Commercial Mash Tun - Spent Grain?

[spog]

you have it wrong spog, there is no carbon in methane, however if you were to light up a cows fart,
then there would be some carbon emisions that the gillard goverment would enjoy the spoils of.
edit - linky

:lol: ....cheers.........spog...........

 

[seravitae]

Sera

I was involved in the installation of the twin stream brew house at Yatala a few years ago and it is much like a lot of home brewerys in a lot of ways (I still look at the P&IDs for ideas from time to time). The lauter tun is a series of perferated screens that once the sparge is finished, the segments slide over each other allowing the grain to fall into a hopper with a screw conveyor that takes it to the spent grain silo.

For 200l batch size however the amount of grain would fit in a wheelbarrow and it would take longer to clean the conveyor than shovel the grain.

Cheers Derrick

I doubt you will need a Ponndorf then

I use the 4L David Gray bottles of water for my Starsan, just because Perth water is too hard. Last weekend I carved one of these bottles down to make myself a larger scoop that could get around the base of my MLT. I reckon the unsexy, but practical "bespoke spent grain scoop" is the go.

Mmm, good point guys. I think a grain scoop might be the ticket. Perhaps i'm just overthinking things

 

[CONNOR BREWARE]

Yes, but as the OP asked, how do they get it out of the mash tun.

yeah fair enough, I was flying past and misread the question.

 

[kelbygreen]

I use a 2lt jug in my 10kg of grain so a shovel for less then 50kg of grain is no big deal I shovel out about 800kg of sand out of the ute in about 20 mins

 

[Rurik]

Most larger microbrewery lauter tuns have reversing rakes (stirrers) and a large trapdoor that opens in the base of the vessel allowing the spent grist to be dropped into plastic bins. The bins are then fork lifted away to be carted off to wherever the spent grist is being disposed of. Adding water to turn the grist into a slurry is neither practical or sustainable.

Wes

Thanks

 

[Bizier]

Mmm, good point guys. I think a grain scoop might be the ticket. Perhaps i'm just overthinking things

If you can make it efficiently sized, strong, and well designed, then it could be a thing of beauty that may cause fellow brewers to envious. I have seen a simple sturdy ss jug welded to a ss pole for mash samples (from deck) and I would love something similarly sturdy and simple to scoop my mash.

You could have a large threaded bung (say 5" or something) in the floor of the vessel which you could sweep onto. The big gripe I have with my setup is that the thing weighs like 35kg without grain, and after a double batch of high gravity, considerably more. A 200L batch might benefit from the availability of a dump port you could sweep into a barrow or bucket, perhaps a short diverter pipe comes up into bung thread to keep things clean. You easily hose the remainder out, and ideally it drains to that point, or you can do something to make it drain to that point.

 

[rippa]

200L batches?
Buy the big Braumeister, job's done. :beer:

 

[JDW81]

you have it wrong spog, there is no carbon in methane,

No Carbon in methane eh?

 

[bum]

Carbon is people.

PEOPLE!!!

 

[billygoat]

you have it wrong spog, there is no carbon in methane, however if you were to light up a cows fart,
then there would be some carbon emisions that the gillard goverment would enjoy the spoils of.
edit - linky

Methane is CH4.

 

[Feldon]

you have it wrong spog, there is no carbon in methane ...

 

[seravitae]

Although the big braumeister is a nice piece of hardware, i've got some other solutions underway...

and yes, methane contains carbon, i am not sure why that was even in this thread, but, nonetheless..

200L batches?
Buy the big Braumeister, job's done. :beer:

 

[dougsbrew]

Methane is CH4.

jeezzus the joke critic police are in force here..
take it out of context why dont ya..pfff..we were talking carbon tax.

 

[seravitae]

sorry.. i totally missed it... maybe thats why this is all so awkward now.. :unsure:

 

[spudfarmerboy]

jeezzus the joke critic police are in force here..
take it out of context why dont ya..pfff..we were talking carbon tax.

Crap joke is crap joke.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

wes has it - big breweries open up a hole (or in our case 4) in the bottom of the lauter tun, rakes push spent grain into the hole wherre its carted away... fork lifts and bins in smaller breweries, screw conveyors and pondorfs in big breweries.

Spent grain lives in (quite stinky) silos until its dropped into trucks who take it to feed cows. Cows (according to the truck drivers who cart the stuff for us) ******* love spent grain and come running at a pace when the truck pulls up. They scarf the stuff down and as a result (people in white coats have checked) produce considerably less methane than they do if they eat either grass or whole grain feeds instead of spent grain.... methane which they primarily burp, not fart.

On the 200L scale - i'd think about making the lauter tun tip so that it can be raked out easily into a bin. A bit of applied leverage, or some pully action, or even a bit of simple hydraulics could make it a physically trivial job to tip, and raking would be simple and easy. Whereas shoveling/scooping from the bottom of the tun, over the edge and into a bin = ergonomic OH&S nightmare. Save someone somewhere a serious back injury and think of a better solution. Just because micro breweries often do make people get into the MT and shovel it out..... doesn't mean that that particular way of doing it is anything but completely shit in every way, shape and form.

TB

 

[seravitae]

Yeah TB that is a good point, that was my only issue with shoveling. Was thinking of maybe getting some sort of eyelets welded onto the tun so it can stand on a swivel frame and simply be tipped forward, possibly even near upside down.

 

[pk.sax]

You know how a toilet in an aircraft is flushed.... A compressor and some sort of a t-piece jet type of arrangement? Especially for a bottom draining tun.

 

[raven19]

Carbon is people.

PEOPLE!!!

I immediately thought of Soylent Green... mmmm People.... :lol:

Back to the OP, I can confirm at the Barrossa Vally Brewery (1500L ish final batch volume into fermenter) its the ol' shovel out of the mash tun manually into a skip on the forklift.

OH&S not ideal as per Thirsty's excellent post above.

 

[np1962]

I immediately thought of Soylent Green... mmmm People.... :lol:

Back to the OP, I can confirm at the Barrossa Vally Brewery (1500L ish final batch volume into fermenter) its the ol' shovel out of the mash tun manually into a skip on the forklift.

OH&S not ideal as per Thirsty's excellent post above.

Just to clarify this.
It is through a trap door at the bottom of the lauter tun not up and over the top.
Nige