Speidels Braumeister. Impressive Yes. Expensive Yes.

[wessmith]

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

TB, more than one micro I know has been forced to utilise a cold or luke warm sparge. Usually occurs when (a) the heat source fails in the HLT, or (B) the brewer forgot to refill the HLT after mash-in. In every case the results have been surprisingly good - not too much lost gravity.

Wes

 

[Florian]

Cold water sparging - that's what I regularly do on the Braumeister. I usually only sparge with 3 to 4 liters, so instead of messing around with a separate hot plate or a kettle, I just run of a few jugs straight of the RO tap.
Works well enough for my purposes, seeing it's only a small amount and the grain bed still gives off some heat anyway.

Sometimes I mix half a liter of hot wort with half a liter of RO water to keep the temperature a bit higher and to incorporate some of the previously added salts into the sparge water. I'm yet to find out what difference in numbers it exactly makes, if any.


Another thing I do regularly and that very surprisingly hasn't come up in the Braumeister discussions yet are decoctions.
The point here is obviously not to raise the temperature, but I do decoctions where I deem it beneficial for colouring and flavour.
Although a little bit messy, it' such a simple thing to do if you don't have to rely on hitting target temps by calculating a certain grain percentage as you would on an esky mash tun or similar system.

At the end of a temperature rest just hit the pause buttons, remove the upper false bottom and withdraw a portion of the mash. Depending on how long I decide to boil and after which step I pause the program, I either leave the program in pause mode or let it continue, sometimes skipping a whole mash step. Then just return the decoction to the main mash and continue the program.

Another thing I want to try with one of my next beers is starting with a decoction straight away. So basically starting the mash with only, let's say, 70% of the grist, and bringing the other 30% slowly to a boil in a separate pot, possibly incorporating some short rests on the way.
That would skip the step of withdrawing a part of the mash from the Braumeister while already in operation (my least favourite part of the decoction), so the program only needs to be paused once to return the mash, making it even easier.

 

[Mearesy]

Interesting stuff about your decoction process Florian! Sounds like a simple enough thing to add to the process when the beer being brewed calls for it. Have a BM on order at the moment, and will def. give this idea a go in the future!

 

[drtomc]

TB, I've done cold water sparging for BIAB for an OG 1.080 baltic porter. The mash efficiency came out at 80%.

My notes say that I did a "dunk sparge" into 5L of tap water.

cheers,
T.

 

[wobbly]

TWOC in Perth has just taken delivery of a 200 liter unit which he indicated he was planning to use to go into fresh wort kits and is expecting a number of 20 litre units in a couple of weeks.

He is selling the 20lt units for $2500

Cheers

Wobbly

 

[schooey]

I'm sure the two Braumeister dealers will be interested in that little snippet....

Edit: ohhhhh, TWOC is a Lhbs? Does this mean there are now three dealers in Aus?

 

[scott_penno]

Only two listed here http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/shop_co.../Sales-Partners

sap.

 

[Malted]

Only two listed here http://www.speidels-braumeister.de/shop_co.../Sales-Partners
sap.

Yep maybe there are three dealers in Aus.
I am quite certain they will be interested:

Listed on TWOC website +$50
http://www.homebru.com.au/index.php?main_p...cPath=12_22_121

 

[ticinglese]

I am quite certain they WILL be interested:

Listed on TWOC website +$50
http://www.homebru.com.au/index.php?main_p...cPath=12_22_121

apologies if there is a thread on this already (and please point me there if there is) but the BM manual suggested freezing a litre or two of wort before u add the yeast that is then defrosted and used as the sugar input for secondary fermentation. seemed to me a classy way of doing it and possibly something to do with the reinheitsgebot in germany but probably a bit hit an miss unless you have a tool/speadsheet that tells you how much to add depending on the OG. Any one ever tried it?

 

[Malted]

apologies if there is a thread on this already (and please point me there if there is) but the BM manual suggested freezing a litre or two of wort before u add the yeast that is then defrosted and used as the sugar input for secondary fermentation. seemed to me a classy way of doing it and possibly something to do with the reinheitsgebot in germany but probably a bit hit an miss unless you have a tool/speadsheet that tells you how much to add depending on the OG. Any one ever tried it?

I was reading about that just today, don't remember the content...
There was a calculator that I downloaded that would tell you the volume and specs of a Krausening beer (from set aside wort) to add for secondary fermentation/carbonation, but that's on my work computer

 

[outbreak]

Why would they be interested?? He is approx 4000km away and has had the Braumeister for ages now.

 

[Malted]

Why would they be interested?? He is approx 4000km away and has had the Braumeister for ages now.

Turf warz an all that...
Authorised resellers an all that...
Maybe BM haven't updated their website in a while and have pooped on their authorised Australian resellers?

 

[outbreak]

Turf warz an all that...
Authorised resellers an all that...
Maybe BM haven't updated their website in a while and have pooped on their authorised Australian resellers?

Wouldn't be the first time a supplier has done something like that! Its good we have a supplier in Perth, shipping from the east can be a bitch.

 

[MHB]

As one of the two dealers in question, I can say there is no problem, G&G worked out a deal to drop ship units to WA through TWOC, I think considering the growing interest in Braumeisters that you might see some other similar deals popping up over the next couple of months.
Mark

 

[Bribie G]

Off topic for the BM but picking up on one of Florian's ideas, I'm brewing tomorrow and I'll try his suggestion of mashing a part of the grain in a stockpot then raising it to the boil and tip it into the main BIAB mash. It will give me something to do while waiting for the main water to reach strike temp (I'll be using RO) and I have a temperature mixing calculator so there won't be any guesswork on hitting correct mash temp. :icon_cheers:

 

[Malted]

apologies if there is a thread on this already (and please point me there if there is) but the BM manual suggested freezing a litre or two of wort before u add the yeast that is then defrosted and used as the sugar input for secondary fermentation. seemed to me a classy way of doing it and possibly something to do with the reinheitsgebot in germany but probably a bit hit an miss unless you have a tool/speadsheet that tells you how much to add depending on the OG. Any one ever tried it?

Ok so now I see what I found is not exactly what you're after.

Here's a link to an article about the subject of using Krausening beer made from Wort kept aside from the main brew http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Kraeu...ting_the_volume
At the Bottom of the paragraph "Calculating the Volume" there is a link to download "carbonation calculator metric units."

Not as easy as putting in unfermented wort as the bulk priming solution but according to the article Krausening beer does have some benefits.
The process may not be practical for us homebrewers but I wouldn't be surprised if a starter of 3 Litres or so couldn't be used.

 

[mxd]

went to G+G today and the 200 ltr unit was getting it's maiden voyage, it was setup yesterday.

 

[ticinglese]

Ok so now I see what I found is not exactly what you're after.

Here's a link to an article about the subject of using Krausening beer made from Wort kept aside from the main brew http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Kraeu...ting_the_volume
At the Bottom of the paragraph "Calculating the Volume" there is a link to download "carbonation calculator metric units."

Not as easy as putting in unfermented wort as the bulk priming solution but according to the article Krausening beer does have some benefits.
The process may not be practical for us homebrewers but I wouldn't be surprised if a starter of 3 Litres or so couldn't be used.

Thanks Malted! Looks fairly simple, I might try that, tho first I think I'll bottle half with plain wort and the other half with sugar and compare and if that doesn't work then try with kraeusen. Talking to a kiwi who set up his own microbrewery here about it and he just has pressurised conditioning tanks and when the wort hits about 1plato he shuts off the vent and the CO2 simply builds up inside. then he bottles/kegs with counterpressure. probably more complicated than it sounds but definitely sounds like a future project with a corny keg!

 

[Florian]

:icon_offtopic:

Talking to a kiwi who set up his own microbrewery here about it and he just has pressurised conditioning tanks and when the wort hits about 1plato he shuts off the vent and the CO2 simply builds up inside. then he bottles/kegs with counterpressure. probably more complicated than it sounds but definitely sounds like a future project with a corny keg!

That's fairly easy to do at home. Get one of these, rack from primary to keg before fermentation has finished, set to desired pressure. Once finished, cold condition and filter to second keg if you like, or just live with a few cloudy pints.

I've done it a few times and it works fairly well, but I've gone back to mostly force carbing now.

 

[ticinglese]

:icon_offtopic:



That's fairly easy to do at home. Get one of these, rack from primary to keg before fermentation has finished, set to desired pressure. Once finished, cold condition and filter to second keg if you like, or just live with a few cloudy pints.

I've done it a few times and it works fairly well, but I've gone back to mostly force carbing now.

great tip! thanks Florian. funny a lot of people get snobby about forced carbonation til you explain to them co2 is co2 and natural carbonation is no more "organic" than forced, just less predictable and possibly more romantic.