Worms - Bucket

[MarkBastard]

All you need is some sort of bracket that allows you to sit the inner tube at the top of the urn for free draining. Got any ideas bribie? Would love the urn itself to support the weight. No need for pullies etc.

 

[Tim F]

I don't know if a plastic bucket would be strong enough but I plan to rivet a little upside down hook kinda thing to my lower side of my pot so it can just hook onto the rim of the outer pot and drain.

 

[Bribie G]

I stand the urn on a tool trolley on castors and whilst that's great (and a good trolley for milling on as well), I do need the pulley system as it's too high to do much direct lifting. However in reality the bottom of the urn would only need to be on a stand tall enough for a no chill cube to fit just under the tap, and if you commit to using Ross cubes rather than Willow cubes the rig could be quite low indeed and would give fit young chappies like yourselves ample "purchase" to just lift up the bucket and clip it in place. Basically that's what I had to do with the bag at the Systems Wars day but I brought the BribiePressinator along to make things easier.

I'm having a think about that "clip" idea - not sure how you could make a safe "non slip" thing.

 

[MarkBastard]

I was thinking maybe two pieces of wood that are approximately the dimensions of the inside of the handles on a crown urn.

You then slide them into the urn handles vertically and they then hook under the lip of the bucket.

Of course at the bottom end they'd need to slot into something as well so they don't slip around.



That's just a very basic starting point.

I basically like the idea of using the urns standard handles and using the surface the urn is sitting on to hold the weight of the bucket.

Whatever the easiest way to achieve that is, while having a sturdy solution, is something we should be working towards IMO.

 

[stux]

All you need is some sort of bracket that allows you to sit the inner tube at the top of the urn for free draining. Got any ideas bribie? Would love the urn itself to support the weight. No need for pullies etc.

The braumeisters use a U shaped bar which sits on the rim and mates with the two bars sticking out of the malt pipe. That holds the malt pipe above the boiler while it drains, also allowing you to run sparge water into the maltpipe if you want.

I suspect it should be easy enough to build a bracketty thing which will support the bucket by its top lip

 

[MarkBastard]

Yeah that's not a bad idea, though it'd have to be a lot different because you'd want the lip of the bucket a lot higher than the top of the urn.

 

[stux]

The braumeisters use a U shaped bar which sits on the rim and mates with the two bars sticking out of the malt pipe. That holds the malt pipe above the boiler while it drains, also allowing you to run sparge water into the maltpipe if you want.

I suspect it should be easy enough to build a bracketty thing which will support the bucket by its top lip

Picture

http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx30/na...er/P4150600.jpg

 

[stux]

Picture

http://i738.photobucket.com/albums/xx30/na...er/P4150600.jpg

Actually, if you're using a pulley to pull the bucket out of the urn... just lock it off at the right height and let it hang

...

Now I just need to find a plastic bucket with a diameter slightly less than 40cm

 

[Tim F]

The easiest way of all is just to sit the bucket on a rack on top of the urn. I've been using a spare bit of wooden play pen

 

[nala]

I begin this topic by acknowledging that Bribie G is the instigator of brewing in a bucket, I have merely embellished
what he conceived as a good potential method, I have introduced a recirculating method to his original efforts.

Firstly a geometry lesson for Michael in readiness for next bucket trial :

View attachment 49175

This picture shows the bottom of the handy pail, firstly cut off the centre projection and drill a 6mm dia hole.
Around the rim there are equally spaced projections, bisect these through the central 6mm hole and mark a line with a pencil.
Mark a drilling point on each alternate line so that the hole you are about to drill is inside your 9" false bottom,
mark drill point on the other lines as per the picture, to drill the holes use one of these :

View attachment 49179

This is a 10mm dia drill with a little point and is designed for cutting wood or thin gauge metal.

For the false bottom I have used utility items, the first is a collander/sieve from Woolworths, I cut off the handles, flattened the base a little so that when the colland/sieve is lowered into the bucket you get a good fit around the rim.
Below the collander I have a disc of fly screen and a piece of coarse material, the fly screen acts as a clamp to the material,
I pierced a hole with a screwdriver through the flyscreen and material and secured them in position with a small nut and bolt.

View attachment 49180

This a before and after picture of the collander/sieve with and without handles

View attachment 49181

This shows the false bottom assembly inside the bucket.

View attachment 49182

This the setup ready for launch on Monday or Tuesday, will be using the recirculating pump and will attach my pulley to the handle ( I cut the white plastic handle in half squeezed in some 2 pack araldite and created a gap so that the bucket can be lifted in a balanced way by the small hook on the pulley) I will try the bucket at a level where I can create a compact grain bed and use the recirculation as a kind of sparge.
To complicate things and give it a good workout I am using the Braumeister stepmash technique with mashout.
I am also using my STC1000 temperature controller to control the various step temperatures, this was very sucessful
on my previous WORMS- BIAB trial.
PS: the sparge bar is "D" shaped only because that was all the copper tube that I had left from the previous effort.

I attempted the Worms Bucket trial yesterday and make the following comments and observations :



Doing a wet test to ensure all joints are secure and no leaks.



33 litres of water and 5.3 Kg of grain gave it a good mash and started the pump.
I began with the bucket on a trivet because I was not sure where the water/wort level would be, with the pump fully open
and pumping potentialy 6 litres per hour, I quickly saw that I would need to adjust the inline valve that I had inserted into the tube connected to the sparge/spray head.
The drainage from the bottom of the bucket I assesed as about 1 litre per minute, I later raised the bucket by the pulley to a level where I could see the top of the grain bed, the grain bed was very well compacted and only a small amount of husk was floating on the top.



The temperature control within the grainbed was spot on and the STC1000 was doing a great job with the wort temperatures.
After the mashout I raised the the Bucket so that I could see the the wort draining from the bottom of the bucket, this I presume would be about the same as I estimated when adjusting the pump flow when mashing about 1 litre per minute.
After the draining I lowered the bucket into a plastic tub and pressed on the top of the grain with a glass saucepan lid in an attempt to extract more wort. With BIAB I would normally get 30ish litres of wort by squeezing the bag with 2 glass saucepan lids, I managed about 2 litres, I was 3 litres short of my pre-boil volume of 31 litres so I topped this up with boiling water. The boil went well after I had an electrician disconnect the boil dry and thermostat, I got a good boil and did not need to scrape the disc above the element.
Taking refractometer readings after the boil I find that I am woefully short on Brix/Sg readings which I put down to the fact that I had a lot of fermentables still left in the unsparged grain. I am not overly concerned about this, the experiment went well although I will have to think of ways to increase the effiency, I could have sparged the grain whilst it was still in the bucket but I wanted a true indication of what I had produced.
Next time :
I intend to leave out both the flyscreen and the coarse fabric filters, I think the grainbed was good without the need for these, I am hoping this will improve both the recirculation and the draining after mashout.
I will have to sparge in some way either by a second vessel and my pump or by hand when I remove the bucket from the HLT.

 

[felten]

hmm my old coopers barrel FV fits nicely into my kettle... h34r:

 

[Bribie G]

So does my 25L Bunnings Style fermenter, that's what I was considering doing about a year ago when the crazy idea started nagging at me. Also they have lifting "dimples" in the sides that could be useful.

Nala, I know what you mean about sweet wort trapped in the grain. With BIAB you can Sumo-Wrestle the bag but in the case of BIAU you either need to press the grain or do a sparge with say 5L and boil longer. The longer boil doesn't faze me, many Euro Breweries do 2 hours and even UK gurus such as Graham Wheeler regularly wave their handbags in frustration at the one hour "cheapy" boil that seems to have become the default with home brewing. Electric is cheaper than NASA or Rambo burner at the moment, I'm definitely thinking of employing a 90 min boil as part of my new regime.

 

[kymba]

can't you just mash with 5L less and use that for your sparge, eliminating the need to boil longer? surely your grain bed isn't that high?

or you could cut out a disc of thick chopping board or something and press down on the drained grain bed, sorta like your pressinatorthingo. or will your bunnings fermenter fit in there? maybe that filled with water would do the same?

 

[nala]

So does my 25L Bunnings Style fermenter, that's what I was considering doing about a year ago when the crazy idea started nagging at me. Also they have lifting "dimples" in the sides that could be useful.

Nala, I know what you mean about sweet wort trapped in the grain. With BIAB you can Sumo-Wrestle the bag but in the case of BIAU you either need to press the grain or do a sparge with say 5L and boil longer. The longer boil doesn't faze me, many Euro Breweries do 2 hours and even UK gurus such as Graham Wheeler regularly wave their handbags in frustration at the one hour "cheapy" boil that seems to have become the default with home brewing. Electric is cheaper than NASA or Rambo burner at the moment, I'm definitely thinking of employing a 90 min boil as part of my new regime.

Thank you Bribie,
the benefit of posting a topic is to get as many ideas as possible, my initial thought was to mash in with less water - say 25/26 litres and do a sparge to get to my pre-boil volume of 31 litres. With the pulley system I have enough headroom to incorporate a sparge using my pump connected to a small HLT. Alternatively a sparge when I have removed the bucket from the Urn.

 

[Bribie G]

Exactement B) - the first BIU I did with the SS false bottom I did a thicker mash and sparged with about 5L on hoisting, and it turned out bloody good eff. - as always I had a taste of the spent grain and it definitely wasn't as sweet as the standard BIAB spent grains.


So what do you think of BIU as a new term "Bucket in Urn" ? It's got a nice ring to it, pronounced "Bayou" as in
Snappy hey

Edit: and yes of course the ol' Roy did a really nice original version - a ripper

 

[RdeVjun]

Edit: and yes of course the ol' Roy did a really nice original version - a ripper

Yeah, I prefer the harpsichord as a single manual, the voicing on the French styles gets a bit ordinary, give me a Flemish Virginal any day. Nice song though!

 

[Bribie G]

Yeah, I prefer the harpsichord as a single manual, the voicing on the French styles gets a bit ordinary, give me a Flemish Virginal any day. Nice song though!

Wouldn't a Flemish Virgin be as rare as a white-faced sheep in Wales?

 

[Tim F]

I have a much better

 

[Bribie G]

I have a much better

:lol:

 

[RdeVjun]

Wouldn't a Flemish Virgin be as rare as a white-faced sheep in Wales?

Yep, could be, wonder why I might prefer them?