GUTEN

[kadmium]

Yep fair enough. Kind of got a little off topic I suppose! Considering I've only done one brew on the guten, I'm going to give batch sparge a go and plan recipes at 60% at this stage. A malt mill will come in the future, but for now I'm trying to get a fridge for fermenting. I've taken over the spare fridge in the garage for now, which drives the missus crazy!

Will update on the next brew I do, and probably ask some questions.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Yep fair enough. Kind of got a little off topic I suppose! Considering I've only done one brew on the guten, I'm going to give batch sparge a go and plan recipes at 60% at this stage. A malt mill will come in the future, but for now I'm trying to get a fridge for fermenting. I've taken over the spare fridge in the garage for now, which drives the missus crazy!

Will update on the next brew I do, and probably ask some questions.

The 60% is for a full volume mash NO SPARGE, if you are going to sparge it will have to be a fly sparge otherwise you will be mucking around emptying the kettle and filling it back up agin, then putting the wort back in for the boil. So its either 'no sparge' or 'fly sparge' if you are going to fly sparge then your efficiency will go up, so maybe between 70 to 75%as a starting point.

 

[kadmium]

The 60% is for a full volume mash NO SPARGE, if you are going to sparge it will have to be a fly sparge otherwise you will be mucking around emptying the kettle and filling it back up agin, then putting the wort back in for the boil. So its either 'no sparge' or 'fly sparge' if you are going to fly sparge then your efficiency will go up, so maybe between 70 to 75%as a starting point.

Why would I need to muck around? My simple brain thinks:

Adjust water and add salts to full volume of 32 litres in kettle.

Draw about 10 litres off for "sparge" into old 20L pot with ball valve.

Mash and recirc with 20L. Heat sparge water in pot in kitchen. Lift malt pipe and have resting on legs. Drain from sparge pot onto grain bed with around the same speed as I was recircing. Once filtered through lift and go.

Is that technically fly sparging? Don't plan on sprinkling and check PH of running etc. Just plan on essentially a hybrid rinse of the grain with clean water.

Kind of like what Gash does in his videos on his robobrew?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Why would I need to muck around? My simple brain thinks:

Adjust water and add salts to full volume of 32 litres in kettle.

Draw about 10 litres off for "sparge" into old 20L pot with ball valve.

Mash and recirc with 20L. Heat sparge water in pot in kitchen. Lift malt pipe and have resting on legs. Drain from sparge pot onto grain bed with around the same speed as I was recircing. Once filtered through lift and go.

Is that technically fly sparging? Don't plan on sprinkling and check PH of running etc. Just plan on essentially a hybrid rinse of the grain with clean water.

Kind of like what Gash does in his videos on his robobrew?

Are you going to be using the same grain bill? And your right its not a batch sparge.

 

[goatchop41]

The 60% is for a full volume mash NO SPARGE, if you are going to sparge it will have to be a fly sparge otherwise you will be mucking around emptying the kettle and filling it back up agin, then putting the wort back in for the boil. So its either 'no sparge' or 'fly sparge' if you are going to fly sparge then your efficiency will go up, so maybe between 70 to 75%as a starting point.

My understanding was that fly sparging is fancy continuous sparging - "The process is conducted by slowly sprinkling sparge water evenly over the top of the grains while the mash is slowly lautered into the boil kettle. This process of continually adding the sparge water while also lautering is where the name “continuous sparging” derives".

Whereas batch sparging is what you do with AIO vessels like the Guten - lift the malt pipe and just pour water over the drained malt pipe in batches - "Parti-gyle brewing is the process of completely draining the mash and using those runnings for one beer, while using the sparge runnings for other beers. Batch sparge uses the same general method of completely draining the mash before sparging, but all the runnings are combined in the boil kettle to be transformed into one beer".

So on these systems, we batch sparge, unless you **** about making unnecessary sparge arms, etc. in order to unnecessarily fly sparge

Quotes are from: Fly Sparging vs Batch Sparging | American Homebrewers Association

 

[goatchop41]

Adjust water and add salts to full volume of 32 litres in kettle.

Draw about 10 litres off for "sparge" into old 20L pot with ball valve.

Mash and recirc with 20L. Heat sparge water in pot in kitchen.

You don't need to drain it off and heat it separately.
Heat all of your water together, then drain your sparge water off once you're at strike temp. It will only lose 10ish degrees during the mash - temp of sparge water doesn't really matter all that much (unless it is too hot).

Also, I wouldn't adjust all of the water, unless you are accounting for that in your brewing software (ie. adjusting mash and sparge water in your software). I just adjust mash water in Brewfather, so I drain off the heated sparge water and then add my water additions.

 

[goatchop41]

Lift malt pipe and have resting on legs. Drain from sparge pot onto grain bed with around the same speed as I was recircing. Once filtered through lift and go.

Is that technically fly sparging? Don't plan on sprinkling and check PH of running etc. Just plan on essentially a hybrid rinse of the grain with clean water.

That is exactly what a batch sparge is. You would be batch sparging

 

[wide eyed and legless]

The problem is the last brew Kadmium did was a fairly large grain bill he can't leave the grain basket in the kettle he has to lift it out to add the sparge water. So pouring the sparge water through as he intends to do is neither fly or batch sparge. The efficiency is going to suffer just pouring 10 litres of water over a lifted grain bed. That is why I asked him for his grain bill.

 

[Reg Holt]

The other problem would be the pH of the water which has been drawn of and subject to the buffering effect of the grain, will make some difference to the pH of mash/boil.

 

[golfandbrew]

Maybe it's best not to try and define what you're doing and just leave it at sparging with XX litres of water.

Here are couple things I find useful.

Stir the mash a couple times throughout and recirc to clear the wort in last 20 minutes give or take. You'll see when it's clear. If you mash out that will allow some extra time to clear as well.

Ditch the overflow pipe and put a plug in the bottom screen hole where it used to be. Then monitor how well the wort is flowing through the grain by watching how far up the two little handles the wort is on the top screen. If mine gets about two thirds the way up the handles I'll slow the recirc or stir the mash. Just depends on where I am in the mash.

Cheers

 

[kadmium]

Yeah fair enough, I suppose I would just call it 'rinsing the grain' hahahaha.

I didn't use the top screen and had recirc on the whole time (gave it 10 minutes to mash in an liquefy but didn't really need it with such a high grist:water) and it was hard to get any noticeable level above the bed as it seemed to be pretty loose being full volume. My idea to hold off 10L for 'rinsing' is to thicken the mash a little so that I can get a proper bed forming I suppose.

The next brew is a NEIPA and the grain bill is:

3.5kg ale malt
1kg wheat malt
500g flaked oats (quick oats)
200g honey malt

at 60% eff it get's me a predicted 1.049 which is not a lot considering it's 5.2kg of grain!

I planned on adding a couple good handfulls of rice hulls in there, to help with the mash not sticking.

 

[kadmium]

Sorry for the double post but it seems Bru'N water doesn't care if you add the salts before splitting for mash. If I do them as a whole (32) it tells me to add X salt to mash, if I do it as 22 mash and 10 sparge it tells me to do X-Y for mash and Y for sparge, if that makes sense. So it's essentially telling me to add the same total amount, just split into the right ratio depending on the figures I add.

Because I am not adding any acid to lower mash ph, it seems that I could add the Calc Chloride and Gypsum at the same time into the full volume, circulate to get it well mixed and then draw my sparge water off. I mean rinse water.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I am brewing a Tropical Stout today 6,7 kg of grain into 35 litres of strike water, I may have to draw a litre or two off but I will have to see.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

OK 35 litres of brewing liquor for strike, had to remove 1 litre to get my fermentables in. While leaving room for non fermentables to go in for the last 15 minutes.

Wort ended up about 8 ml from the top of the kettle.

 

[Fro-Daddy]

@CEO Keg King any word on the 70L jackets mate?

 

[goatchop41]

The problem is the last brew Kadmium did was a fairly large grain bill he can't leave the grain basket in the kettle he has to lift it out to add the sparge water. So pouring the sparge water through as he intends to do is neither fly or batch sparge. The efficiency is going to suffer just pouring 10 litres of water over a lifted grain bed. That is why I asked him for his grain bill.

What? Either I don't understand what you're trying to say, or your idea of sparging in these is a bit weird.

he can't leave the grain basket in the kettle he has to lift it out to add the sparge water

The efficiency is going to suffer just pouring 10 litres of water over a lifted grain bed

But that's exactly how sparging works on these all-in-one machines. If they do that, then not only will they get a decent efficiency (it's exactly what I do, and I get ~80% brewhouse efficiency), but they will also be able to fit bigger batches in (because now you're not as limited by the extra volume that the grain bill takes up in the kettle during the mash).
You lift the malt pipe out of the kettle and rest it on the top of the kettle, then pour the sparge water through the top of the now lifted malt pipe. My understanding is that if you then pour the sparge water over in parts, then it's a batch sparge. If you have a sparge arm to slowly sprinkle the water over, then it's a fly/continuous sparge. You can't really do a traditional fly sparge in these, because you don't have a separate MLT and kettle - they're one and the same. So you can't lauter to the boil kettle and sparge at the same time, because technically you don't lauter in these vessels (you could argue that lifting the malt pipe and letting it drain is technically lautering).

By the sounds of what you're saying, you're suggesting that we somehow sparge by leaving the malt pipe submerged, pouring in the sparge water, then lifting the malt pipe? If so, I've never ever heard of such a thing, and I don't really see what it would achieve.

 

[goatchop41]

Sorry for the double post but it seems Bru'N water doesn't care if you add the salts before splitting for mash. If I do them as a whole (32) it tells me to add X salt to mash, if I do it as 22 mash and 10 sparge it tells me to do X-Y for mash and Y for sparge, if that makes sense. So it's essentially telling me to add the same total amount, just split into the right ratio depending on the figures I add.

Because I am not adding any acid to lower mash ph, it seems that I could add the Calc Chloride and Gypsum at the same time into the full volume, circulate to get it well mixed and then draw my sparge water off. I mean rinse water.

My understanding is that differing levels of the chemicals concerned in water chemistry can affect things like efficiency, pH, etc. - to me, this then has implications for just adding to the mash vs adding to both the mash and sparge.
eg. adding 10g of something that will affect pH to just the mash will affect the mash pH more than adding 7g to the mash and 3g to the sparge.

 

[goatchop41]

Yeah fair enough, I suppose I would just call it 'rinsing the grain'

That's exactly what a sparge is. Some homebrewers just like to complicate it too much and think that they have to do fancy fly sparging, because that's how a lot of commercial mash tuns work.

I didn't use the top screen and had recirc on the whole time (gave it 10 minutes to mash in an liquefy but didn't really need it with such a high grist:water) and it was hard to get any noticeable level above the bed as it seemed to be pretty loose being full volume. My idea to hold off 10L for 'rinsing' is to thicken the mash a little so that I can get a proper bed forming I suppose

Being full volume will definitely make it recirculate much more freely. Because it does that, I would then argue that you could mill your grain a bit more fine - the greater water:grist ratio will negate the reduced flow that you would usually see from a finely milled grain bill. You'll then benefit from the likely increased efficiency that comes with a more finely milled grain bill

 

[wide eyed and legless]

What? Either I don't understand what you're trying to say, or your idea of sparging in these is a bit weird.




But that's exactly how sparging works on these all-in-one machines. If they do that, then not only will they get a decent efficiency (it's exactly what I do, and I get ~80% brewhouse efficiency), but they will also be able to fit bigger batches in (because now you're not as limited by the extra volume that the grain bill takes up in the kettle during the mash).
You lift the malt pipe out of the kettle and rest it on the top of the kettle, then pour the sparge water through the top of the now lifted malt pipe. My understanding is that if you then pour the sparge water over in parts, then it's a batch sparge. If you have a sparge arm to slowly sprinkle the water over, then it's a fly/continuous sparge. You can't really do a traditional fly sparge in these, because you don't have a separate MLT and kettle - they're one and the same. So you can't lauter to the boil kettle and sparge at the same time, because technically you don't lauter in these vessels (you could argue that lifting the malt pipe and letting it drain is technically lautering).

By the sounds of what you're saying, you're suggesting that we somehow sparge by leaving the malt pipe submerged, pouring in the sparge water, then lifting the malt pipe? If so, I've never ever heard of such a thing, and I don't really see what it would achieve.

Batch sparging is emptying the mash tun and immersing the grain again in the sparge water,
fly sparge is lifting the grain from the kettle and gently pouring the water through the grain bed into the wort below. Simple. No sparge is self explanatory.
https://bisonbrew.com/batch-sparge/

 

[goatchop41]

Batch sparging is emptying the mash tun and immersing the grain again in the sparge water,
fly sparge is lifting the grain from the kettle and gently pouring the water through the grain bed into the wort below. Simple.

Not in the all in one systems though...
Batch sparging in the all in one systems would just be pouring in batches over the raised malt pipe. As I said, having the malt pipe raised is the equivalent of draining the mash tun in a 3V system.
Fly sparging is continuously and slowly pouring the water over the raised malt pipe - not pouring a heap over all at once and then just waiting for it to drain through.

What kadmium is suggesting doing is the all in one system equivalent of batch sparging