Hlt And Scale Accuracy

[Sloth]

Im ever so slowly putting together the bits and peices require to go AG an Im pretty much stuck on the HLT. Basically I'm trying to work out what size (in litres) it should be, so that I can do single batches for a while and then double batches.

I would heat it with electric elements but the cash it a bit tight. For this reason I was considering an alumunium stockpot but I not know how this will react with any salts added to vary the water chemistry. And as a side note, how accurate do scales need to be for the salt measurements?

All help will be much appreciated.

Cheers, Sloth.

 

[dicko]

Im ever so slowly putting together the bits and peices require to go AG an Im pretty much stuck on the HLT. Basically I'm trying to work out what size (in litres) it should be, so that I can do single batches for a while and then double batches.

I would heat it with electric elements but the cash it a bit tight. For this reason I was considering an alumunium stockpot but I not know how this will react with any salts added to vary the water chemistry. And as a side note, how accurate do scales need to be for the salt measurements?

All help will be much appreciated.

Cheers, Sloth.

Hi Sloth,
If you contemplate doing double (50 litre) brews you will need to do some maths regarding HLT sizes.
I will do an example for you to understand what I mean.
Lets assume 10 kg of grain in the mash tun.
This will mean that you will require up to 30 litres of water for the mash.
Assuming you have a HLT that holds this much(30 litres) it will then be empty when you strike the mash.

You will then need to top up or refill the HLT to allow for the mash out and the sparge quantities.

If you plan to mash out you will need approx 10 litres of near to boiling water to raise the mash temp to mash out.
You will then need approx 38 litres for the sparge.

If you have a HLT with a capacity volume of 40 litres it will allow you to bring the 40 litres to the boil, mash out with ten litres which will leave 30 litres and then top up with cold water to 38 litres to achieve a sparge temp of approx 76 deg c.
In my system I bring only 35 litres to the boil for mash out, drop 10 litres into the mash and then top up the HLT with aprox 18 litres of water to achieve the sparge temperature.
So,
if you take all this into account you will need a HLT of 40 litre capacity to achieve the above.

My HLT is 50 litres.

It could be done with say a 30 litre job but it begins to become complicated with measurements etc.
When I brew with my HLT I have to do water salts additions in two steps and this can be difficult at times.
Ideally if you had a HLT of 100 litres you could do all your additions in the total water or another way is to prepare all your water in containers prior to commencing and then top up the HLT with this as needed.
If you aren't doing double batches then you will just need to halve (approx) the above.

I have an accurately marked site glass on my HLT so the water measurements are the same each brew day for a particular brew. I feel this is important to be able to repeat the results when necessary.

Another consideration is to have a mash tun capacity that will allow double batches.

I am not sure about the reaction of salts on an aluminium pot altho' I know of one brewer on here that has an ali' HLT (Where art thou' chiller).
If I find that salt additions have no affect on ali' pots then I would like to change my HLT to a 90 litre job.

I hope this helps

edit; spelling

 

[Sloth]

Cheers dicko,

Unfortunately I haven't had time to sit down with something like Promash and work through all the volumes, but what you have just told me will help greatly and give me a bit of a guide.

Cheers, Sloth.

 

[MHB]

Although you can get away with a smaller HLT the biggest you should ever need is 7 litres per Kg of grist, this is a touch over what is required for mashing in, stepping and sparging. You could easily have a HLT half this size as the biggest single addition of water is when you mash in and that wouldnt be over 3.5 L / Kg of grist. Then refill while you are mashing.

As for accuracy when measuring salts, good scales are very expensive, but there is a great cheat.
Measure out a lot more than you need then only use a small portion of what you have measured.
Say your scales are only good to 0.1g and you want 0.01g accuracy.
Weigh out 10 X what you need.
Dissolve in water to make 1 Litre.
Only use 100ml. the rest will keep and you can use it in later brews.

Or
The No Scales Method
You can also do this another way, make up some stock solutions that have a know concentration of each salt for instance, make a 1 litre stock solution that has 100g of Calcium Chloride dissolved in it, each millilitre has 100/1000g or 0.1g of calcium chloride.

A measuring cylinder can then be used to make fairly accurate additions and you can either use the salts as you brought them i.e. 100g packet dissolved into 1 litre or go somewhere where that has good scales and weigh out once to make many months worth of stock solutions.

Remember you are adding both Calcium and Chloride you have to account for both

I was lucky enough to pickup a great set of lab scales accurate to 0.01g this does male life easy but replacing them would be a couple of grand, I think my locals all know they are welcome to come and use them.

Hope this helps.
MHB

 

[Sloth]

Thanks Mark,

I have been looking at getting a set of scales for both hops and salts (for the future) and what you've given me here is some food for thought.

Cheers, Michael.