+1cliffo said:This.
Seems to do the job well enough.
but when sparging I use a colander
+1cliffo said:This.
Seems to do the job well enough.
I have a sparge arm through the hole of the lid. This way temperature is more stable.Homicidal Teddybear said:What are people using at the return end when recirculating? just resting the hose on top of the mash, or some sort of sparge arm or dish?
The grain bill was about 4.6 kg. I think I must have compacted it at during volaf (I was aiming for 1 inch of water but I may have put more). I think that mashing out at 77C might help loosen things up.honesmo said:How much grain did you have in there? What temp was your sparge water? I've noticed my sparge slows down in proportion to how much grain I put in there goes at a good rate at around 4.5kg but really slows around 6 so I set it on the way to boil while I wait. I also try not to compact it by sitting too much water on top that speeds it up.
Did you give the whirlpool a good chance to settle then slowly drain it to not disturb the sediment? I've got the same unit and ended up spewing a good inch worth of crap into my fermenter on my second brew but managed to leave most of it behind when moving to the keg.by pouring it off above the sediment.
Can I ask what kind of temp variation in the bed you consider consistent? .1C? .5C? 1C? 2C?cliffo said:I've found temps to be much more consistent throughout the grain bed and the addition of a pump also allows you to get something resembling a whirlpool going whilst chilling to make that process much more efficient.
Do you have the original model with 3.5L dead space or the newer one with 1.75L?cliffo said:I don't whirlpool anymore (other than the action of running the pump whilst chilling).
I've got the original model so I guess it would make a bit of a difference.Dinham said:Do you have the original model with 3.5L dead space or the newer one with 1.75L?
Slightly off topic, but is that the Mangrove Jacks hop spider? If so how do you find it, and where did you get it from?Exile said:Almost a boil over
Yep got it from here http://www.ibrew.com.au/products/mangrove-jacks-hop-spidertakai said:Slightly off topic, but is that the Mangrove Jacks hop spider? If so how do you find it, and where did you get it from?
i would ignore efficiency for now and just work on getting the process sorted..making beer isn't suppose to be a pain in the a*s (well, mostly not)Dinham said:Right well I just did my second robobrew batch. I avoided the compacted grain bed issue I had on my first run by using 300g of rice hulls and mashing out at 77C. I poured my vorlaf very, very slowly. Flowed nice any easy this time.
The big problem I had was I ended up with a metric ****-tonne of hop matter in my fermenter, once again. I stirred a whirlpool about as vigorously as humanly possible and let it sit for 30 minutes. It looked nice and settled / clear on the top. As I started (very, very slowly) draining into the fermenter there was a heap of hop matter coming through, so I sanitized a kitchen strainer and ran it through that. After the first couple of liters it came through nice and clear, and then after about 10 liters it got real cloudy again. Took about 40 minutes to run it through the strainer as I needed to constantly unclog it with a sanitized spoon. This recipe had 110g of hops in the boil. I guess I’m going to have to buy a hop spider or figure out a racking arm solution. Kind of annoying but I don’t see any way around it. I’m going to have to siphon this batch out of my bucket fermenter and as I’m not a carboy user I don’t currently own an auto siphon.
Interestingly, as with my first batch, I’m down about 2L into the fermenter from what I was expecting. On the first batch I assumed it was from the added absorption of a very clogged grain bed, but that didn’t happen this time. I’m using BeerSmith for my calculations and I’ve plugged in accurate dead space and boil off. I’ve not gotten better than 65% efficiency so far. Was aiming for 0.060 and even with my missing 2L I ended up on 0.056.
I guess I’ll try a pump to see if that helps with efficiency.
I'm not really loving my robobrew experience at this stage.
Here it is. Any advice appreciated! Keep in mind I have the newer version with lower tap giving me 1.75L of dead space and not 3.5L.keifer33 said:Can you post up a screenshot of your Beersmith profile?
My malts were:ctagz said:Yeah robo brew looks great. All systems have teething issues. Regarding efficiency, your crush will have most effect, then secondly different brands have found to give higher efficiency too (gladfield was mentioned specifically). Ive never really worried about the colour/opaqueness of wort going into fermenter. in the end it all settles and clear beer off the top.
you could try skimming break off the top before the boil. It looks like coffee crema, skim it out and you should have less break in the bottom after boil. Also didnt read if you used whirlfloc, stuff is cheap and worth a try, I noticed a difference.
Ive read that some of the break material is beneficial for yeast nutrition. At the end of the day Ive made nice beers with cloudy af wort. Im currently shooting for 70% and not fussed, i just wanna avoid astringent flavours so im not going hard on the sparge either
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