my typical brew day

[mb-squared]

The last time I posted about my brew rig, some people had some questions about how I could be getting efficiencies in the low 90s. I think it has much more to do with the way I do things, not the cheap, crappy gear I have. So I thought I'd post a description of my typical brew day. On this particular brew day, I brewed up 50L of Janet's Brown Ale, which is always a big hit with SWMBO.

I begin the day by filling both the boil kettle and the hot liquor tank with filtered water and then I heat both kettles to mash-in temp. Then I transfer the hot water from the BK into the mash tun and then start running the MT water through the HEX (which sits in the HLT) to make sure that the HLT and the MT are sitting at the same temp. Once they are, I turn off the wort pump and dough in. I then turn on the wort pump and just crack the valve to start the recirculation very slowly. Here's a pic of me just starting the mash -- the valve on the wort pump is still only part way open.



The heated wort returning from the HLT is fed through a silicone hose that wraps around the inside of the MT; it rests on top of the grain bed. It's important to start the recirculation of the wort very slowly so that the grain bed can settle slowly and not compact. Here's a pic of the mash tun at the very beginning of the mash. You can see that it is cloudy.



Over the first 10 minutes of the mash, I incrementally open the valve wider and wider until it is fully open. Within 30 minutes, you can see that it has cleared up substantially. By recirculating through the grain bed continuously, the wort is filtered very nicely. The constant, wide-open recirculation during the whole of the mash really helps to extract all that sugary goodness too.



Early on in the mash, I check to make sure that the PH of both the wort in the mash tun and the water in the HLT (i.e. sparge water) is in the mid 5s.



Actually, I rarely ever open the kettles; I'm able to check clarity, PH etc. by taking a sample through the second valve on the output side of each pump.


After the mash and mash-out have wrapped up and it's time to sparge, I close all the valves and then simply move the HEX-in hose to the BK (just hang it over the side) and the HLT-in hose to the HEX-in spot. I then slowly open the valves on both the water and wort pumps so that I have a flow rate of about 1L/min. Here you can see the clear water from the HLT is just beginning its journey through the HEX, pushing the hot wort in front of it through the HEX and into the mash tun.




Once the boil is done (90 minutes is the norm for me), I put my sieve in and siphon out of that with a copper tube. Gotta love the hop bill in Janet's Brown Ale!



Before I start draining the BK, I load up the HLT with ice. It is no longer a 'hot liquor tank'; it is now a cold-as tank (CAT). The boiling hot wort first travels through the CFC, then the wort pump, then the HEX in the CAT and finally into the fermenter on the other side.



The journey begins at boiling temps and hits the fermenter a couple seconds later at 54F (12C). [When I started using my BCS-460 there was a bug with Celsius mode and so I used it in Fahrenheit mode. They have since fixed the bug, but I haven't changed back over yet.]



And there you have it. All pretty basic stuff for most of you, but it might be helpful to a few of you just getting into all grain.

Cheers,

 

[BDD]

Thats a sweet setup you have there man!!!!! Looks like you have your methods pretty nailed too. I think my methods would be considered pretty basic in comparison. Jealous!!!!

 

[mb-squared]

Cheers mate

 

[Dan Pratt]

Hi MB,

Top marks for getting a brew day documented, the setup looks great. :beerbang:

Looking at the information, you do what everyone does with a 3V setup to make wort but getting 90% is what most struggle to achieve for Brewhouse Efficiency's ( especially me...lol 70% ) Possibly the sparging you use whcih I think is fly sparging maybe where your getting the extra %'s.

 

[mckenry]

Hi MB,

Top marks for getting a brew day documented, the setup looks great. :beerbang:

Looking at the information, you do what everyone does with a 3V setup to make wort but getting 90% is what most struggle to achieve for Brewhouse Efficiency's ( especially me...lol 70% ) Possibly the sparging you use whcih I think is fly sparging maybe where your getting the extra %'s.

Can you post your numbers for the day? OG & kgs of malt plus anything else you have.

This is pretty much what I was going to ask. Nice setup by the way! I have a 3V herms, so I have continual flow through the grainbed and the ability to either batch or fly sparge, neither of which get me much over 75% eff. I was hoping there'd be a bit of genius in there that I could put into practice myself. Are you sure you have your software setup correctly? Got your losses exactly right? Evap exactly right etc?
I, for a few brews, thought I was getting better efficiency (85%) as my extraction was up and I put it down to a new mash schedule. Turned out my refrac was out. It was over-registering by 5 or 6 points SG.

Edit - And I'm not trying to tell you how to suck eggs, but things like 'volume to the fermenter' and 'bottling volume' all go towrads overall efficiency and a lot of newbies have these two figures the same.

But, If youre 100% sure of all these things, then I bow to your 90%

 

[mb-squared]

Can you post your numbers for the day? OG & kgs of malt plus anything else you have.

Hi Pratty1, I think you'll find that I've posted these for you before:
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/78566-perfect-temp-control-with-gas/#entry1143629

Cheers,

matto

 

[TheWiggman]

Awesome post. Can you post a pic of your mash tun empty and show how the liquid enters it? My only difference is I keep the flow down for the most part (excluding steps) to ensure I don't get channelling. I tend to get around 75-80% eff. but my MT doesn't look as clear as it does in your pic 3. It's clear as buggery though coming out of the hose.

Also, what's with your status? Kit master indeed...

 

[mb-squared]

Hey Wiggman, I'll try and get that pic to you, but basically just a silicone hose that wraps around the tun and that sits on top of the grain bed. I suspect that recirculating wide-open during the whole mash and mash-out is a part of it. Perhaps another part is that I fly-sparge really slow (minimum 60 mins -- usually closer to 90) and I keep sparging until the BK is full even if that means my final runnings are closer to water than they are to wort. This is why the one thing I'm pretty obsessive about is the PH (gotta keep both the mash tun and the sparge water in the mid 5s). Also, and something I didn't detail in the post, is that I turn the heat off as soon as I start the sparge. So I start sparging at 168F (75C) and finish at around 120F (48C). The cool down is intentional as it helps to keep from extracting tannins during the extended sparge.

 

[wessmith]

Dont quite know how you calculated your efficiency mb-squared, but down my way 10kg of malt yielding 52L into the fermenter at 1046 is smack on 80% brewhouse efficiency which is still pretty good. Part of your efficiency is coming from the slow sparge - 60 mins would be the minimum we run with on our systems but we maintain the temp around 78C IN THE MASH BED. I cant see any real benefit in letting the sparge water cool off. Tannins are mostly extracted by higher temps and pH greater than 6.

Wes

 

[mb-squared]

Hi Wes, I'm not sure where you got your numbers from. Here is what I said to Pratty1:
My last brew was a Cascade Amber Ale. 10kg of grain. pre-boil volume of 61L @ 1.046SG for a mash efficiency of 93.3%. After the boil, I had 52L into the fermenter @ 1.053SG. Beersmith tells me that equates to a brewhouse efficiency of 91.6%

You calculated efficiency using my post-boil volume and my pre-boil SG. That doesn't seem the right way to go about things. But I could be wrong. I'm just going off of what Beersmith tells me. This site here confirms what Beersmith says.

I must say that I'm a bit surprised by all the skepticism about my claims of 90% efficiency. I use a similar setup (albeit with gas) and the same brew-day protocol as this guy and he frequently claims efficiencies of 95% and higher.

 

[wessmith]

My apologies mb-squared, I read your sg into the FV as 1046, not 1053. For the record that makes your overall brewhouse eficiency 92% on my calcs from a malt with 78% yield and based on a brew length of 52L. Very good figures. Again for the record, it really makes no difference which brewing software or manual calcs you might utilise (I use Promash), the key is getting everything calibrated. The pre-boil sg is totally irrelevant in my book as the result is going to vary depending on your sparge volume and then the addition of any adjuncts into the kettle. The trick is to manage the evaporation and kettle/HEX/piping/thermal shrinkage losses to arrive at your planned volume and sg into the FV. These ultimately are the only figures that count.

Wes

 

[mb-squared]

It took me ~10 or so brew days to get my system dialled in (it's my first system!), but I have more than 50 brews on it now. I build my recipes on the assumption of 90% efficiency and I consistently hit my numbers (volume and gravity) into the FV.

My only reason for making detailed posts with lots of pics is because I know there are a lot of people out there with serious 'electric brewery envy' but who can't afford to go that route. I am one of them! I'm hoping that my posts will convince some of the new guys getting into all grain that it is possible to hit those high numbers and produce some really amazing beer -- on the relative cheap! I believe my brewery does that quite nicely. At least I am happy with it.

 

[TheWiggman]

Re: the tannins, all that I've read suggests that the temp goes no higher than 80°C in the mash bed and you keep your sparging SG above 1.005 as a minimum (many here have suggested 1.010). Obviously you will gain slightly more efficiency by fly sparging as long as you can, but you're at risk of extracting undesirable flavours. Screwtop did a good post on this not long ago, and until his beer was judged he wasn't aware of the problem.

Are you wary of this mb?

 

[mb-squared]

Yep, very wary of this. This is why I let the temp drop during the sparge and ensure that the PH is kept stable in the mid 5s. The gravity of my final runnings are usually in the range of 1.005. I know the received wisdom is not to let the final runnings go below 1.010, but from everything I've read you can go lower, much lower, if you're careful with the PH and the temp (though Wes suggests that it's OK to keep the temp right up there at mash-out temps -- that strikes me as risky, but I've never been bothered to run an experiment).

I have found these two sources helpful (as I'm sure others here have too):
http://www.braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_pH_affects_brewing
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-chemistry-primer-198460/ (careful, this one will take a full day to wade through)

Haven't bothered to have any of my beer judged, unless you count the steady stream of friends asking for me to supply the beer for their upcoming parties. Which I'm more than happy to do

 

[mb-squared]

Awesome post. Can you post a pic of your mash tun empty and show how the liquid enters it?

Here you go Wiggman. Hard with all the reflections to get a clear idea of what all is in there and where. But you should see clearly enough the false bottom, the thermowell and the silicone hose that is attached to a bent/angled copper inlet tube. Hope that helps!

 

[thedragon]

The last time I posted ... I think it has much more to do with the way I do things, not the cheap, crappy gear I have...

MB, your setup is far from cheap and crappy. It looks great... It will leave many brewers - me included - quite jealous.

 

[TheWiggman]

Righto, so it's just open ended? Mine's the same but I point it at the back of the MT higher than the water level. It falls, avoiding any whirlpooling. Yours however (as can be seen from the pic) whirlpools when in action. I avoid doing this now at the advice of others.

I think the biggest difference with your method vs most everyone else's is the adjustment of the sparge water pH to mid 5s.

 

[Dan Pratt]

Mb, what are you using to reduce your sparge water pH?

 

[mb-squared]

Mb, what are you using to reduce your sparge water pH?

just lactic acid. the water in my area is so soft that a few drops is enough.

 

[mb-squared]

Righto, so it's just open ended? Mine's the same but I point it at the back of the MT higher than the water level. It falls, avoiding any whirlpooling. Yours however (as can be seen from the pic) whirlpools when in action. I avoid doing this now at the advice of others.

I think the biggest difference with your method vs most everyone else's is the adjustment of the sparge water pH to mid 5s.

yep, I get quite a whirlpool going in there. fluid dynamics is a bit outside my area of expertise, but I suspect that letting the wort cascade down the walls of the MT in one spot is going to lead to more channelling problems than letting the whole thing whirl. but I have nothing other than a hunch on that. I do know that the whirlpool with the pump running wide-open works well for me.

cheers mate,

matto