Speidels Braumeister. Impressive Yes. Expensive Yes.

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allready thinking of knockin a similar product up in the shed. :rolleyes:were is is the temp taken from? near the base/ element?...
 
i had a quick flick through this thread and could not see the max OG you can get out of these? can you brew a strong RIS or barley wine?
 
thanks to earning a decent currency like you guys down under I just bought a 20l Braumeister from Germany and imported it to Switzerland - way cheaper than through the local agent. Comes with ss mesh now instead of cloth as it seems people were making their own anyway. Before I brew I have a couple of questions any of you Braumeister experts:

- Sparging. The instructions seem to think sparging isn't necessary - does it really extract all available sugars without a sparge? Assuming not should I simply lift the sleeve and pour in water at 78 or remove the top plates and mesh first? starting with 23l, how much should I sparge with? Has anyone tried sparging by drawing off the wort first then lowering the sleeve again and recirculating with the sparge water (kind of against the idea of the single pot but though it might extract more sugar that way)?

- Wastage. Is it me or is the tap to high? do you lose too much wort or is it set at the perfect level not to suck out all the trub when running through the heat exchange?

Any other tips you've had to work out for yourselves would be welcome
 
ticinglese said:
thanks to earning a decent currency like you guys down under I just bought a 20l Braumeister from Germany and imported it to Switzerland - way cheaper than through the local agent. Comes with ss mesh now instead of cloth as it seems people were making their own anyway. Before I brew I have a couple of questions any of you Braumeister experts:

- Sparging. The instructions seem to think sparging isn't necessary - does it really extract all available sugars without a sparge? Assuming not should I simply lift the sleeve and pour in water at 78 or remove the top plates and mesh first? starting with 23l, how much should I sparge with? Has anyone tried sparging by drawing off the wort first then lowering the sleeve again and recirculating with the sparge water (kind of against the idea of the single pot but though it might extract more sugar that way)?

- Wastage. Is it me or is the tap to high? do you lose too much wort or is it set at the perfect level not to suck out all the trub when running through the heat exchange?

Any other tips you've had to work out for yourselves would be welcome
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum.
I do not have a braumeister (but will soon).
Whilst this is not strictly a Braumeister forum as such, quite a few people do have them.
I am not sure if you speak German, (I don't but Google Translate works good enough for me) you can check out http://hobbybrauer.de/ as they have a lot of info on the Braumeister.

There was a short discussion on sparging in another thread on this forum. From what I can tell you may easily get 75% efficiency without sparging, so some would say that is good enough and wouldn't bother. Some would bother and can push their efficiency to 80% or slightly better. Some folks say that it isn't really sparging but more like rinsing any remaining sugars off the grains and some say "isn't that what sparging is?" http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...55813&st=20 This is the link to another thread on this forum where there was some discussion of sparging. MHB said he would leave the top plates on when tipping sparge water through as the plates help to spread the sparge water more evenly.
 
dj1984
As mentioned in another thread, the biggest beer I have ever made in my Braumeister knocked out at 1.114 there was a 2 hour boil in there and the efficiency was absolutely crap (as is always the case with big beer).
If I were to do this again I would lift the malt pipe and put it over a bucket then sparge the grain (bit like a Party Gyle) and do a second boil after the first was finished. What Im thinking is that I wouldnt even empty the Braumeister between boils, just drain down the first batch leaving 3-5 L behind dump in the second runnings, do some quick hop calculations and let rip.

Ticinglese
As discussed earlier in this or one of the other Braumeister threads, a quick flood sparge while the malt pipe is sitting on top of the Braumeister (about 1L/Kg of grist @80oC) and Im regularly hitting 80% efficiency into fermenter, with a bit of basic water chemistry closer to 85%. You could do an incredible amount of screwing around and you wont get over 90%, hardly seams reasonable to get too excited about 5% of 10 Kg of grain a Kg of malt costs so little I for one couldnt be arsed.
The tap is just fine where it is, it allows a quick drain down without disturbing the trub, then I just put a bit of wood under the back leg and drain the last of the wort off slowly, total loss is around 2-3 L including all the trub.
My numbers are all bases on a 50 L Braumeister so you could expect half those losses; again you would have to be so tight you squeaked when you walked to get too excited about the losses.
Braumeisters are very efficient; they excel at making normal/standard beer (12oP & 25 IBU) but thats the vast majority of the beer made so it makes sense that they would be optimised for that point in the market. You can make most any beer you like including some very OTT monsters, but as is always the case at a price in efficiency.
MHB

Malted
Yep thats the goods, ty
M
 
Thanks Malted and MHB, I'll try that. Got a bit impatient and did a test run last night, the Braumeister was great until I decided instead of using it for the boil I'd split the wort in 3 pots and give them all a different hop profile - stove must be more powerful than I thought as rather than nice session stout I'm looking at 3 minute quantities of RIS now - probably should have thought about diluting but at least I got something to look forward to drinking at Christmas now!

Aside from this unconnected personal failure the Braumeister is really is great, and I like the way this forum focuses on the positives rather than an american one i read where the general tone was "I can build that better and cheaper". It's a luxury, and sure it could be improved, but I cant think of another system with such a small footprint that can handle an AG brew on a work night.
 
...oh and a small tip for those of you like me who didn't realise a nickel plated brass tap can't be welded to an ss pot...

http://jbweld.net/products/water.php

food safe, heat resistant to 150ish and i have 3 pots that have survived a 90 minute boil and the lateral force of turning the tap on and off. I bought it on amazon or ebay in the uk (cant remember) but I'm sure it'll be available in oz too
 
ticinglese said:
...oh and a small tip for those of you like me who didn't realise a nickel plated brass tap can't be welded to an ss pot...

http://jbweld.net/products/water.php

food safe, heat resistant to 150ish and i have 3 pots that have survived a 90 minute boil and the lateral force of turning the tap on and off. I bought it on amazon or ebay in the uk (cant remember) but I'm sure it'll be available in oz too
Click to expand...

+1 JBweld - great for heat exhangers in marine diesels as well. Good gear.
Cheers
BBB
 
MHB - have you (or has anyone else for that matter) tried the re-itterated mashing trick with the braumeister? To me that seems like the obvious way to push the OG limit of the unit up higher without sacrificing too much time or efficiency.
 
Sure, we did an Edinburgh Strong Ale
Target OG was 1.080 there was a total of about 2.4 Kg of specialty malt out of nearly 20 Kg whish was all put into the second drop.
You still get a significant reduction in efficiency in the second iteration (?) simply as there is no reason for the sugar to migrate out of the grist once the sugar concentration in solution is up to same concentration as that in the grist.
This is the one area where Full Volume Brewing (Braumeister, BIAB...) has a built in inefficiency, to which I believe there is no solution. True sparging is the one advantage a 3V system offers, if I was making mainly very strong beer I would opt for a 3V.
You can make very strong (approaching the theoretical limits) beer with a Braumeister or using BIAB but there will be an inescapable price in efficiency.
Although the efficiency still suffered re-iterated brewing lets you make the full volume your equipment can handle but I think thats about all
MHB

As an aside: -
I believe George Fix talked about Full Volume Brewing as far back as the 50-60s (rather disparagingly) and coined the term Pillow Case Brewing, I have read some of his comments but I cant for the life of me find the references in any of my books, can anyone recall having seen a reference or know where I might look.
Any help appreciated
Mark
 
What's the cost of ..JB Weld ...APPROX......ticinglese...
NO pricing on website.......
PJ
 
davewaldo said:
Are you guys using this JB weld on the Braumeister?
Click to expand...


god no, the braumeister may not be perfect but defo no need for waterweld. i just used it on some big pots i bought. drilled a hole near the bottom, cleaned the rough edges, stuck a 3/4 inch tap on the front with the waterweld and boiled the life out of what could have been a nice stout 24 hours later. you could easily do 5 taps with one tube, possibly more if you were tight with it. Admitedly I've only used the pots once but it held out at a v high heat and messing around turning the tap on and off etc. Food safe too which rules out most glues. So far I'd definetly recommend it but not for messing with your braumeister!
 
MHB said:
Sure, we did an Edinburgh Strong Ale
Target OG was 1.080 there was a total of about 2.4 Kg of specialty malt out of nearly 20 Kg whish was all put into the second drop.
You still get a significant reduction in efficiency in the second iteration (?) simply as there is no reason for the sugar to migrate out of the grist once the sugar concentration in solution is up to same concentration as that in the grist.
This is the one area where Full Volume Brewing (Braumeister, BIAB...) has a built in inefficiency, to which I believe there is no solution. True sparging is the one advantage a 3V system offers, if I was making mainly very strong beer I would opt for a 3V.
You can make very strong (approaching the theoretical limits) beer with a Braumeister or using BIAB but there will be an inescapable price in efficiency.
Although the efficiency still suffered re-iterated brewing lets you make the full volume your equipment can handle but I think thats about all
MHB

As an aside: -
I believe George Fix talked about Full Volume Brewing as far back as the 50-60s (rather disparagingly) and coined the term Pillow Case Brewing, I have read some of his comments but I cant for the life of me find the references in any of my books, can anyone recall having seen a reference or know where I might look.
Any help appreciated
Mark
Click to expand...

Thanks Mark - i seem to recall chris colby in that article he wrote about re-itterated mashing, having some sort of convoluted sparging regime that allowed him to get reasonably good (although of course reduced) efficiency out of that re-itterated mashing technique. I thought that might well be applicable to a braumeister too. But imo if you are brewing genuinely big beers you just need to cop it sweet on the efficiency drop no matter what system you are using, so its more about whether its possible to do or not on a given system - and it sounds more than doable.

One thing that might be of service to both braumeister and BIAB brewers who want to incorporate a sparge step, but dont want to increase the number of vessels in their system is something that i know is done by Spillsmostofit and was tested by Kai Troester... Cold water sparging. Yeah yeah... I hear all the howls of protest from the usual suspects "the heat reduces wort viscosity" "the heat dissolves the sugars better" etc etc various reasons why cold water sparging would be worse than useless. But as a matter of fact it isn't. Spills does it, Kai tested it and I've tried it and it works only slightly less well than sparging with water at traditional temps. I haven't tried it out on a traditional full fly sparge, only on BIAB and batch sparges .. and I guess it might work less well on a fly sparge, but i kind of doubt it. And what i have tried on a fly sparge is hot water from the tap - it works near enough to identically with sparge temp water so as not to matter.

Means that sparging in what would otherwise be a full volume brew, is a matter of the act itself and whether you can be bothered with it, rather than needing an extra vessel to heat water.

TB
 

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