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Batz

Batz Brewery...Hand crafted beers from the 'Batcav
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Well I am away ! Have the mash turn full and waiting
Now , I am doing one of Jayse's skunk fart ales , total of 5.62Kg of grain , so added 17Lt of water , strike temp 73c (was expecting it to drop a little more than it did) what I found is the 5 gallon rubbermaid mash tun is full to the brim ! I don't think I would be able to add another litre of water , I notice that some of Jayse's brews have more grain , how the hell would I be able to do that ?
 
batz,

from the photos of jayses setup
id imagne he has a least a 30L mash tun.
i believe we can do a bigger grain bill with less water in the tun
but just need to sparge a lot more to make up the boil volume.

good luck
mine first attempt went great.
crackers
 
You could use a thicker mash for bigger recipes. You are using 3L/kg which is good. I tend to use 2.5 to 2.6L/kg and sometimes even drop to 2L/kg when a really stiff mash is necessary. If you used 2.6L/kg you would only need about 14.6L which would save you some room.

As Crackers says, you would then sparge more to hit your pre-boil volume, assuming the SG doesn't drop below 1.010 or whatever your target is.
 
Well done Batz! Keep us posted on how its going.....photos would be nice too if thats possible...

What efficiency are you working on to work out the sparge water?

I have been assuming 60% (first time) and I think its throwing my volumes right out. From memory; to get a 32L pre-boil I only use about 17L of sparge - the rest is all in the mash to get to 3L / Kg when most people seem to think that the sparge volume should be 1.5 to 2 times the mash volume....
 
I have been stuffing about with my water volumes (only done 3 mash's)

I use a bucket in bucket mash tun, there is 3.5Lt "dead space??" between the bottom and the false floor. say i use 5Kg grain, do i add 3Lt per Kg of grain - 15Lt + dead space 3.5Lt to a total of 18.5Lt


then they say sparge with twice the amount of water, 37Lt, thats a total of 55Lt, then i take out say 5Lt for the hops and crap at the end of boil and say 5Lt that remains in the grain.

boil volume then 45Lt. this will be more than My target final volume of 23Lt


So where do i remove the water? dont account for the tun dead space, less sparge? (eg only sparge untill 1.010 - this may be more or less)

whats a boil volume for 60min boil to end up with about 22Lt??

sorry about all the questions but i want to sort this out for my next mash - Lager mmmm
 
All going OK till now , boils happening
Very small leak from mash tun connection , just weeps
The piece of stainless that I have bent at 90 , this goes on the mash tun to transfer into a spare fermenter , then into boiler...well wasps had made a mud nest in one end (get by without it for this time)
Little boil over because I left it for a second

Going to have trouble lowering the temp. , house water is not all that cool , I will use my chiller then will have to use ice I think

Still at it
 
Ben,

To sum up:

Your mash tun has 3.5 litres of dead space.
Your boiler has 5 litres of dead space.
You are looking to get 23 litres into the fermenter.
You want a 60 minute boil.

Assuming a 10% evaporation rate you would need 30.5 litres of sparge water.

Personally I think 5 litres is a lot of dead space in the boiler. Remember an immersion chiller will create some displacement reducing the dead space.

HTH,
Beers,
Doc

WaterNeeded.JPG
 
Whats dead space?
Finished with 21 Lt , had to add 2Lt of water

It was
5Kg anc trad malt
250gm Carapils
250gm Munich
125gm Wheat

Sample gave me 1.040

Boil was 60 mins , used Cascade
32@60min
14@15
14@10
18@5
28@1

SG was 1.040 also
 
Good stuff Batz. Was the 1.040 the gravity when you were complete or before the boil. I had one come back at 1.045 and I found the hop aroma and flavour were a lot less than the same brew that hit 1.056+ ... don't know if it was down to the gravity or something else I did different?

In any event I am sure it will be a tasty drop, let us know how it turns out when you start drinking it. :chug:
 
Batz

Sounds good.....
Only comment - IMHO 28g at 1min in the boiler is a horrific waste.
Dry hop the 28gms in the secondary - could probably half that and still get more hop flavour than in the boil for 1 min.
 
Did you do any tests Batz - like Iodine for conversion and PH ?

There doesn't seem to be much talk of PH testing - is it important?
 
That make a lot of sense , I should have thought of that , was just following one of Jayses recipes.
I do like dry hopping gives full on flavour
JasonY
the 1.040 was before but also was the same after , I did add 2 Lt of water
 
Congratulations Batz.

I just walked into the house with 18 m of annealed copper pipe, ball valves, nipples etc and will be following your lead before long.

Now that you are officially an AGer, probably helps if you start thinking in gravity rather than volume. So after you have boiled and cooled, check the gravity and dilute if necessary based on that, regardless of the volume. Jayse reckons skunk fart needs to get up around 1.050 so it might have been better to start the brew at 21 l and a higher gravity than to bring the volume up to 23 l. I am sure it will be a very tasty brew as is, but something to think about next time.
 
Simon,
My system is far from finished yet , the HLT is still waiting a few pieces before fitting the element and welding everything up.
Just was keen to have a play at AG , worked out OK with what I had just the same , and yes still have a lot to learn.
Gotta get my brain around promash yet
Cheers and all the best with your set up , let me know if I can help with anything
Batz
 
way to go batz, keep us posted on how things go. my first ag wa quite a learning experience but i think i know what went wrong. two thing, i worried, and i didnt have any homebrew during the process. i did start at 9am though! good luck
joe
 
good onya Batz.!!!!! i'm about 2 weeks behind your. just waiting for my kegs to get drilled (holed) <_<

am i the only one who adds DME to up the SG when its unexpectantly low? Is this a good or bad practice?

anyway goodluck
 
Just for interest I have been brewing K&K for some 20 years before starting partial grain brews , this AG was brew #30 , have done 29 partials all thanks to mainly this site
Thanks guys
 
Doc,

thanks, i have now entered the numbers into promash, is there a area where you can "lock" in ratio's etc so it works out the sparge and mash volumes for you? Or do u need to do it manual each brew if the grain size changes?

I have used 2.75Lt of mash water per Kg of grain.

3.5Lt dead space

3Lt of boiler dead space


with my 2.75 grain to mash water ratio, i then just change the sparge water amount to get my final volume correct. Is this how you do it?
 
ben when i sparge i have been using 2 litres to every kilo of grain so with 5 kg of grain your sparge water is around 10 ltres
 
Got that bit right then , thanks Jazzman
 
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