Lurks
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 15/11/11
- Messages
- 133
- Reaction score
- 22
As you may recall I tried the bucket-in-bucket lauter tun 'ghetto' contraption for my last brew day, making the move from BIAB. I suffered from a stuck sparge which was sub optimal and my efficiency worked out at near 70%, a fair bit less than my old process.
So this time I decided to essentially use the same gear with some technique improvements aimed at avoiding the stuck sparge. Here's the list of things I did differently:
1. Drilled out a number of 3mm holes to 4mm, mainly the ones that looked a bit blocked with plastic bits.
2. I did a proper 10m mash-out at 76c. The theory here was that my grains weren't hot enough in the tun.
3. I filled the ghetto tun with sparge water until it just covered the holes in the inner bucket.
4. I recirculated quite a lot of wort in 1L batches until it came through clear-ish.
5. Drained off first runnings but not so the grains were no longer covered in water.
6. Cracked the tap just slightly and poured the rest of my sparge water in a litre at a time for a long-slow sparge.
Using this incremental sparging I added hot water until I was sure I was going to reach pre-boil vol. In fact I ended up a litre over, no biggy.
So how did it worked compared to the first ham-fisted attempt? Well, excellently actually. It's pretty hands on for the slow manual sparge but it's still better than the bag messing around. A few more grains got through into my wort than last time, probably due to slightly larger holes.
What about the efficiency? Well here's where it gets mad. I did the measurement twice, both volume and wort, making sure it was close to my hydrometer range. It looks to me like I got bang on 90%. Even allowing for me cocking this up somehow, it's safe to say I got a hell of a lot more goodies out of my grain than the first time around.
Bit of a win then.
So this time I decided to essentially use the same gear with some technique improvements aimed at avoiding the stuck sparge. Here's the list of things I did differently:
1. Drilled out a number of 3mm holes to 4mm, mainly the ones that looked a bit blocked with plastic bits.
2. I did a proper 10m mash-out at 76c. The theory here was that my grains weren't hot enough in the tun.
3. I filled the ghetto tun with sparge water until it just covered the holes in the inner bucket.
4. I recirculated quite a lot of wort in 1L batches until it came through clear-ish.
5. Drained off first runnings but not so the grains were no longer covered in water.
6. Cracked the tap just slightly and poured the rest of my sparge water in a litre at a time for a long-slow sparge.
Using this incremental sparging I added hot water until I was sure I was going to reach pre-boil vol. In fact I ended up a litre over, no biggy.
So how did it worked compared to the first ham-fisted attempt? Well, excellently actually. It's pretty hands on for the slow manual sparge but it's still better than the bag messing around. A few more grains got through into my wort than last time, probably due to slightly larger holes.
What about the efficiency? Well here's where it gets mad. I did the measurement twice, both volume and wort, making sure it was close to my hydrometer range. It looks to me like I got bang on 90%. Even allowing for me cocking this up somehow, it's safe to say I got a hell of a lot more goodies out of my grain than the first time around.
Bit of a win then.
