VIC-Xmas 2016 Case-Swap Recipe (Cocko's place)

[JB]

Hi Martin. Yep, think there was one other cube already with hops but all others were hopped.

 

[Nullnvoid]

Yeah that was mine. Mardoo and I cubed ours before we left.

 

[technobabble66]

Which made it 3 - rusty, mardoo & mardoo's buddy (Cam?).
All others had hops put in them from Yob 's care package.

... So hopefully he received 16x $5 from all who used his hops, plus MJ & I used a 2nd lot on our Partigyle cubes. (So hopefully Jesse ended up with ~$90 in cash on the day (for ~3.5kg of hops!!)).

 

[MartinOC]

Whilst mowing the grass today (read: Beating it into submission with a borrowed ride-on mower [Thanks jbourke!!]), I had a thought that it might be a good idea to debrief what worked & what didn't so we can learn from it & do better next time.

Here's my thoughts/input:

Cocko's Rack-It racking worked really well for the gear we used.

The orientation with 2 x MLT's on the bottom & 2 x hot liquor "holding tanks" (courtesy of the Mildura boys) up-top worked, so we could have sparge water feeding by gravity, rather than having to use pumps.

The "Cold-Start-Ramp" idea to use a couple of H/X's & pumps programmed to come-on at 4.30am & have everything ready to go by the time we all surfaced on Saturday didn't work. They were just too under-powered to do the job for the size of mashes we did. If we were to use this idea again, probably best to dough-in on the Friday night as soon as we've got everything set up & get them going straight away.

Two decoctions didn't work to get the mashes up to where we wanted them. That was a definite failure.

If we want to get quick steps, what we DID have was the ability to heat a LOT of water in order to do hot/boiling infusions (underlet). We had plenty of burners & pots available, but didn't use them properly. We could then use the H/X's just for maintenance between steps.

Someone ('can't remember who) was a bit precious about not stirring the mash. Dunno why...? Disturbing the grain bed? That would be fixed easily with a bit of recirculation.

We had plenty of facility to move hot water from place to place, so I suggest we use that next time (ie. extra pumps & "holding-tanks").

There was still plenty of sugars left in the grains after the main boiler was full (seems to be a given with the gear we've used so far), so I suggest we plan for another parti-gyle brew in future.

That's my 2c. Any other observations?

 

[Yob]

as a side, my second runnings cube blew apart in the cellar, cracked the lid and fermented out half of itself, smells like arse in my barrel room <_<

Setup was fantastic as far the racking goes, so tight and simple. Tanks.. we lack large volumes of at temp liquor, most of the other issues evaporate if we had 800L of at temp volume..

march pumps in series may work/help? dangerous?

we just couldnt move the volume from top to bottom quickly enough.. anywhere near enough.. we have reached the event horizon with our current pumps HEX/s...

 

[Bridges]

So you need something like this
Bit exxy and in the states but will move 50 GPM at a head of 45 feet.
Should do nicely.
Just need one to fall of the back of a plane so to speak.

 

[TheWiggman]

I think the setup overall had the capability to brew well but lacked power, literally. If the pumps are slow and the HEx isn't boiling then the limitation is the element power, not the pump. That was the biggest hindrance from the electrical side of things. If we had more power then absolutely would need bigger pumps. In fact considering the amount of water we had to move if would be a lot quicker and safer if we had 2 larger pumps as per Bridges. I chatted to Yob about the pumps in series and that would work too for the HExs (as pressure was the issue on the HERM-IT coil, though irrelevant if we weren't to use a bigger element or two). Two pumps in parallel would effectively double flow for transfer.
A single HERMS for maintaining temp and an infusion mash would probably work best with the gear we had, but with such a high gravity it would make for a very thick mash. My preference at the start was a single infusion mash (boring though) but grain handling would become a hurdle because you would want it all in there at once.
I was a bit precious about stirring Martin because on my system it results in a stuck mash almost every time. I've never used the esky-tube false bottom before so maybe this is much less of a risk. Wort was flying out if the tap when we checked so it made ****-all difference plus proved we has scope for more pumping capacity.
Alternative: multiple pumps and HERMS systems in parallel from tees out of the drain. This would allow more power easily and with thought put into extension cord placement wouldn't trip circuit boards.

 

[idzy]

At some point during the Saturday I saw 500+ litres of wort flowing into cubes. Mission accomplished

Do's - what we usually do (+ buckets)
Don'ts - timers and cold mashes

 

[Mardoo]

My 2c - not having been on this brew but having done a few on Adam's system - is nothing new. The flow and transfer rate kills us, time wise at least. Great wort is produced, no doubt. 1/2" tubing on Chuggers and March 809/815's adds at least 2 hours to the day, perhaps 4, maybe even 6.

Yob uses the slow ramp method at home and produces some fine beers with it. Maybe the Friday night mash-in with HEX's set and running is the go, as suggested. We'll needs a Night's Watch though . Heating capacity for infusions isn't a problem, as long as we have the heating and storage volume

Infusion with recirculation is probably the go, with a different mash tun running the temp of each step, as done previously. But then the transfer and flow rate thing rears its head again.

There are workaround solutions for most of the issues, except for the one of flow and transfer rate.

Maybe this is where we start talking about kicking some cash and build time in towards solving this on Adam's system.

 

[mofox1]

Night's Watch eh Mardoo? Winter swap is coming...

HLT wise, I mentioned on my system I preheat the HLT on the night prior to brew day. Usually set to just sub boiling and turn it off when I go to bed. When in winter I'll cover precious with a doona.

Brew day morning I wake up to 65°C strike water. Too easy.

 

[TheWiggman]

I'll quote this smart arse -

Extrapolating from my system, we'll need shitloads of power if step mashing.
More technically, 1500W is ok for stepping 20 litres so for an equivalent ramp rate you're roughly looking at 28kW. That's a few power points, 12 to be precise pulling full current and smashing the power bill.

4 x heat exchangers (~2kW each?) will adequate to maintain mash temps but step mashing will be a bit of a doozey. At a minimum we're looking at 4 x 10A power points for the mash. If required I can legitimately borrow some fittings from work but I'm hoping we'll be able to assemble some manifolds on the day out of spare parts in our systems. We'd need -

Issue is energy, not flow. 2400W of electrical heating power is going to take hours to heat up 375 litres of water and grain no matter which way you look at it. 4 options as I see it for step mashing -

1. Gas-fired HERMS with angry burners and lots of flow
2. Parallel HERMS with multiple small elements
3. Single HERMS (like the pot that was there) with a few elements in it
4. Bigger HERMS element/s, necessitating a large GPO

Option 1 requires constant monitoring but is workable, option 2 is simple as long as people bring their gear, option 3 would be handy as long as the house had the power capability, option 4 is best but not workable at most homes.

 

[idzy]

This particular config has worked on the blue esky for a few swaps now with not too much dramas. Mainly because I use 2x2400w elements. Wiggman's HEX only had 2200w, which did mean ramping was slow, so it would be good to fix this.

The problem is that most places will only have 10amp outlets. So we need a system similar to mine, 2 elements at 2400w. That way we can use it anywhere with 2 x 10amp outlets.

Ideally what I would like to do is replace the 2x STC-1000s with 2x PIDs with SSDs, similar to Wiggmans and have both connected to the one probe on the HEX output. Seems like it would be the best way to do it. Problem is design, cost, and time to build it. If anyone has the inclination to help with design and time to build, I will work out a way to fund it. PM me.

EDIT: I note that Kinglake and Kangaroo Ground both had power issues at site. Something we should look to resolve with generators and or location selection. Power output is absolutely mandatory. No point having 3 phase pumps and HEXs with nothing to run them.

 

[TheWiggman]

I swear home owners get their houses wired up without the consideration of large brewing systems later down the track. Madness.

 

[WarmerBeer]

I've got 36 Amps wired into my brewing shed.

Unfortunately, the physical size of my brewing shed means I can host no more than 3 brewers at any case swap.

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

I don't have 3 phase. But I'm happy to have a fire. Could direct fire or heat up some rocks steinbier style. Could be an issue in the esky's though. Might have to line them with foil.

 

[idzy]

I don't have 3 phase. But I'm happy to have a fire. Could direct fire or heat up some rocks steinbier style. Could be an issue in the esky's though. Might have to line them with foil.

I reckon even with our current setup, if we dough in at 60c, we will be sweet.

 

[Nullnvoid]

I don't have 3 phase.

You have 6 months .

Kickstarter!

 

[mofox1]

as a side, my second runnings cube blew apart in the cellar, cracked the lid and fermented out half of itself, smells like arse in my barrel room <_<

Erk. Any idea if it blew 'cos it started to grow, or just decided it was in an opportune place to fail (in which case be thankful it wasn't in the back of the subi)?

 

[Mardoo]

Oh my god, back when I used to do catering I had 25L of prawn ceviche spill in the back of my Subi. At the end of a 2-hour drive. Arriving AT the event. On a 44C day. 25L of ceviche. Locked car for 10 hot hours. Fragrant drive home. Took 2 years to get rid of the smell, even after I ripped out all the carpet and upholstery it spilled on.

As we were.

 

[Mardoo]

I'll quote this smart arse -


Issue is energy, not flow. 2400W of electrical heating power is going to take hours to heat up 375 litres of water and grain no matter which way you look at it.

It's both actually. I may have confused the issue by saying "flow". I'm not referring to the HEX's. The ability to transfer liquid at a reasonable rate is one of the major issues. Check out Spike Brewing's literature on the difference in flow rate between 1/2" and 5/8" tube. (Sorry, that's the only solid reference I can think of off the top of my head.)

As Adam referred to, we've run 2 smaller HEX's, one for each tun, each with 2 OTS elements in them and managed to ramp in not-unreasonable times, not ideal ones either. So, yes, power is absolutely an issue that needs to be considered.

**** I love this conversation.