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doon

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Had the day off today so decided to take the plunge and brew with new equipment

Had made up a recipe in beersmith for an aussie ale with amarillo, was trying to go for a concentrated 17l litre batch to water down as i am no chilling into 17 l cube. Only ended up with 15l (oops) and missed gravity, but you know who cares.

Had fun testing it all out, bit stressful at times (especially having to take apart NASA burner mid boil and wire brush it). My Beerbelly falsie didnt really work how i had hoped, as it let grain through, but perhaps brew shop had crushed too fine?

Can anyone give me the best way to test out mash tun deadspace and lost to trub etc and how to enter that into beersmith as i think this may have been where i came undone!

Anyway onto to planning next brew
 
Had the day off today so decided to take the plunge and brew with new equipment

Had made up a recipe in beersmith for an aussie ale with amarillo, was trying to go for a concentrated 17l litre batch to water down as i am no chilling into 17 l cube. Only ended up with 15l (oops) and missed gravity, but you know who cares.

Had fun testing it all out, bit stressful at times (especially having to take apart NASA burner mid boil and wire brush it). My Beerbelly falsie didnt really work how i had hoped, as it let grain through, but perhaps brew shop had crushed too fine?

Can anyone give me the best way to test out mash tun deadspace and lost to trub etc and how to enter that into beersmith as i think this may have been where i came undone!

Anyway onto to planning next brew
I did a wet run with water to check my mash tun dead space...then just tipped it into a measuring cup...as for loss to trub...i allow about 6 litres...others may be different...my2c
Cheers
Ferg
 
Congrats on the first (of many) ag brews. Final volume into the cube is a bit of a hit and miss affair. I came 2L under what I had aimed for on the weekend due to a slightly more vigorous boil and having the lid off the kettle more. The mash tun deadspace - unless there's still a fair bit of liquid left in the tun then don't worry about it. Lost to trub - it's better to increase your final volume to take this into account as beersmith doesn't increase your boil volume to overcome the trub. My cube can fit 21L so I set me final volume to 22L to cover the trub.

Missed gravity - higher or lower than expected. If it's higher, that's because you had more evapouration than expected so when you put it into the fermenter you can add some extra water to bring it back to the est OG. If you are under, the mash didn't go as well as expected. On a few of my brews I got about 62% overall efficiency all down to mashing technique. Now I just try and stick to the single infusion, light body mash. Good stirring helps convert the sugaz so stir well at mash in, middle, mash out and then sparge. This alone has helped me get up to 70ish%.
 
Gravity was lower oh well! we live and we learn, i really wanted to use this to gain knowledge i see so many other people taking weeks and getting a thousand opinions on what they should do for their first brew i just thought stuff it best way to learn is by doing it.

Just went and worked out mash tun dead space is 2 litres, so dont worry about that hey? so if no chilling into 17l cube final volume should be 18-19l to account for trub?
 
In beersmith I enter the estimated trub volume in the designated area (don't have Beersmith on this PC to provide directions). I think it's under the Equipment area. Then beersmith just works out the loss to trub for me.
 
My Beerbelly falsie didnt really work how i had hoped, as it let grain through, but perhaps brew shop had crushed too fine?

Really? I have never had a problem with their false bottom, nor have I heard of any problems. When did the grains come through? I still get grain coming through, but that is on the absolute first runnings, which I recirculate or 'vorlauf' back into the mash.

Cheers
Phil
 
yeah recirculated a few times and they still came through, maybe i was doing something wrong though
 
Not suggesting this is your personal solution but it helped me when I started.

Next time try the start of the recirculation slower and gradually speed up the flow to the speed you want. Also be sure not to disturb the grain bed when returning to the tun, try floating something above the grain be to gently pour onto.

Advise for deadspace is described well above. Trub will change with the recipe, so best to record all the volumes as you go to revise on future brews.
 
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