!

JS

Edit: PS PistolPatch... Here's to hoping for a 'YES!'

 

[mimerbryg]

Preheat water to mash temps

OK

Mash thin with the basket submerged in the 50L vessel

Use mash-schedule. E.g. 58C for 15 min, 68C for 60 min, 78C for 10 min (or whatever your recipe is)
Stir only at the beginning. When the malt is wet, start the pump

Then raising the basket slightly above the wort level and recirculate wort with pump, rinsing with sparge arm

Raise the basket slowly and add 78C water until you reach the final quantity + the the amount of water that evaporate during boil. (We use 15 min for raise and sparging)

Begin boil
Immersion chill and dump into fermentor

This is OK

To keep the hops from going in the fermenter we have a bazookascreen in the bottom.
The worth is very clear as you can see

If interesseted I can upload some pictures showing the system disassembled

Kind regards
Flemming

PS
You could also visit this site http://humleland.dk/Opstillingafgrej.htm which show the system.
Follow the links in the left:
Mskning = mashing
Sparging = Spargin
Urtkogning = worthboil
Nedkling og grtilstning = cooling and add of yest

 

[jimmysuperlative]

mimerbryg, great posts ...and its looks like very good website.

...trouble is I can't find a "page translator" that does a good enough job at converting your site (from Danish?) to English :blink:

Can you suggest a good language translator to use? I'd really enjoy reading more about your setup.

Cheers ...and welcome to the forum

 

[mimerbryg]

mimerbryg, great posts ...and its looks like very good website.
...trouble is I can't find a "page translator" that does a good enough job at converting your site (from Danish?) to English :blink:
Can you suggest a good language translator to use? I'd really enjoy reading more about your setup.

Cheers ...and welcome to the forum

Unfortunately it is not my site. If interessted I could ask the webmaster to translate it to english (or maybe collect my own photos and make a page myself B)
The only page I know, claiming to translate online from danish is InterTran, and the translation is bad.
But the principles are as drawn by James above.

 

[jimmysuperlative]

Unfortunately it is not my site. If interessted I could ask the webmaster to translate it to english (or maybe collect my own photos and make a page myself B)

Yes, I think you should :super:

 

[James Squire]

So I guess based on mimerbryg's experience this is a feasable idea then....

Thanks for the experienced input mimerbryg, your help is very much appreciated.

What are the detrimental effects on efficiency and beer quality using this method? Are there any?

If not then rock on with the mini home brewery! :beerbang:

JS

 

[James Squire]

Further reading has led me to believe that mashing thin like this will take longer to complete the conversion process....

Perhaps also as Ash has said make a less malty beer too....

Are these two things true? Any other ill effects? As Ash has also eluded to is the maltiness issue somehow avoidable?

Regards,

JS

 

[PistolPatch]

This idea had me thinking all weekend and so I did a bit of research and PM'ed two experienced brewers. From all this, I think the idea is worth a try.

The first question to be answered is, "Why has there not been more of a response to this thread?" Two possible answers I can think of so far. The idea could be obviously stupid or no one really knows the answer. (In this particular situation a thing called cognitive dissonance also sets in which doesn't help much. Explaining this here will also probably not help much!!!)

From my enquiries, the idea is not obviously stupid. Two possible problems were posed to me (at least one mentioned above) but the sources were unsure as to the extent of these problems. Clarity and astringency were the major two unknown problems put forward. Clarity can be dealt with through other means so, unless anyone else knows that astringency will be a major prob, I'd love to give it a go. If it works, ther are major advantages for those aspiring to AG.

I've PM'ed JS with my naive willingness to possibly, 'take another one for the team,' and he's all for it although he's uncertain about me not having a pump! Here's what I propose...

Recipe: Will test the idea initially with Ross's Scwartzbier recipe but using US56 yeast. The worst you can get out of this is a very drinkable beer. Also I know what this beer should taste like and can always slip the end result to Ross and a few others that live up here to double-check the end result.

Equipment: I'm not going to use a pump or a container to hold the grain. Instead, I will use one of Ross's jumbo hopsocks (maybe 2) and my 70lt kettle though a 40-50 lt kettle would probably suffice.

Process: Want to adchieve a strike of 66 but using a volume of about 32 litres. (Will edit these figures later...) Am guessing here that with such a high initial volume, that the 32 litres of water should be heated to about 71 degrees.

Drop in hop-sock/s of grain and jiggle/stir? Making sure that the grain is loose enough in the hop-socks can only be guessed at until the day but I'm sure I can borrow enough hop-socks (maybe brewers as well!) to work this out on the day. Temperature maintainence can only be guessed at as well but hopefully we can get it right enough on the first go to make a second experiment unneccessary.

Mash for maybe longer than an hour and a half? (Should buy some litmus paper.) Jiggle hop-socks quite a bit at so far undetermined times to ensure sugars are rinsed into mash water. (Clarity will be atrocious but will skim etc. as much as possible and filter final beer.) Remove the bags and then raise to boil.

All else as normal.

Any Thoughts? Yet another long post sorry! (Thank Jye - just had to drink his 9.3% beer!) If the above is going to be a waste of time, then as JS said, the feedback would be really appreciated NOW, not later! If anyone has any ideas on how to improve the hastily devised process above without using a pump or secondary container, please throw your thoughts in. If any locals would like to assist with equip, expertise or supplying beer, well, that would be really good. Unless someone advises that the above is really stupid then I wouldn't mind having a bash at it on Sat or Sun.

Still hoping JS!

Cheers
PP

 

[razz]

PP, I'm not a local, but I can lend moral support. Go you good thing !

 

[poppa joe]

PP..
Dunno what keeps your hop sock spread open...To keep the grains spread..
But spend 50cents at Vinnies for a plastic coleander..put it in bottom..
I only spent 20 cents..small coleander..Smaller tun ..Haven't used it yet ..but looks like it is going to work to spread my sock.I also cut another coleander up (cut a hole in middle used it to keep top part of sock open)
Hop sock==Grain sock..

P.S. Barley Crusher may be available..
Cheers
PJ

 

[PistolPatch]

Good news on this!

Had yesterday off and was able to do a mini experiment. I had 1.3kg of crushed grain lying around in my fridge too old to be used for a proper brew. Using Ross's hopsock I mashed and boiled it. Here's the results.

Procedure

1. Mashed 1.3kg of grain in 7.8 litres of water pre-heated to 71 degrees. Struck at 64 so immediately raised to 66 through force of habit.

2. Mixed up grain in hop sock vigorously quite often during first 20 minutes and then every 15 minutes thereafter. Did this as grain was tight in the bag. Refractometer readings were 1041 at 55 minutes. 1044 at 80 min. 1047 at 100 min. As a matter of interest and because the grain was so tight I kept the mash going.... 1049 at 120 min and 1049 at 150 min. (Unfortunately, some of the earlier readings will be inaccurate as I probably didn't cool the wort for long enough in the refractometer.)

3. Mashed out 5.25 litres at 1049 which gives efficiency into boiler of 70%. I'm not too sure how this figure translates to, "Efficiency into Fermenter." Hopefully there's not much change???

4. Boiled for an hour just to see how much scum formed and how much trub was left.

Comments

Clarity: No worries at all. Hardly any scum. As for trub, I'm guessing that it was actually far less than from a normal mash. The hop sock is 250 micron mesh (0.25mm) so when you think about it, not much is going to get through.

Efficiency: No worries, I think (see 3 above)???

Weird how the grain retained 2.5lts of water and this was after squeezing the bag. Am hoping the grain was measured accurately at the shop. Couldn't be too far off though.

Problems/Solutions

The grain was quite tight in the hop sock hence the reason why I actively stirred it up so often and extended the mash time out to 2.5 hours. Also temp in the middle of grain was always about 2-3 degrees lower than the surrounding water. Ross's jumbo hopsock will not make a difference either as the diameter of the jumbo is the same as the small hopsock. To solve these problems and to get back more to Jame's orioginal idea, I'm hoping Ross can source me a wider diameter bag. By fixing the above, the mash time problem should be solved as well.

Poppa: I think a grain bag will release too much husk into the brew and therefore tannins in the boil. Like your colander idea but watch what sort of plastic it is, i.e. toxicity. Ross's hopsock has a nylon ring to hold it open. You can see a pic here
Clarit

James: I know the hopsock is a little off your original idea but certainly the same principles apply. My thinking is that the hopsock material is going to save a lot of problems, work, money and cleaning. And you need no pump which is a huge expense. Cool! The container with holes and/or mesh also worries me a little as I'm guessing that it would be time-consuming but, really, I have no experience to base that comment on.

Finally

It looks as though it will be up to us newer AG'ers to experiment with this one. After talking with some more experienced brewers, they can't see anything wrong with the principles. Because they are already set up though, there is no real advantage for them to experiment with this method. The main criticism was the amount of unknowns in the idea. The above experiment seems to have got rid of some of the main ones.

The reason I'm so into this idea is two-fold. If this works, I can actually throw kettle, sock, burner and bottle into my van and brew while I work. How cool is that?

Secondly, if brewing in my small apartment, this is going to save a lot of space, set-up time and active time etc., required for a brew.

I also think that this would be a brilliant way for those wanting to give AG a bash as it's very simple and very inexpensive. Not saying it would work for all beers but at this stage can't see why not.

Hopefullly Ross can source me a wide diameter sock and I'll be able to do a full scale test run soon. If the first experiment works OK, I'll follow it up with a double brew day. One brew with this method and another identical brew using traditional equipment.

Once again excuse the long post. Seems to be that I write the same length posts whether sober or not - lol!

Thanks again James for raising the topic.

Cheers
Pat

 

[James Squire]

All sounds good Pat,

Possibly with 2.5Hr mash in small volume of water you may have lost a bit more not only to the absorbtion but perhaps to evaporation also.... Not too sure.

Sounds too good though mate. Mashing ratio of 6L water per Kg grist should indicate whether there are any flaws in the plan, coversion seems good although as expected mashing thin took a couple of hours to get there...

Its great to have someone else so enthusiastic about this because as you say, for the new brewer looking to move to AG, this is a great option to explore. Cheap and not too space consuming, gives you the practice with the process and helps you to understand it all, also can be a modular step up to a full system because whatever is used as the vessel for this system can always be used as a boiler or HLT if you expand to a three vessel system.

Cheers for now, keep up the good work Pat,

JS

 

[apd]

I'm about to set up something similar. I've taken my inspiration from here:

http://brewingtechniques.com/library/backi...schmidling.html