Big Beers For The Braumeister

[Florian]

How about if you did a standard mash with the 50L malt pipe (10kg of grain) and run off wort like you say into a cube. Then do another batch with the small malt pipe with 5kg of grain then blend the 2. Then you would end up with roughly 55-60L in the kettle after blending. That would get you 15kg of grain and a fairly high gravity.

EDIT: No sparging would be done either. Efficiency would be high as well.

Yep, that's what I meant with 'short' and 'long' mash earlier, might have not been clear enough.

Another thing to consider with a re-iterated mash in the same vessel is your mash temp. Obviously if you go all the way up to mash out and then want to start your 2nd mash with a protein rest, you would have to wait until it cools down.
Would probably be easiest to stick to one or two steps somewhere in the sixties, or add some cold water or even ice before the 2nd mash.

 

[Ross]

Gav,

I'd just be adding some dry malt to get the gravity you are chasing, it's a common practise commercially & cartainly makes hitting your targets easy.


cheers ross

 

[Thefatdoghead]

Yep, that's what I meant with 'short' and 'long' mash earlier, might have not been clear enough.

Another thing to consider with a re-iterated mash in the same vessel is your mash temp. Obviously if you go all the way up to mash out and then want to start your 2nd mash with a protein rest, you would have to wait until it cools down.
Would probably be easiest to stick to one or two steps somewhere in the sixties, or add some cold water or even ice before the 2nd mash.

I was thnking after mashout dump the first batch of X L into a vessel then start the next mash with the 20L short pipe.

 

[Thefatdoghead]

Gav,

I'd just be adding some dry malt to get the gravity you are chasing, it's a common practise commercially & cartainly makes hitting your targets easy.


cheers ross

Gday Ross,
It's a good idea and would save a fair bit of stuffing around. Just have to try it and see how the flavour comes up. If I used liquid munich extract instead of DME to replace the 3kg of munich in my recipe would the the flavour be the same. I have Weyermann munich 1, do you have the equivalent malt extract?

 

[lickapop]

I did my first brew on a 20L yesterday.
It was a belgium tripel and was a bit of a learning curve
La chouffe clone i tried to scale from here- http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic....f=4&t=54087

5.5kg of boh pils
500mls belgium candy syrup
500g sugar (yet to be added in a couple of days)
30g Cascade @75min
25g Saaz @15min
15g Coriander @15min
WL3522

I started with 20L in the BM

Anyway lol I added 1/3 malt before I remembered to quit the pump on mash in, so I lost a bit of grain over the sides. I took the MP out again and scooped out the grain that was lost in the main vessel and started again.

I then had a couple of wort fountains which I left because at the time I was busy mowing the lawn and washing my hair..and couldnt figure how to pause it at the time...
and then I dont know WTF i was thinking but I did a 7L grain rinse??

Long story short... I got an OG of 1062 and still have to add the sugar but next time I do this brew, I think it will be better if I use MHB idea and start out with 5kg of grain into 20L and do maybe a 2-3 litre rinse which should get me about 20L preboil and a OG of 1070-80 in 18L into the fermenter....i think

It will be interesting to see how your tripel goes MHB

Dr smurtos classic in the BM today...how easy is it?? I can wash my dogs and brew at the same time

 

[MHB]

Guys

Something Ihave been meaning to post every time the term Fountain appears.

Just loosenthe wing nut a bit.

A bit of thewort will bypass under the malt pipe seal, after 10 minutes or so the malt willhave mover around and you can nip it back up.

Mark

 

[lickapop]

nice one...but you should have posted that snippet like 2 days ago..lol

 

[dmerrick]

Now he tells us!

 

[Droughtmaster]

Hey Guy's,

I have quiet a few recipes that require more malt than the malt pipe can hold in my 50L braumeister. It says 10kg max in the book but I have squeezed in 12kg before. Efficiency drops to **** though. Anyway I was thinking of doing a Baltic porter and it has maybe 15kg of grain that need to be mashed. All the rest (spec malts) i'll either cold steep or steep after mashout.
I thought I could either make up the extra 5kg with malt extract or if I wanted all grain just start with 35-40L and boil down to a single batch. Second option not the best because it's kind of a waste of malt.
Has anyone else thought of ways around making the biiger style beers with the Braumeister?

:icon_cheers:

me personaly i own a 20 ltr braumeister if i wanted a heavy beer i would just add some DME to the boil the other 80% of the grain bill would take take care of any taste deficencies just my thoughts :0 hop it up
drought :icon_chickcheers:

 

[Malted]

I pumped out a batch of 1.081 from my 50L BM. To be honest I was aiming for 1.100 though...
I used the short malt pipe with about 4kgs of grain and 25L of water. I did a five step mash and did not sparge.
Then I pulled the grain out and added ice to the wort to pull the temp down.
I then reloaded another 4kgs of grain into the short malt pipe and skipped the mash in and protein rests and went straight to the maltose rest.

Things I learnt.
I should have sparged the first lot of grain as I had to top up when the second lot of grain went in (grain absorbtion loss x 2).
I should have sparged the second lot of grain because I wasted sugarz by not doing so.
Water is easy to get rid of but you can't create more sugarz, just less volume of water with those sugarz.
I reckon it would be easier to do a 50L batch with the normal malt pipe with a sparge to get all the sugarz and then boil it down to a 25L batch.
It all went to **** and consequently I didn't take good records. I reckon my efficiency could not have been any higher than 50% (probably much lower). It may have been higher if I had of sparged .

I'd say adjust your recipe to fit in the regular 50L malt pipe and reduce the output volume by boiling down to the desired gravity. I don't know what volume you'd get but it may be something whacky like 22.5 etc.

As MHB keeps saying, you can manually adjust the boil temp when it is in that cycle simply by pressing the up arrow key. 102 is a much more vigorous boil than 100.

I do not know what calulations are needed to estimate how much of a volume A at gravity A needs to be boiled off to reach a volume B at gravity B. Anyone?

 

[RdeVjun]

Malted, with MaxiBIAB where MT volume is quite limited and grainbill relatively high, for decent efficiency we've learned to do something constructive with every water addition, adding any plain water is basically a handicap and it is far better used as a sparge, even as a small one. I guess you've learnt that now though, so good luck with the next one.

WRT the calculations, its a straight dilution:
InitialSG / FinalSG = InitialVolume / FinalVolume
Eg. If you have a 30L of 1.060 and want to predict what SG (FinalSG) it is boiled down to 20L:
60 / X = 30 / 20
Solving that is
X = 30 / 20 * 60
X = 90
Therefore the expected SG at 20L would be 1.090. You can do the same with volume as the unknown.

Hope that helps! :icon_cheers:

 

[Malted]

do something constructive with every water addition, That's a good way to phrase it.

Hope that helps! :icon_cheers:

Yes it does help, thank you. (Maths is not my strong point :blink: )
Cheers!

 

[stux]

I also was going to suggest not to forget to replace the absorption of the first batch with a sparge, but you worked that out now

 

[Thefatdoghead]

After a lot of thought on brewing a big beer with the 50L BM I think i'll go down the easy road to start with and just add some LDME to the boil. I'll have to use 2kg in my recipe but I honestly dont think i'll notice the difference. I'll be making the massive IPA The hop hammer out of "brewing classic styles" so it comes in at about 1.080, 9%ABV and it's got 1kg of hops in a 55L batch.

One thing I have learned with the Braumeister is that when I rinse the grain with about 22L of 80deg water my efficency climbes to 84% everytime. I always assumed it would come down because the original wort is being diluted with a lower SG wort but the last 3 batches it's been the same rising from about 77% to 84% after the sparge.

Anyway i'll post back on here after tasting the "HOP HAMMER" if im still alive and haven't died from hoppenitis :lol:

:icon_cheers:

 

[alfadog]

Malted, with MaxiBIAB where MT volume is quite limited and grainbill relatively high, for decent efficiency we've learned to do something constructive with every water addition, adding any plain water is basically a handicap and it is far better used as a sparge, even as a small one. I guess you've learnt that now though, so good luck with the next one.

WRT the calculations, its a straight dilution:
InitialSG / FinalSG = InitialVolume / FinalVolume
Eg. If you have a 30L of 1.060 and want to predict what SG (FinalSG) it is boiled down to 20L:
60 / X = 30 / 20
Solving that is
X = 30 / 20 * 60
X = 90
Therefore the expected SG at 20L would be 1.090. You can do the same with volume as the unknown.

Hope that helps! :icon_cheers:

Cheers for that one, will remember this one

 

[stux]

One thing I have learned with the Braumeister is that when I rinse the grain with about 22L of 80deg water my efficency climbes to 84% everytime. I always assumed it would come down because the original wort is being diluted with a lower SG wort but the last 3 batches it's been the same rising from about 77% to 84% after the sparge.

Sparging will never reduce your efficiency. It might increase your pre/post boil volumes which means your OG will be off, but it will never reduce your efficiency.

The only thing which can reduce your efficiency is spilling your sweet liquor, or leaving it behind.

And sparging can only ever add sugars, you can't take them away

Is that 84% Into Boil or Into Fermenter?

 

[Thefatdoghead]

Sparging will never reduce your efficiency. It might increase your pre/post boil volumes which means your OG will be off, but it will never reduce your efficiency.

The only thing which can reduce your efficiency is spilling your sweet liquor, or leaving it behind.

And sparging can only ever add sugars, you can't take them away

Is that 84% Into Boil or Into Fermenter?

So I have learned. Setting efficiency to 84% and using the amount of kg of grain beer tools pro states gets my pre boil O.G spot on, so into the boil.

You can see why I would have thought that sparging would decrease my efficiency though..... The wort circulates in the grain constantly in the Braumeister and a sparge is really just a rinse of the grain. What im saying is I'm surprised at how much sugars are still left in the grain after mashout. Next batch i'll check the s.g of my sparge runoff just out of interest and log it.
If you see Malteds post he said he used the 20L malt pipe and did not sparge. So really if he had of sparged he would have had a higher preboil O.G and more wort for the next lot of grain as he had stated. Good effort on Malteds part for trying and great to see the results and what was learned.

 

[wobbly]

Posted this under the "Braumeister Tips and Tricks Topic" a couple of months ago

[i]11. Lifted malt pipe and let it drain for about 10 mins and then moved to a separate bucket so as to be able to check sparge running SG

12. First sparge was flood with 2lt 78C water and SG of runnings was 1034

13. Second sparge was flood again with 2lt 78C water and SG runnings were 1024

14. Did a third flood sparge again with 2lt of 78C water and SG was 1020

15. Vol in Braumeister now 27lt and SG was 1047 at the start of boil which is indicative of (depending on how you do the calculation) of between 81 and 84% mash eff.[/[/i]code] 

Cheers

wobbly

 

[Malted]

So I have learned. Setting efficiency to 84% and using the amount of kg of grain beer tools pro states gets my pre boil O.G spot on, so into the boil.

You can see why I would have thought that sparging would decrease my efficiency though..... The wort circulates in the grain constantly in the Braumeister and a sparge is really just a rinse of the grain. What im saying is I'm surprised at how much sugars are still left in the grain after mashout. Next batch i'll check the s.g of my sparge runoff just out of interest and log it.
If you see Malteds post he said he used the 20L malt pipe and did not sparge. So really if he had of sparged he would have had a higher preboil O.G and more wort for the next lot of grain as he had stated. Good effort on Malteds part for trying and great to see the results and what was learned.

He he I am having a great time learning from my mistakes!

Did another little number with the short malt pipe in the 50L. Only about 4kg of grain (not another high gravity), started with too much water and for some reason I sparged with 11 L of water (8L then 3L) - think I'd best check the markings I put on on that bucket! Not surpisingly I was under gravity preboil...

Used the volume/gravity formula RdeVjun posted to check what volume I would be aiming for to hit the desired gravity. Try a 4 hour boil to get down to desired volume & gravity! The wort has darkened a bit...

So after the 8L +3L rinse I set the malt pipe over a bucket and later checked the gravity of the bucket runnings - 1.016. I was quite surprised given the high volume of rinsing (sparging). So yes my experience too is that there is quite a lot of sugarz left in the malt pipe.

So I made a(nother) mistake but used what you guys have said to fix it. Cheers guys.

I also recorded heating times to be able to figure the ramp rates. A bit better than 1oC per minute, generally speaking but I'll have to go through my notes.

I reckon the next high gravity I do will just be with the 50L malt pipe and a long boil to get down to desired gravity, seems to work well if you make time for it.

 

[pmastello]

There seems to be lots of talk about doing long boils to increase gravity, but does anyone use a smaller amount of initial mash in water, with the max grain in the tube?

Eg- with a 20L BM, Instead of mashing in with 25L of water, you only put in 20L. Then you sparge and boil as in a normal grav brew. Then, instead of 20L out of 1.060, you might get 16L of 1.075.

I suppose you would getting screwed with your efficiency though? Although, when I think about it, my current 3v esky system uses a water to grain ratio of 2.5L/kg and gets a good efficiency, and on a 6kg grainbill for the BM wouldn't that only be 15L?

Anyway, I am very excited about my BM. I ordered it on the weekend from MHB and can't wait. Hurry up Germany and ship it over!