Mash Tun And Hlt Combined

[BennyBrewster]

Hey all,

I want to use a gas burner to heat my sparge water in the mash tun (50L keg) and then add the grain to it. This will save me having to use another keg as a HLT.

What problems will I run into? Will the grain not settle into a nice bed?

Ben

 

[razz]

Where will you heat the extra water for spargeing?

 

[BennyBrewster]

This is a valid point lol sorry to waste a whole thread.

No wonder I couldn't find any threads where people were discussing it, seemed pretty obvious to me!

As you can probably tell it has been a few years since I did any brewing and I totally overlooked this step while brainstorming my new brewery setup.

Dam this throws a spanner in my plans to modify a shopping trolley into a mobile brewery stand

 

[randyrob]

i wouldn't be dis encouraged, why not heat up the full volume of water required in your hlt/mash tun before adding the grain???

your only limitation then is batch size, but it will still work!

 

[razz]

Ben, do a search on BIAB. You will be able to mash and boil in the same vessel.

 

[BennyBrewster]

i wouldn't be dis encouraged, why not heat up the full volume of water required in your hlt/mash tun before adding the grain???

your only limitation then is batch size, but it will still work!

Not sure how well this would work without using a bag. Wouldn't the mash be way to thin?

Ben, do a search on BIAB. You will be able to mash and boil in the same vessel.

Yeah BIAB is an option, however I have plenty of kegs and making a HLT is not a problem. I guess I just wanted to save space.

 

[Offline]

You could always heat all of your water then put your sparge water in something else while you mash, like a fermenter. It would need to be hotter though to allow for losses. You might even have to add some cold water to your strike water to cool it a little.
Just a thought

 

[randyrob]

Not sure how well this would work without using a bag. Wouldn't the mash be way to thin?

There is quite a good article here by Jeffrey Donovan on the Mechanics Of No Sparge Brewing

http://www.promash.com/TipsNTricks/CommonT...ge_Article.html

Rob.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Offline - its pretty common in the US for breweries to heat up their sparge water and "store" it in a Eski style HLT. All done before the mash and it just holds temp for the hour, then sparge with it.

There is a bit of working out to do with how much heat is lost and how much absorbed by the eski - but its well do-able. It means that onlyone burner/heat source is needed for a 3 vessel brewery.

So your thought is a perfectly good one.

 

[ArnieW]

Why not have a mash tun that is big enough for a normal mash plus headroom for sparge water later. Mash as normal, heat sparge water in the kettle, then dump sparge water from kettle into the mash tun, and drain all your lovely wort into the kettle for boil? 2 vessels could do all that if the sizes are right.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

you are right Arnie - I was in the BiaB headspace and thinking only one vessel - dont know why. Brain fade. Randy Rob even posted a link.....

What you describe is no-sparge brewing, and its exactly what I do. I managed with only two vessels quite well before getting a separate HLT.

A keg mashtun should have more than enough room for no-sparing a single batch - my mashtun is a 47 litre tub and there is plenty of room with even a really big grain bill. Still getting 75% efficiency into the kettle with basically no sparge step. At least a few other brewers on this site do similar things.

I suppose you could even try heating all the water up in the mash-tun and mashing with a super high L:G ratio as well as no sparging. Which would essentially make it the same as a BiaB brew but without the bag. And BiaB works... so why not.

Lots of different ways to skin the brewing cat

TB

 

[Tim]

You can always heat all the water up in your kettle, drain your mash water into the MLT and dough in as normal, you can the gravity sparge from your kettle into the MLT and pump the runnings back into your kettle, you can keep this recirculating until you get a stable SG for the wort. I think the Beer belly brewboy works this way. Basically two tiered, two vessel with a pump. The only loss in efficiency over batch sparging will be the volume of wort that is soaked up by the grain.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Interesting - kind of like a continuous No-Sparge. Same end effect, but with built in re-circulation.

batch sparging loses wort to the grain as well, and this technique or just plain no-sparging will lose the same amount, its just that the wort lost will be stronger, so more sugar is left un-recovered. The difference is quite small, but real. On my system it translates to a 2-3% drop in mash efficiency (measured into the kettle) over a batch sparge where I would drain the mash-tun twice in equal amounts.

No-Sparging IS however, a hell of a lot easier and faster than any other sparging technique I have used other than BiaB

TB