Keg King ROBOBREW 35L SINGLE VESSEL BREWERY

[Exile]

This.

Seems to do the job well enough.

+1
but when sparging I use a colander

 

[ctagz]

yeah i rest the hose on the colander on top of the grainbed

 

[VanDrago]

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?

I have a sparge arm through the hole of the lid. This way temperature is more stable.

 

[Dinham]

Thanks for the tips ctagz. Yes this is my first all grain. Never did BIAB. I didn't let my whirlpool settle for anything like 30 mins. It was more like 2. I was concerned about getting it into the fermenter ASAP to avoid infection on the second brew tomorrow I'll let it settle for 30 mins. I used whirlflock.

 

[Dinham]

I don't really understand pumps with a system like this. I'm a total newbie but from what I do understand the point is a slight bump in efficiency and better temp consistence through the malt during the mash. My robobrew is wearing a yoga mat for insulation and when I mashed with the lid on my ChefAlarm was reading about a 1 to 1.5C diffence in temp at the top of the malt pipe to the robo's reading at the bottom. Is it really worth the added complexity for such a small temp difference?

When designing anything I'll always avoid complexity unless I can see it adding tangible benefits.

 

[Dinham]

Double post.

 

[Dinham]

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.

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.

I didn't give my whirlpool enough time to settle it seems. Was concerned about infection seeing as it had cooled.

 

[cliffo]

I much prefer the Robo operating with a pump. A cheap "upgrade" and well worth it.

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.

A mash out around 76-77 is ideal. Be sure to ramp the temp up on the Robo to mash out temps before sparging as well.

I don't whirlpool anymore (other than the action of running the pump whilst chilling).

I chill then let the wort sit for 20-30 minutes before emptying the wort into the fermenter. I tend to get mostly clear wort doing things this way.

 

[Dinham]

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.

Can I ask what kind of temp variation in the bed you consider consistent? .1C? .5C? 1C? 2C?

 

[Dinham]

I realized on my first batch that if you want to get it cooled in any reasonable amount of time you have to stir pretty much constantly. I can see the appeal of a pump meaning you don't have to do that manually.

 

[Dinham]

I don't whirlpool anymore (other than the action of running the pump whilst chilling).

Do you have the original model with 3.5L dead space or the newer one with 1.75L?

The would obviously effect the need to whirlpool quite a lot.

 

[cliffo]

Do you have the original model with 3.5L dead space or the newer one with 1.75L?

I've got the original model so I guess it would make a bit of a difference.

 

[takai]

Almost a boil over

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]

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?

Yep got it from here http://www.ibrew.com.au/products/mangrove-jacks-hop-spider
Does the job well and doesn't tend to block up like the KegKing one.

 

[Dinham]

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.

 

[keifer33]

Can you post up a screenshot of your Beersmith profile?

 

[SBOB]

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.

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)

- If you aim to do hop forward beers, a hop sock/hop spider is a decent investment especially if you are worried about a bit of hops making its way into the fermenter (personally, for your first few batches I wouldnt stress it..it will settle out into the crap you leave in the fermenter anyway. )
- calculate your efficiency for the last brew and use that on your next beer smith recipe and see if you hit the predicted numbers. The difference between a 60% efficiency and 80% efficiency in a robobrew batch would be about $1 worth of grain. I'll take consistently repeatable results for a $1 over trying to reach some arbitrary efficiency (especially as you are having the brew shop do the crush you have less control over one of those variables)

 

[ctagz]

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

 

[Dinham]

Can you post up a screenshot of your Beersmith profile?

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.

 

[Dinham]

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

My malts were:

Gladfield Crystal Dark Malt
Gladfield Ale Malt
Briess Rye Malt
Briess Caramel Malt 60L

And the crush was 1.2mm from my LHBS. Should I go courser? Finer?

I did use Whirlfoc.

On my first batch I didn't worry about how much hop matter got into the fermenter as I don't really care about clarity, but because I was using a bucket fermenter with a tap at the bottom, even after a 3 day cold crash I still go so much trub into my keg that it clogged the liquid out poppet. So now I'm very aware of how much hop matter is getting into the fermenter!