Lurks
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- Joined
- 15/11/11
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Did my first brew using the ghetto lauter tun, eg bucket in a bucket. Some stuff went wrong, some went right.
What went wrong was that the sparge became stuck. I waited... jiggled a bit, stirred the top part of the mash a little, and then stirred down at the bottom to try free it up which helped slightly, but not heaps. I pretty much thought it was going to be a disaster at that point.
In the end I just dumped a load of sparge water on top of the grains (which seemed very content to sit under the water, and after awhile it began to flow quite well. Maybe it was the extra temperature? I lifted it up to check it wasn't channeling... it was dripping nicely out of holes then. How strange.
There's two things I can think of that might be wrong: Firstly my holes might be a bit small. They're 3mm, I've seen others use larger holes. Not too sure about that, some grains still got through, but not much - it seemed to work okay.
Secondly, turning the tap full on to let out the first runnings - the whole lot - may not have been wise. For a start, it just meant I had a lot to recirculate and secondly that might have clogged the holes due to the rapid flow? I was thinking I'm kind of on the clock to recirc and get ready for sparge otherwise the grain temp will fall too much.
It might have been better to turn the tap on/off and just take a big jar of runnings to recirc, but I found a construction error with my tun - the bloody tap rotates, despite being siliconed in. It doesn't seem to leak but excessive tap use seemed risky so I thought I'd just leave it open and sparge jug by jug sorta thing (onto a defuser plate).
It wasn't a disaster. I got a clearer wort than I ever have with BIAB. I also boiled more vigorously and doing the whole whirlpool thing properly, I got the most solid distinct clod of trub I've ever seen - it was very easy to suck up around it, virtually none is in the wort.
I seem to have managed an efficiency of around 75%. Which is fractionally less than a squeezed BIAB.
Overall good, room for improvement - very high hopes for the Belgian ale that's chilling in the bath.
What went wrong was that the sparge became stuck. I waited... jiggled a bit, stirred the top part of the mash a little, and then stirred down at the bottom to try free it up which helped slightly, but not heaps. I pretty much thought it was going to be a disaster at that point.
In the end I just dumped a load of sparge water on top of the grains (which seemed very content to sit under the water, and after awhile it began to flow quite well. Maybe it was the extra temperature? I lifted it up to check it wasn't channeling... it was dripping nicely out of holes then. How strange.
There's two things I can think of that might be wrong: Firstly my holes might be a bit small. They're 3mm, I've seen others use larger holes. Not too sure about that, some grains still got through, but not much - it seemed to work okay.
Secondly, turning the tap full on to let out the first runnings - the whole lot - may not have been wise. For a start, it just meant I had a lot to recirculate and secondly that might have clogged the holes due to the rapid flow? I was thinking I'm kind of on the clock to recirc and get ready for sparge otherwise the grain temp will fall too much.
It might have been better to turn the tap on/off and just take a big jar of runnings to recirc, but I found a construction error with my tun - the bloody tap rotates, despite being siliconed in. It doesn't seem to leak but excessive tap use seemed risky so I thought I'd just leave it open and sparge jug by jug sorta thing (onto a defuser plate).
It wasn't a disaster. I got a clearer wort than I ever have with BIAB. I also boiled more vigorously and doing the whole whirlpool thing properly, I got the most solid distinct clod of trub I've ever seen - it was very easy to suck up around it, virtually none is in the wort.
I seem to have managed an efficiency of around 75%. Which is fractionally less than a squeezed BIAB.
Overall good, room for improvement - very high hopes for the Belgian ale that's chilling in the bath.
