System Test

[Brizbrew]

I did a full dry run of my system today to check how it all works and where I am lacking, it went pretty well but for a few things.

I boiled around 40L in my HLT keg and drained the water on to the 500g of crushed grain that I had on hand from testing my mill (No I did not use coco pops) . So far so good.
I know the water should not be boiling but this was just a practice and I wanted to see how much heat my esky lost during an hour.
As I have a pick up tube dipping right down to the bottom of the concave keg bottom is sucks up all but about 100ml of the boiled water.

I left the "mash" sitting in the esky while I run through in my head the process if this was a real brew day, I would be refilling the HLT with sparge water and heating it to sparge temps and occasionally stirring the mash.
After approx an hour I attached a hose to the MLT output and let it flow in to the kettle, it went without incident. The SS braided filter held everything back as it is supposed to. this is where I had my first suprise.
The esky held back just over 3L of water. The outlet for the tap on the esky is about 3 inches up from the bottom but it has a large base area, about the same size base as a 50L keg - it is a 63L job - so that is why it held so much. I did not expect it to be 3L though. :blink:

I then brought the liquid to the boil in the kettle and placed my IC in there just to go through the motions and this was another problem area, the coils are probably too tall, only the bottom half of the chiller was under the surface of the liquid so maybe some work to "despring" the coil apart from that it cooled pretty quickly to the mid thirties but it failed to get much lower although I did not give it more than about 10 minutes though . I will add a pre chiller for brewday's.

Finally I drained the kettle into a simulated fermenter, a bucket and found that I lose another 3 litres at the bottom of the kettle. I have a 1/2 inch pick up tube with a SS scrubby pad on the end going off at an angle to the side of the fermenter to avoid picking up crap after whirlpooling so this was another suprise 3L loss.

What I calculated was on brewday I am going to lose 1L per kilo of grain so that is around 5L for a 5K batch plus the 6L I lost today takes us up to eleven and that is before I factor anything for evaporation.

By my calculations I will need to start the boil with 30L to have any hope of a 23L batch, after losing 3 to the troob and 4? to evaporation is this close to normal/average?

After losing another litre on bottling day that means 22L to bottle. h34r:

 

[Darren]

The esky held back just over 3L of water. The outlet for the tap on the esky is about 3 inches up from the bottom but it has a large base area, about the same size base as a 50L keg - it is a 63L job - so that is why it held so much. I did not expect it to be 3L though. :blink:


Just add 3 litres more sparge water and you have made that 3 litres up

"I then brought the liquid to the boil in the kettle and placed my IC in there just to go through the motions and this was another problem area, the coils are probably too tall, only the bottom half of the chiller was under the surface of the liquid"

Why only make 30 litres? Add more grain to your esky and you will should be able to fill your kettle with wort.


"so maybe some work to "despring" the coil apart from that it cooled pretty quickly to the mid thirties
but it failed to get much lower although I did not give it more than about 10 minutes though . I will add a pre chiller for brewday's."

I found that it is best to "jiggle" the IC during cooling to get the temps down. I'm not sure about the water temps in Qld now but summer here in SA I can only get temps down to the mid twenties even with counter flow. Pre-chiller or allowing the wort to cool in you ferm. fridge before pitching is the way to go

"Finally I drained the kettle into a simulated fermenter, a bucket and found that I lose another 3 litres at the bottom of the kettle. I have a 1/2 inch pick up tube with a SS scrubby pad on the end going off at an angle to the side of the fermenter to avoid picking up crap after whirlpooling so this was another suprise 3L loss."

Not sure of your system but I would just "bend" the pick-up tube a bit closer to the bottom of the kettle

"By my calculations I will need to start the boil with 30L to have any hope of a 23L batch, after losing 3 to the troob and 4? to evaporation is this close to normal/average?"

Seems a bit high. If you want you can "top-up" your volume with more water at 10 minutes before flame-out.

Cheers
Darren

 

[johnno]

Brizbrew,
Depending on how much hops there are I would watch the SS scrubby.
The one and only time I tried one it blocked.
I gave up after that and dont worry about it now. Everything will settle to the bottom and really clear up in the primary.
Then after secondary it's like brand new again.

johnno

 

[pint of lager]

Yes, 30 litres into the boiler is normal. Every system is a little different, and fine tuning will happen for the first few brews. There are losses at every stage, and people are always amazed at the amount of water they heat up to mash and sparge with compared to the final volume into the fermenter.

When you have finished sparging at 1.010, you have to decide, do you top the boiler up to the 30 litre mark, or do a slightly lower volume brew.

You will always come across something in your brewday a bit different, for example, I used all noble hops for a pilsner of 40 IBUS. The 200 gms of hops left 4 litres of trub in the boiler. Which led to less wort into the fermenter.

When using your immersion chiller, move it around a few times so that all the wort comes into contact with the coils, otherwse you end up with hotspots. To get the wort down a few more degrees, you could freeze up sanitised icelocks and drop them in after your chiller has taken the wort temperatue as far down as it will go. Or, use frozen bottles of water, sanitise the outsides, and drop the into the cooled wort. This will not affect your final volume as regular iceblocks do.

 

[Brizbrew]

When you have finished sparging at 1.010, you have to decide, do you top the boiler up to the 30 litre mark, or do a slightly lower volume brew.

I don't follow what you are saying here.
Should I be checking the wort as it runs out of the MLT to see what the reading is on my hydrometer?
How will I know when it has hit 1.010 otherwise?

I thought that I would just sparge until I hit a pre determined volume in the kettle, in this case 30L. :unsure:

 

[mobrien]

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter18-6.html

You are supposed to stop collecting at 1.010 or 1.008 as after that you will get tannins etc.

However, in practice, I too can't see how to do this - you need to cool it down to use the hydro.

I think I need a refractometer

M

 

[Brizbrew]

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter18-6.html

You are supposed to stop collecting at 1.010 or 1.008 as after that you will get tannins etc.

However, in practice, I too can't see how to do this - you need to cool it down to use the hydro.

I think I need a refractometer

M

[post="71185"][/post]​

I have read most of Palmers online book and although he says you should stop sparging when you get to 1.008 it seems a bit strange to be measuring the runoff and converting to allow for the temperatre in the middle of a hectic (For me anyway) brewday.

As a novice is it possible to just sparge to reach a kettle volume?

 

[warrenlw63]

Brizbrew,

If you're using pellets get rid of the scrubby. It will just block. Keep it for plugs and leaf hops.

I have forgotten what you originally said about the height of your kettle from the floor... Even with a pickup tube make sure you've got at least 10cm from the tap to the top of the fermenter so the syphon from the tube works.

Other than that...

Go Briz! Go Briz! Go Briz! :beerbang:

Warren -

 

[warrenlw63]

BTW Briz.

3 lts Water left in your esky is no big deal. If it were a full sized mash those last 3 litres would be full of tannins, draff and **** anyway. You'd like to think you would have stopped your mash before then anyway. Good rule of thumb about 1.015 for dark beers and about 1.020 for paler beers. YMMV. Sometimes I like to stop even higher on more delicate beers, like about 1.025.

Warren -

 

[Scotty]

Brizbrew, im right here you know.... At the time I thought the coco pops would be good idea.... Im never going to live this down am I. 'sigh'

Scotty

 

[Brizbrew]

Brizbrew, im right here you know.... At the time I thought the coco pops would be good idea.... Im never going to live this down am I. 'sigh'

Scotty

[post="71290"][/post]​

Ah, sorry mate :lol: Just couldn't help myself.

I had a picture in my head of the kids going in the cupboard to get their breakfast and it was sitting in your boiler.

:super:

 

[Asher]

I don't follow what you are saying here.
Should I be checking the wort as it runs out of the MLT to see what the reading is on my hydrometer?
How will I know when it has hit 1.010 otherwise?

I thought that I would just sparge until I hit a pre determined volume in the kettle, in this case 30L.

Generally you'll find that your pretty safe just continuing to sparge untill you reach your target boil volume with beers that have an OG of 1.048 and above. It really only becomes an issue when your making midstrength beers...
As far as knowing when tannin extraction begins. A ittle tast of the runnoff will tell you a whole lot... believe me, you'll know when you begin to extract tannins

Asher for now

 

[Scotty]

Lucky I don't have kids.... I just wouldn't be able to see such a sad look on their little faces.

Scotty (thanking god he has no kids )

 

[TidalPete]

use frozen bottles of water, sanitise the outsides, and drop the into the cooled wort. This will not affect your final volume as regular iceblocks do.

[post="71173"][/post]​

POL,
Isn't this a bit risky??? I am very new to all this & had assumed the way to go was to add the frozen bottles to an esky of water then pump the chilled water through the IC to reach your final temp or can you do it both ways. :blink: I have almost collected all the gear I will need to go AG & was thinking of getting a pond pump for this very purpose. If you are right then I will not need a pond pump. is phos acid ok to sanitise with & is the sanitisation instantaneous??? :unsure:

:beer: