------- Start of digest ------- From: arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) Subject: EASYMASH Date: Thu, 28 Nov 91 08:19 CST To: Homebrew Digest Fm: Jack Schmidling EASY MASH (The Sequel) This was originally posted leaving out a lot of details, some of which, I herewith fill in. As I intend to produce a new - - - - - on all grain brewing, I would appreciate any and all CONSTRUCTIVE comments. I want to develop an all grain process that reduces the cost and effort to the minimum while producing an acceptable beer. As I have the same aversion to plastic as I do to aluminum and to keep within the budget of most hobbiests, I decided to base the system abound the old enameled 8 gal kettle that grandma used for canning. The same kettle is used for mashing, sparging and again after dumping the spent grains, for the boil. It is never lifted full so the problem of handles falling off is not an issue. A few simple mods are required to make it fit the process. A small brass spiggot is fitted to the bottom with a short piece of pipe extending several inches toward the center on the inside. A small piece of window screen is rolled several times around the pipe and secured with a hose clamp or twisted copper wire. The screen roll extends several inches past the end of the pipe and the last inch is bent over itself to prevent anything from entering the spiggot that has not passed through several layers of screen. Mashing is begun by "doughing in" enough warm (100 degs) tap water to 8 lbs of milled (2 row/6 row) malt to obtain a consistancy of oat meal. Let this rest for 30 minutes. Add enough hot tap water to bring the temp up to 120 degrees using a candy thermometer to monitor the temp. Hold this temp for 60 minutes by adding heat as necessary. Stir frequently to avoid carmelizing and to distribute the heat. On a separate burner, bring a couple of quarts of water to a boil. Increase the heat and add enough boiling water to raise the temperature to 158 degrees. Maintain this temperature for 60 minutes. This can be done by simply adjusting the flame while monitoring the temperature and dilligent stirring. The preferred method is by decoction. Remove a quart of the mash and bring it to a boil on a separate burner then return it to the mash. Repeat this as often as necessary to maintain the 158 degrees. In spite of the fact that boiling destroys the enzymes, there are other important chemical reactions that take place only by boiling. As only a small portion of the mash is boiled at one time, there will always be enough enzyme activity in the unboiled portion to maintain the process, even on the boiled portions. Even partial decoction should produce a beer superior to the more common method of dumping hot water into a cooler full of malt and trusting to luck. After 60 mins at 158, crank up the heat and continue the decoction until 178 degrees is reached. Hold this temp for 30 mins with flame and a few decoctions, then turn off the heat and let it rest while heating water on another burner. If you have control over the hot water heater, you can get it almost hot enough out of the tap. I keep two pans of water going so that one is heating while the other is sparging. You are on you own here. The level of wort in the kettle should be no more than about an inch above the grain when it settles. Lay a dinner plate on top of the grain to distribute the sparging water and minimize the disturbance of the grain. Open the spiggot just a trickle and run the wort into a sauce pan or jug till it runs clear. Pour the turbid runoff back into the kettle. The object of sparging is to extract as much sugar from the grain as possible. The longer it takes, the more efficient the extraction. Adjust the outflow so that it takes at least an hour to obtain 5 gallons. Add the boiling water as necessary to just keep the grain covered. The first runoff should be about 1.080 and you quit when it gets below 1.010. The total blend will produce 6 to 7 gallons at about 1.030 which, after boiling will yield 5 to 6 gals at 1.040. The seven gallons of wort will fit easily into the kettle for the boil. A minimal one hour boil will evaporate about a gallon so you can play with the volumes in various ways. You can increase the gravity by more boiling or boil less and have more beer. Add half of your hops as soon as boiling begins. Save one forth for the end and the remainder at regular intervals during the boil. After the boil, it is tapped into the primary after cooling, either overnight or with a wort chiller if you have one. I actually draw it of a gallon at a time so that I can shake it vigorously and "glug " it into the primary to oxygenate it prior to pitching yeast. The kettle seems to be universally available for about $35 and the rest of the stuff can be had for less than $5, making it a pretty inexpensive system. I happen to have a small foundry furnace that I use to boil on and have not actually tried boiling on the kitchen stove but I gather from others that two burners will eventually bring 5 gals to a boil. My furnace will bring 7 gals to a wild boil in about 20 minutes and provides a true "fire-brew". It is made out of a few fire bricks, a small blower and some pipe fittings. For those afraid to try all grain, I can simply say that (for me), the quality of my beer has made a quantum leap forward and it was like falling off a log. I do not doubt that some people can make good beer with extracts but I can now honestly say, I don't think I ever did. All grain brewing takes a bit more time and effort but the satisfaction is immence and dollar-a-gallon beer is also no small part of the compensation. js ------------------------------ From: Bob Jones Subject: Mash Tun False Bottoms Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1991 10:22 PDT >In HD 762 Mike Sharp asks : >How does one place a false bottom inside a 15gal keg? I have used two different methods. One is with SS screen sandwiched between two SS rings cut from a large diameter SS pipe. One of these SS rings is placed inside the other, with the SS screen between. The sandwich is held together with SS screws and nuts. I then made a copper L shaped pipe with a compression fitting that connects to the fitting that passes through the keg wall and on to the output valve. One end of this pipe rests on the bottom of the keg after passing through the SS screen. It is held in place in the screen with two washers soldered on each side of the screen to the pipe. Whew! We need some drawing tools here. This screen method works great, however it is complex to make(unless you have a machinist friend who likes beer). I have used another method that I think is easier to make and works just as well. You make a ring out of copper tubing that has a T in it. The output of the T connects to more tubing that connect to a compression fitting that connects to the same fitting that passes through the keg wall. This circular ring that rests on the bottom of the keg has lots of saw kerfs in the bottom of it. I mean one every 1/4 inch. The compression fittings allow you to remove either fixture for cleaning. Obviously the hole in the top of the keg is a little larger than the fixture. Mine are about 10-12 inches in diameter. I have been using the SS screen method for years for both kettle and mash tun. I recently went to the tubing method when I gas fired my mash tun for step mashing. I was afraid the mash liquid would not be properly mixed if below a screen, hence the new tubing design. Both work very good in a mash tun situation. I never liked the idea of using a picnic cooler for mashing. The thought of leaching weird chemicals out of the plastic don't settle with me. I know the manufacture says that these liners are safe, I just don't want to take the chance. Besides the SS keg will last forever, and is cheap(the cost of a deposit). I hope no one from AB is listening. Good luck. Bob Jones ------------------------------ From: Tom Dimock Subject: Boiler/Chiller Construction - Part 1 Date: Tue, 26 Nov 91 15:53:11 EST Having received several mail files expressing interest in my brewkettle construction, and having been re-assured by G. Fix that my use of an A-B keg doesn't make me a despicable criminal, I will describe the construction of my brewkettle and chiller. Note that I would NOT use a keg from a microbrewer, only A-B or Miller, who will not be hurt by my action. Building a Modern Electrikal Brew Kettle - Part 1 I'd like to start out by noting that low cost was not my primary goal - although I may not be as over-paid as those Rich men from Microsoft (sorry Darryl, I couldn't resist :-)), I can afford to appease my own desire to have a really NICE brewkettle. The use of a keg was based on the fact that it makes a really great kettle, and only secondarily that they are really cheap. The first step is to remove the tapping core. This has been very well described by George Fix in recent HBD's, so I won't describe the process in detail. It is important to release the pressure in the keg by pushing down on the ball valve with a big screwdriver. Wrap a towel around it, unless you like being showered with Bud Lite! The next step is to cut out the top of the keg. The kegs are 16" in diameter, so an 8" hole in the top works quite nicely. I know of at least 5 ways to perform this step. 1) Drill a couple of holes in the top and then saw between them with a Sawz-All (a heavy duty version of a hand jig saw, for those of you who are not tool freaks). The stainless steel that the kegs are made of is very tough, so you will need to use carbide blades - the SS will just round off the teeth on a normal hacksaw blade. This is a noisy and expensive way to do it, as you'll probably chew up several blades. 2) Use an abrasive blade in a circular saw. The blade is meant to cut in a straight line, so getting it to cut in a circle is a little tricky. You always want to wear eye protection when cutting metal, but if you try this method be sure you have heavy duty eye (and ear) protection. There is a distinct possibility of having the blade bind in the cut and throw you, the saw (which is running), and the keg about quite vigorously. Although others have recommended this method, I think it is too dangerous and cannot recommend it. 3) Drill a lot of little holes right next to each other and then bang it out with a hammer. Again the toughness of the steel is a problem, but I have found cobalt drill bits (available in many hardware stores) can stand up to it. Using a 5/32" bit, you'ld need to drill about 150 holes, so have a HB handy for when you get thirsty (but not too many - safety first!). This will leave a very rough edge, which you can the even out with a half round bastard (no gutter talk here - that's really what they're called) file, or with an angle grinder if you have one. 4) Cut it out with an oxy-acetylene torch. Unfortunately, stainless cuts very poorly with oxy-acetylene, which leaves you with a lot of slag and crud to clean up with an angle grinder. A file might do it, but slag tends to be harder, so you might just end up using the keg to smooth out the file! 5) Take the keg to a welding shop and have them do it with a plasma torch. This is really the right way to do it. You might be able to wangle a barter deal - I've never met a welder who didn't drink beer. So which way did I do it? Number four, because I own the torch and could borrow the angle grinder. Which would I recommend? Number 1 - No. Too hard, and because carbide blades are expensive, you wouldn't be saving much money. Number 2 - No. Too dangerous. Number 3 - Yes. You can buy the bit and the file for about $10 and an electric drill should be easy to borrow if you don't own one. Number 4 - Yes, but only if you already have or can borrow the the tools. Number 5 - Yes. Now RDWHAHB. Next installment we'll work on the heating elements. I'd like to thank those whose idea I've used in this project - Bill "Veg" Noon for the basic design of the boiler, and Steve Russell and Tom Strasser for ideas on chiller construction. And of course all of you out there in net-land who have discussed these topics over time. Tom Dimock -- Flame your kettle, not the net! ------------------------------ From: Tom Dimock Subject: Kettle building - Part 2 Date: Mon, 02 Dec 91 10:17:56 EST Building a Modern Elektrikal Brew Kettle - Part 2 I chose to heat my kettle electrically so that I would be able to brew indoors in my shop. This lets me stay out of the Ithaca weather (which is usually bad) and out of the kitchen, which makes my wife happy. It does require a pretty heavy duty electric supply - mine is a 50 amp 240 volt outlet that normally powers my monster welder. Because I have this heavy duty power source, I configured the kettle with a high setting that will boil 6 gallons of water in less than 20 minutes, and a low setting which is used for the actual boil and which won't scorch my wort. In order to prepare the kettle for electric heat, we need to mount two 1" pipe fittings into the side of the keg. These can be standard pipe couplings from the hardware store, or if you have a friend who owns a large machine shop (as I do - thanks, Charlie!) you can have custom fittings machined from 304 stainless steel. You need to cut two holes for these fittings fairly low on the side of the keg (about 1" above the seam where the bottom support ring is welded on) so that the elements will be near the bottom of your wort. The holes should be about 6" apart, and slightly elliptical so that the fittings are parallel. I cut these holes using the "lots of little holes and then filing to fit" technique. This was surprisingly easy to do. You can also let the welder cut the holes with his fusion torch, if you're sure he understands what you want. While we're cutting holes, we also need one dead center in the bottom of the keg to make our drain. This one can be a 3/4" fitting, although if you have a pile of 1" SS fittings (gloat, gloat) you can use one of those. Now comes the fun part, attaching the fittings to the keg. They can be silver-soldered in (normal solder won't bond to the keg), or they can be welded. Silver solder and the special flux it requires are quite expensive - if you're going to buy them just for this, you might come out cheaper to have them welded in professionally. Twenty-five dollars seems to be the canonical number for the job. If you have someone else weld them in, make sure they are not using welding rods containing Cadmium, as this can make your beer poisonous. TIG welding is the best, and is how mine was done. The two heater fittings should be welded in with their axis parallel to each other and to the floor. The bottom fitting should be welded so that it does not extend into the inside of the keg, so that you can drain the keg completely. Nou you'll notice that the keg won't sit flat on the floor anymore, because of the drain fitting. Don't worry, we're going to give the keg legs. Ah, yes, the legs. I wanted the keg to be up high enough that I could drain from the bottom of the keg directly into a counter-flow chiller and then straight into the carboy. For a five gallon carboy and the chiller I had in mind, this meant that the top of the keg needed to be five feet off the floor. The legs are made out of three 2x4's five feet long (my 2x4's are cherry, but that's another story :-)). The legs get cut as shown in the crude diagram, so that the leg supports the keg and touches it at the top and bottom rings, but is cut back away from the sides of the actual keg. Holes are drilled through the legs and the top and bottom rings of the keg to take 5/16" carraige bolts. These rings make the keg material look like butter - I mean they are TOUGH metal. A cobalt drill bit is highly recommended. The three legs are spaced evenly around the keg, with one being centered between the two heater fixtures (this will be the back of the finished boiler. notches for chiller ___ keg goes here ____________________ | | | | V V V V V _________ _ _ _ _ ____ _____| |_| |_| |_| |_| t | |___________________________| o | floor -> p |__________________________________________________________________ The chiller will be a six-turn coil of 1/2" copper tubing encased in 1" i.d. plastic tubing, and for that we need six notches into the inside of each leg. The notches should be 1 1/4" wide and deep, and 1/2" apart. Don't cut them yet - in a future installment I'll have some more detail on them. Next installment - Heating elements and power. P.S. Since writing this installment, I have wondered about silver solder (see separate post), so that becomes an un-recommendation until I find out a little more. ------------------------------ From: joshua.grosse@amail.amdahl.com Subject: Going all-grain. Date: Monday, 2 December 1991 10:14am ET I went all-grain for the first time yesterday. I used a blend of Miller and Papazian methods, made some mistakes, infuriated my wife by consuming the kitchen for a good six hours, and had a mixture of stress and relaxation during the process. I'm looking for advice from experienced all-grain brewers on both technique and, in a couple of cases, product availability. EQUIPMENT I went with a Thorne Electrim brand "bin" for mashing/boiling. This is a 220 volt thermostatically controlled 7 gallon plastic bucket; a Bruheat clone. I made a Zapap lauter tun, using 6.5 gallon buckets, with a slightly leaky tap at the bottom from a rather rough cut hole. I also purchased a Burch immersion chiller. GRAIN I was unable to obtain or use a grain-mill. I used a Braun coffee grinder, as there seemed nothing else in the house that would work. I've got a blender, and a Cuisinart with lots of attachements, but I thought the coffee grinder would be the least abominable. I ground 8 lbs of German 2-row (lager/vienna) a 1/4 cup at a time in the thing. Going in very short bursts, I thought I'd be able to crack the grains without making too much flour. For those of you without grain mills; what do YOU use? What kind of extract rates do you get? I got a lot less than I'd hoped. It seemed I made a mixture of flour and uncracked whole grains. For those with mills; how much do they cost? MASH I used two left-over PH tests from my old salt-water fish tank to adjust PH during the mash. They were a little TOO wide range (from 5 to 9) but I could tell that I needed to add some gypsum to the mash, and that 1 tsp got me between 5 and 6, anyway. I couldn't obtain PH papers. Where do you find them? I know the brand name that Miller recommends, but my local homebrew supply and one pharmacy I checked with didn't carry 'em. I used 2 quarts of water per pound, so 4 gallons of water with the 8 pound mash. Miller, and other brewers, recommend thin mashes with Bruheat (or my clone) systems. This worked fine, no scorching or burning. I used the old Iodine test that Miller doesn't like. As Papazian predicts, the mash was done in less than 40 minutes. Miller likes to mash for an hour and a half without testing. I preferred to test. SPARGE A 4 gallon mash didn't all fit in the lauter-tun at the same time! I ended up taking a lot of run-off out right away in order to stop leakage from between the two buckets! Miller recommended a 5-minute rest for settling; I couldn't. This made the sparging get a little more complicated. I'd forgotten about that gallon of acidified foundation (underlet) water at the bottom of the lauter tun. I used a total of 3.5 gallons of acitified sparge water; one for the foundation, the rest for rinsing after an hour of recirculating. My wort never went clear; I never saw particulate matter, instead it seemed to remain the same level of cloudiness throughout the recirculation. I tried it both Papazian's way, with the liquid above the grain level, and Miller's, with the liquid just below the grain level -- I believe my coffee grinder may have been at fault. BOIL The electric boiler never got a really good high ruckus boil. All to the good, because I didn't have to watch for a boil over, yet it was "rolling" gently all through the 90 minute boil. I kept the lid 3/4 on, which seemed to help the rolling, but that obstructed my boiloff. I started with about 6.5 gallons and ended up at about 6, not the 5 I was hoping for. CHILL The immersion chiller only has a small leak on the input side connections, which I'll fix with teflon tape. It chilled my 6 gallons from boiling to cold in 20 minutes, with some gentle stirring every 5 minutes. EXTRACT I kept 5 gallons of the 6 gallons for fermenting. Guess what? Starting Gravity was 1.030. Had I had a better method for grinding, and a 5 gallon finish, I would have had 1.047. Papazian says, when you get an extract that's different than what you expect, relax and ferment it. That's what I'm doing. - ----------------------------------------------------------------- Josh Grosse jdg00@amail.amdahl.com Amdahl Corp. 313-358-4440 Southfield, Michigan ------------------------------ From: "Dr. John" Subject: Mashing & chilling Date: Tue, 03 Dec 91 12:48:26 EST Sorry for any extra garbage, haven't posted anything for a while, and apparently the submission address has changed since I last did so. - ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Greetings all, Glad to see the flaming being doused (mostly), though I did think that some were warranted. Now that we are back to serious discussions, I though I'd weigh in with a few observations on mashing and chilling. Jack Schmidling, in #764, in your second "Stuff" posting, you claim that if the boiling of the liquid under the false bottom in a direct-fired mash tun could be controlled, then you would be gaining the benefits of a decoction mash. Then in #771 you talk about boiling puny little quart-sized portions of the mash as though this is decoction mashing. Jack, you appear to be confused as to just what decoction mashing is. May I suggest that you pick up a copy of Noonan's book and read it, or re-read it if you already have it. Regardless of what any of us may think about the grasp that Noonan has on his material, he does elaborate a procedure for decoction mashing that works (I've used the approach successfully a couple times). I think that once you consult this reference you will be firmly disabused of the notion that either of the approaches you discussed constitute a decoction mash. In fact, the first one (boiling the liquid under the false bottom) would only result in deactivating the enzymes. I'd be interested in hearing what the source of your information on decoction mashing is. Kinney, in regards to your questioning of the utility of a protein rest, in #773, I think that the modification issue isn't a 2-row v.s. 6-row thing. I beleive that either type of barley can be modified to whatever degree the maltster desires, and that the tradition is for Ale malts to be more fully modified than Lager malts, thus obviating the nedd for a protein rest in traditional ale mashing. So, it seems to me that the question we need to answer here is how well-modified is the malt we are using? If some of the protein still needs to be dealt with then we need to do a protein rest, if not we don't. I'm a firm beleiver in attempting to brew traditional styles with their traditional raw materials, and as such will not be easily convinced that the protein rest has no place in homebrewing. In regards to chilling, Jack, in #770, you mention a very long time to chill a 5 gallon batch through quarter-inch tubing immersed in an ice-water bath. In my system I use 20 or 25 feet (I can't remember which) of quarter-inch copper tubing which I immerse in a 5-gallon bucket of ice water. Takes me about 25-30 minutes to chill 5.25 gallons or so. I simply set up a gravity-feed system where the hot wort flows from a 2-bucket hop-back into the coil and thence into my 25 litre fermenter (where it sits for a couple hours before being racked off the trub, aerated, and pitched). I don't know why your system took so long Jack, maybe the extra tubing, though that doesn't seem to me to be a reasonable explanation. Mike Zentner, in #773, you seem perplexed as to temperature regulation with an ice-water wort chiller. Now, if you follow Jack's astute suggestion about adding more ice as the initial load melts, then there is only one extra little step you need to make this system work. Hve you got one of those little white plastic things for restricting the flow on plastic tubing? I use one with my setup, and by regulating the flow rate can adjust the temperature of the wort coming out of the chiller. If you require a precise temperature this may not be for you, but if you can live with a close approximation you could simply stick a sanitized thermometer in the outflow occasionally, read the temperature and adjust the flow as necessary. Given the discussions we've seen about various sanitizing agents and their effects on different materials, I'm convinced that regardless of whatever minor hassles the system gives me, its big advantage is that I can use heat (actually steam since I bake the coil after running some water through it) to sanitize the coil and don't have to worry about what sort of byproducts I'm creating with a chemistry experiment involving copper and bleach (or whatever). So, what's the scoop with Klages? Is it modified fully enough to get by without a protein rest? Ooogy wawa, Dr. John ------------------------------ From: Bob Jones Subject: Mash tun design Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1991 15:03 PDT ############################################### Following is another contribution from Micah Millspaw on mash tun design. These contributions are his alone. I am merely acting as a conduit for his ideas and opinions. Bob Jones ############################################### I've built IMHO a very efficient mash/lauter tun. This is the result of many years of brewing and four earlier mash tuns. I usualy do single temp. infusion or step infusion mashes so my equipment is set up accordingly. This mash/lauter vessel is made from a SS keg(15.5) and can easily mash and sparge 50# of grain. I have brewed at least 150 gallons using it and had no stuck mashes or any large problems at all. It is not insulated as SS is a poor thermal conductor and the grain is a large thermal mass,I lose about 3 degrees F over 2 hours. I've built into this mash tun some interesting features which might be of use to others who are planning on building or modifing their mash tuns. 1) the false bottom is a piece of 10 gauge perforated SS sheet metal with 3/32 holes in it. This is a pricey item but it is worth the cost. 2) the tun can be gravity filled with strike water from the bottom up. IMHO this makes for uniform heating of the grain without stirring, also dry pockets of grain are totally eliminated. 3) Spray sparging over the grain bed Bob Jones has come up with a flow control ( but I haven't installed it yet) that will maintain the level of sparge water over the grain bed. 4) most importantly, a vent tube that runs from the top (outside) of the tun to under the false bottom. I believe that this vent prevents a set mash caused by a sort of vapor lock, where the wort cannot flow out because no air can flow in. It has been my experience that venting under the false bottom works very well, this is my third mash/lauter tun to use this. However too finely crushed grain can still cause problems that no mash tun will fix. On the topic of boil overs, I have a hood with a two speed fan above my kettle. Since the installation of this hood I have had no boil over problems and have had much more vigorous boils. Micah Millspaw 12/11/91 ------------------------------ From: pencin@parcplace.com (Russ Pencin) Subject: Infusion, Mash-out, Sparge Efficiency Date: 18 December 1991 1:14:14 pm I had been out of town for several weeks, so I am posting several observations that may or may not be relavent at this time. If so, please ignore them. 1). INFUSION I attended the Advance Brewing Science class at UC Davis in September. Dr. Lewis is an amazing individual to say the least. The key word in the description of this class was "SCIENCE". The class was aimed at personel of major breweries who need to understand the process and procedures used to produce consistant product. The main point of the mashing lecture was to scientifically explain why a single step infusion accomplished at 153 degrees in fact produced a more consistant product than one produced via a step infusion starting at 122 degrees rising to 155 degrees. The chemistry of this process was presented in excruciating detail. The bottom line was that because current malting tecniques produce a malt that is highly convertible and that the protein molecules are locked in a matix that is only broken by protease enzymes, that a single-step infusion at 153 degrees will produce the optimum starch conversion without releasing the protein from its matrix. The absolute requirement here was that the grain be "struck" so that all the grain ended at exactly the strike temperature expected and stayed there for the entire mash. He gave several formulas for calculating the temperature of the strike and several "techniques" of providing consistant mix of strike water and grain. ( i.e. don't just dump the water onto the grains, instead create two even flows of materials such that every grain gets hit and mixed with an equivalent stream of hot water. Not easily accomplished at home alone, but quite simple if brewing with a friend. He/she pours the grain in a fine stream, you pour the water to meet just above the water line in the mash tun) I have used this technique for the last 5 batches of brew using 3 different grain types. 2 row Klages, 2 row Muton/Fison English, and American Munich malt. In each case I use my Auto-Mash(tm) preheated to 153 degrees and strike with 158 degree water. The advantage to the Auto-Mash(tm) is that it provides both a stirrer and a +-1 degree water jacketed temperature control. The resulting wort has been nothing short of spectacular!. The Klages and English complete conversion between 45 and 55 minutes, the Munich is done in 40-45 minutes. The "efficiencies" I have obtained consistantly are Klages 1.034, M/S English 1.032, Munich 1.032. The beers from these mashes do have a slight chill haze, but this disipates in less that a week in the fridge ( I only bottle ). I will never do a step infusion again, even if it is dead simple with the Auto-Mash(tm) because the results from the single-step process are quicker, clearer, and easier to sparge ( no, I don't know why, the run-off just seems to clear quicker and run more smoothly). 2) Mash-out, Sparge Efficiency I couldn't help but grin at the "non-use" of the mash-out by many HB's. I in fact never used a mash-out (170 degree temp rise) until after the UC class. After hearing the lecture on conversion and all of the chemistry involved, I had a discussion with Dr. Lewis about the degradation of crystal malts at mash temperatures. What I now do is mash my base grains to conversion. At conversion I add the Crystal and any other specialty grains ( all finely ground ) to the mash and start my mash-out temperature rise ( 1 degree a minute to 170 degrees ), allowing the mash to mash-out at 170 for 10 minutes. I the ladle the grains into my picnic cooler/ slotted pipe sparger and take ALL of the initial run-off after recycling about two quarts to get clarity. Once the initial run-off is collected I add ~4 gallons of 170 degree water to the tun and stir the H--- out of it for three minutes. Let is settle for 5 mins, recycle about two quarts to set the bed again and take the run-off to the boiler. This proceedure has boosted my "efficiency" on an average by 1.005 per pound of grain. My real point here is that adding the Specialty grains during mash-out temp rise has added a whole new dimension to the flavor/aroma profile of my beers. I don't know about you, but one of the constant comments on my score sheets from competion since I went to all grain has been: 'Needs more malt, not much malt aroma". I now get that heavenly crystal aroma and that pleasing residual sweetness that I so loved from the extract brews that added "steeped crystal" liquid to the boil. I haven't had an opportunity to enter these new beers in competition yet, the Lyons Bay Area Brew-off Competion will be the first. I'll post my results. Russ Pencin Overpaid tool freak and brewer pencin@parcplace.com (415) 691-6701 ------------------------------ From: bradley@adx.adelphi.edu (Robert Bradley) Subject: mashing and sparging in a BruHeat Date: Wed, 18 Dec 91 17:21:17 -0500 What follows is a copy of some info I shared with a fellow HBDer who is the proud owner of a new BruHeat bucket. I actually own an "Electrim Bin". As near as I know it's identical to a BruHeat, except that mine is 110 volts (and therefore slower in getting liquids to boil). I use a hanging grain bag with the trade-name Brewbits. If you want to try to make one: it's cylindrical, with a nylon(?) mesh on the bottom which is fairly fine and an impervious material making up the side. The diameter is perhaps an inch or two less than the interior diameter of the bruheat. There are four loops at the mouth, and you hang the thing by passing a string through the loops and tying it around the mouth of the bucket. On my bucket, there is a rim right at the top, and another a couple of inches down, so I have two positions for the bag: "down", with the string at the lip of the bucket, and "up" with the string futher down pulling the loops up higher. (I hope this all makes sense :-) To make average strength beer with a single stage infusion mash: To make an 8 lb. batch: set the bag to down, add 3 gal. water, raise temp to about 162 (72 C), add grain. Temperature outside the bag should be good, add a little boiling water to get inside temp to 150-155 range. Hold 60-90 min. Raise temp to 175. Heat off. Raise bag to up position. Drain the wort below the bag and pass it all back through, then 2 1/2 gal sparge water, also at 175. (As you have already realized, you can't do _everything_ in the bruheat...my compromise is to heat sparge water in the pot I used to use for extract brewing). When sparging is done, get rid of the bag and spent grains, and perform boil in the bruheat. I just throw the hops in loose, and I therefore have to pour the contents out. If you use a hop bag, you could just drain the wort through the tap. Further details added the next day: The Brewbits was purchased at a Wine-Art store in Toronto; sorry I can't be more helpful than that...mail order across the border is a bit of a hassle, though not out of the question. Wine-Art is a national chain, based in Vancouver.....perhaps they do mail order. I've not seen it anywhere else, but a similar item without that trade-name may well be available somewhere. **** If any of you HBDers know where such a bag can be found, please tell Jay Marshall (marshall@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov) **** As I said yesterday, the bag can be hung in one of two positions. When "down", there's room for about 1 gallon of liquid below the bag; just enough to keep it safely above the heating element. This leaves approx 2 gal (sure, 2.25 if you like) to combine with the grian in the bag. When "up", there's room for maybe 2 gallons below the grain. So you have to let wort out of the tap a couple of times during the sparge. I sometimes boil the first 2 gallons in the same pot I heated the sparge water in, so as to save some time on the boil (i.e. I combine it with the rest of the wort in the bruheat once the sparging's done). Happy sparging! Rob (bradley@adx.adelphi.edu) ------------------------------ From: pencin@parcplace.com (Russ Pencin) Subject: Re: Ice Chest Lauter Tun / Dumping All Sparge Water Date: Mon Dec 14 13:21:09 1992 Well, I waited to answer both of these requests because I didn't want to be redundant with other folks. I have been using an Igloo Ice chest with slotted pipe for a Lautern for over a year now ( 24+ batches ). The inside of my Igloo has buckled in many places, but has never cracked and has not affected the process in any way. I sparge at 170 degrees and, as with Florian, I dump the entire 4 gallons of sparge water in at one time. Now let me expand on my process so no one misunderstands. Taking some advice from both Nancy Vinyard and Anchor Brewing Co., I first carefully recycle the first runnings until I get a reasonably clear runoff into a large glass jar, at the point that the run-off is clear I COMPLETELY drain the first runnings from the Igloo tun into my boiler. I then block the run-off hose, and pour the entire4 gallons of 170 degree sparge water into the Igloo Tun, then merrily stir the grains and water for about 3 minutes. I let this sit for another 10 minutes to allow resettling. After settling, I begin the glass jar run-off and recycle until I get very clear wort from the drain. At this point I let the run-off go into the boiler. Please don't ask me what "efficiency" I'm getting, I don't worry about such thangs [sic], but I usually get around 1.054 for 6 gallons of wort in the boiler for 10 lbs of 2 row kladges. I'm very happy with this method, and never have had a stuck mash since employing it. The wort is sparkling clear and there is no evidence of astingency from "over-sparging". If you'd like more info mail me directly. If there is enough interest, I'll post the summary. Russ ------------------------------ From: dipalma@banshee.sw.stratus.com (James Dipalma) Subject: RE: HBD 1032 Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 15:14:17 EST Hi All, In HBD 1032, Mark Garti asks: >when sparging >and adding sparge water, are you supposed to let the water level >start to drop below the the top of the grain before adding more >sparge water. OR do you never let this happen. All the books >are pretty grey here. I try to maintain 1-2 inches of water on top of the grain bed when sparging. If you let the water level drop below the top of the grain, the runoff will slow due to the lack of water pressure in the column. Also, when you add water to such a sparge set-up, you will disturb the grain bed and diminish the filtering. >also no one touched my question about reasonable conversion times. >i had asked if most people end up doing a conversion step of 45-90 >minutes? papazzian had indicated a total time of about 25 minutes. >is anyone getting decent efficencies with this short a time. I'm >not but i don't know if this is the problem, or if it's something >else. i usually get 25 ppg. My conversion times are approximately one hour, with slight variances due to amount and type of malt used. 25 minutes seems a little low, are you using an iodine test to determine if conversion is complete? ************************************************************** Also in HBD 1032, Scott James asks: >I found that buffering my sparge water (2-3 gallons) with 1/2 teaspoon >gypsum greatly increased my extraction rates. Does anybody else do >this to? And Todd Enders writes: >Sparge >water was acidified with lactic acid ala Miller >... >The last runnings had no preceivable tannic taste. There was a recent thread on this forum regarding the lack of tannin extraction during decoction mashing, the conclusion being that low pH environments minimize the extraction of tannins. Someone (Darryl Richman?) included an explanation of why tannin extraction is problematic during sparging, i.e., the pH of the mash increases as sparge water is added. In my particular case, I have well water that is very hard. When I pre-boil this water, a large amount of white precipitate forms which I assume to be calcium carbonate. The pH of this water after boiling is still something near 7. During sparging, the taste of tannin becomes noticeable when the SG of the runoff is still 1.020-1.025. Clearly, there is still quite a bit of sugar present, but if I continue to sparge I get the tannins as well. I saw the thread on tannin extraction, and decided to try acidifying my sparge water. I got this stuff called 'Acidblend' from a friend who makes wine, and uses it for the same purpose, pH adjustment. I don't know what's in it, but it is certainly effective in lowering pH. I use 1/4 *teaspoon* per 4 gallons of water, which brings the pH from ~7 to 5.5 - 5.0!! I have used it for the last three batches, and while I did notice a slight improvement in extraction, the biggest improvement, IMHO, is that I now sparge all the way down down to 1.005, with no noticeable tannin taste in the runoff. I can't taste any sugars at that point either, so I stop sparging at this point. I have'nt noticed any unusual fermentation characteristics with these three batches, so it appears that the yeast is still working well, despite the somewhat more acidic wort. The first of the three batches was kegged this weekend, so I'll soon have some notion of what effects the acidification had on flavor. Cheers, Jim ------------------------------ From: chip upsal <70731.3556@compuserve.com> Subject: oxygen, mashing &c. Date: 31 Dec 91 08:18:37 EST Al writes: >'ve wondered about this. Intuatively, I figured that a shower-like >sprayer >would be the best way to evenly distribute the sparge water and minimize >the >disruption of the grain bed, and planned to include such a device in a >lauter >tun I've been planning to build. However, wouldn't spraying the sparge >water >oxygenate it? Wouldn't the resulting oxygenated water create oxygenated >wort, >which at temparatures above 80F, would quickly produce oxidized wort? >Now... what do all of you think about this? I do not beleve there is any problem with oxygenation of sweet wort. The problem comes when hopps come into play. Randy ask: >1) In Line's book, his procedure for a step mash suggests doing the >"protein rest" or first stage at 55C (131F), but Papaizan suggests >50C (122F). Who's right? Does it really matter? >From what I have read here and elsewhere a proteen rest is not nessessarly nessary. I skip it unless I have a lot of adjuncts or malted wheat. Then I hold at around 122F >2) The recipe I'm using from Line's book (for a light pilsner, a >Heinekin clone), he calls for 5.5 lbs of "lager malt". What kind of >malt is this? 2-row or 6-row? Unmodified, modified, or highly >modified? Eurpian lager is generally 2-row while american is 6-row. As far as I understand lager malt is *generally* less modified then ale malt. >3) In Papaizan's book, he says that 2-row barley has a LOWER enzyme >content than 6-row. But in my catalogue for the Home Brewery, they >tell me that 2-row barley has HIGHER enzyme content than 6-row. >Line's book didn't mention it. What's the deal? The two row malt in question in the cattloge is called Kagles. This malt has a lot of enzymes for two row; weather it really has more the 6-row I could not say. Chip ------------------------------ From: wslack!wrs@mv (Bill Slack) Subject: Mash tun spigots Date: Wed, 1 Jan 92 09:51:43 EST Martin Lodahl asks about a better spigot for his mashing cooler: The best solution I found was to go to a RV store (Winnebagos, etc.) and get a plastic tap of the right diameter. Take your old one with you. You may need to use the existing nut and washer since they tend to sell bare taps. But the one I found fits my 5 gallon Igloo and 64 quart Igloo perfectly and works fine. RV stores have lots of plastic items because they resist travel vibration better than metal in some cases. Happy New Year everyone! - -- Bill Slack wslack!wrs@gozer.mv.com uunet!mv!gozer!wslack!wrs - -- Bill Slack wslack!wrs@gozer.mv.com uunet!mv!gozer!wslack!wrs ------------------------------ From: abirenbo@isis.cs.du.edu (Aaron Birenboim) Subject: mash procedure for the picnic-cooler mash tun Date: Thu, 2 Jan 92 16:51:56 MST After reading Russ Pencin's mash procedure inspired by Dr. Lewis, i amthinking of a new mash procedure for myself. My problem is that i sue a picnic cooler mash/lauter tun, and mashing out at 170F will be tricky, i cannot just turn up my heat source Following is my proposed procedure, along with some questions, please let me know what you think. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1) Strike dry grain with enough 160F water to bring mash to 153F. Stir and let rest until conversion. Q: if i am using a mess o adjunct (barley flakes, roast barley, wheat, malted wheat, oats...) can i really get by without a protein rest??? 2) Add specialty grains 3) Mash out. I cannot just add boiling water here, since It would take too much water to bring all that mash up to 170F. I propose to drain off a galon or how ever much it takes of liquor, bring it to a boil, and syphon it back in to raise mash temp to 170F. I will determine the quantity by experiment. Q: Is this a good idea? I figger that decoction mashers boil part of the mash, so maybe i can get away with boiling some liquor??? QQ: Is turbid liquor OK? I won't boil long, so i hope so. I could recycle a bit of liquor and boil only clear stuff, but that would be a pain in the butt, and carry a risk of hot wort oxidation as i pout the turbid liquor back onto the grain bed. I'd like to take this risk only at the sparge if possible. Note: syphoning liquor with the picnic cooler mash/lauter tun is real easy. Just drain liquor through a tube in to kettle. boil. Drain another few cc's into kettle. Then lift kettle above mash-tun to syphon liquor back into tun for mash-out. very little aeriation danger. 3) Allow mash to sit at 170F for about 10 min. 4) Recycle wort until clear, then drain into boiler until liquor drips slowly. 5) syphon 170F water (~4 gal) into mash tun. stir vigorously. then recycle run-off until clear again. 6) drain remaining liquid from lauter tun until it starts to drip, then begin the boil. aaron ------------------------------ From: stevie@spss.com Subject: Spigots Date: Thu, 2 Jan 92 18:31:26 CST Martin Lodahl writes: Subject: In Search of Spigotry > ...My dear wife gave me an insulated water cooler for Christmas, but I'll be > DAMNED if I'll stand there holding that button in for the whole > sparge! Anybody have any ideas where I might find a suitable tap? The drum > taps I've always used are just too big for the hole in the cooler, and > enlarging that seems a dubious proposition, at best. Suggestions? I converted an insulated Igloo cooler last year and successfully hooked up a standard drum tap. I enlarged the hole after removing the button tap by doing some careful reaming with a power drill. The hole is not threaded, so just ream it gradually until the drum tap can get through. Make sure the fit is tight. Tighten well, using the usual rubber washer and plastic nut. You can remove it, clean it, and replace it at will. It may seem dubious -- certainly not the height of brewing geekitude -- but this sucker has survived some 20 brews without leaking or any other problem. Steve Hamburg (stevie@spss.com) SPSS Inc, Chicago ------------------------------ From: joshua.grosse@amail.amdahl.com Subject: Mashing questions/answers Date: Friday, 3 January 1992 1:24pm ET Randy@rdr.com asked some questions in #792, which I tried to answer via e-mail. My mail bounced back today, and this was the content: > The two books I'm referring to are Papizan's "Complete Joy of > Homebrewing" and Dave Line's "Brewing Beers Like the Ones You Buy". A really good source for mashing information and far more detailed technique than Papazian (for mashing) is Miller's "The Complete Handbook of Home Brewing." I don't have a copy with me, but I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can from memory and from my two, count 'em, two all-grain batches. Of course, this is after 6 years of extract based brewing. > 1) In Line's book, his procedure for a step mash suggests doing the > "protein rest" or first stage at 55C (131F), but Papaizan suggests > 50C (122F). Who's right? Does it really matter? Miller says that a 131 F rest will tend to produce more protease enzymes, so that your larger protien molecules get broken into smaller ones. Result? Less chill haze, more mouth-feel and head retention. He also says that he never did a side-by-side 122/131 comparison, so he's not sure if the homebrewer would notice the difference. My first batch was an altbier with german 2-row, and I used 131 F. I also used Irish Moss, and the beer came out quite clear. > 2) The recipe I'm using from Line's book (for a light pilsner, a > Heinekin clone), he calls for 5.5 lbs of "lager malt". What kind of > malt is this? 2-row or 6-row? Unmodified, modified, or highly > modified? Lager malt is a color definition only. Line was British, and in both the UK and Germany they only have 2-row, as, I believe, 6-row is a north american species. All brewing malt should be highly modified. Undermodified malt is usually a mistake. You can tell by chewing a grain. The test (according to Miller is "chewy/steely". Chewy, edible malt is well modified. Undermodified will chew like gravel. The "base" malts you'll use will usually be either "lager" malt or "pale" malt. Use the pale for english style single temp mashes, lager for everything else. > 3) In Papaizan's book, he says that 2-row barley has a LOWER enzyme > content than 6-row. But in my catalogue for the Home Brewery, they > tell me that 2-row barley has HIGHER enzyme content than 6-row. > Line's book didn't mention it. What's the deal? Miller agrees with Papazian, though he also says that 2-row American Klages (and no, I have no idea if "Klages" is a brand-name or a subspecies) approaches the enzymatic power of 6-row. American breweries like to use 6-row because the high-enzyme content makes it easy to mash adjunct starches. Me, I use all-malt, so I never worry about enzyme content. 6-row is more difficult to crush than 2-row due to the large amount of husk material, and it makes for a more tannic/harsh taste than 2-row (according to Miller). > 4) In the same recipe in Line's book, he calls for 14oz. of "flaked > rice". My local home brew shop has rice extract solids. How much of > this extract would correspond to 14oz of flaked rice? (I understand > that the rice solids go into the boil while the flaked rice goes into > the mash). How about using regular white rice or rice grits? I would boil your white rice to "gelatinize" it, as these brewing books recommend, and then use it. I have no idea how much would be needed to match a Line recipe. And you'll want to add it to the mash in order to convert the starch to sugar, with whatever enzymatic barley (6-row or 2-row Klages) you've chosen. > 5) For the second stage of the mash (the actual starch conversion), > I've heard of times anywhere from 15 minutes to 1.5 hours. I > understand that this can change depending on what kind of beer you > make and what temperature you mash at, but what's a good rule of > thumb? What's the usefulness of using tincture of iodine to test for > starch conversion? It varies, yes it does. The test is *very* useful, so you can determine when conversion is complete. Miller doesn't bother with the test, he just mashes for 90 minutes. I have better things to do with my time, and the test works *great*. What, no sparging questions? That's where I've had all my questions. Find Miller's book. I think its a great book for those who are just about to jump into mashing. Papazian is easier to read but doesn't go into as great a depth as I think one needs to understand what's happening when going all-grain. I like and use both books. -Josh Grosse- jdg00@amail.amdahl.com ------------------------------ From: korz@ihlpl.att.com Subject: Re: Mashing questions/answers Date: Mon, 6 Jan 92 16:09 CST Josh writes: >> 1) In Line's book, his procedure for a step mash suggests doing the >> "protein rest" or first stage at 55C (131F), but Papaizan suggests >> 50C (122F). Who's right? Does it really matter? > >Miller says that a 131 F rest will tend to produce more protease enzymes, so >that your larger protien molecules get broken into smaller ones. Result? >Less chill haze, more mouth-feel and head retention. He also says that he >never did a side-by-side 122/131 comparison, so he's not sure if the >homebrewer would notice the difference. My first batch was an altbier with >german 2-row, and I used 131 F. I also used Irish Moss, and the beer came out >quite clear. Just one correction. It's incorrect to say "tend to produce more protease enzymes." All the enzymes you will ever get to use are in the grain when you begin. You can add enzymes you puchase separately. I'm sure what you meant was something on the order of "activate." According to Papazian's New CJoHB, at temperatures ideally between 113F and 122F, one type of proteolytic enzyme cuts long proteins in to amino acids, which can subsequently be used by your yeast. Between 122F and 140F, other proteolytic enzymes break the long proteins into shorter proteins (I'm borrowing from Miller on this) which contribute, as Josh said, to mouth-feel and head-retention. If you leave the long proteins around, that will contribute to chill haze, which is partly why you would like to cut them up. >> 2) The recipe I'm using from Line's book (for a light pilsner, a >> Heinekin clone), he calls for 5.5 lbs of "lager malt". What kind of >> malt is this? 2-row or 6-row? Unmodified, modified, or highly >> modified? > >Lager malt is a color definition only. Line was British, and in both the UK >and Germany they only have 2-row, as, I believe, 6-row is a north american >species. All brewing malt should be highly modified. Undermodified malt is >usually a mistake. You can tell by chewing a grain. The test (according to >Miller is "chewy/steely". Chewy, edible malt is well modified. Undermodified >will chew like gravel. The "base" malts you'll use will usually be either >"lager" malt or "pale" malt. Use the pale for english style single temp >mashes, lager for everything else. I disagree again. Brewing malt can be 2-row or 6-row AND highly-modified or under-modified. Lager malt is less-modified than British pale malt. Undermodified malt has more starch available for conversion to sugars and more complex (long) proteins, but less amino acids. It requires a protein rest. Fully-modified malt, aka, British pale malt, has less starch available for conversion to sugars, less complex proteins and more amino acids. With pale malt, you can skip the protein rest and do a simple infusion mash. In the rest of Josh's post, I concur, but also cannot provide a documented conversion rate from "flaked rice" to "gelatinized white rice." Papazian, however says that flaked rice is simply "moistened" and "passed through rollers" which gelatinizes them. Later, he says that white rice needs to be cooked at least 30 minutes to gelatinize. Based on this, I would intuatively say that you should substitute 1:1 dry white rice to flaked rice and then make sure to gelatinize it before adding to the mash. Al. ------------------------------ From: gummitch@techbook.com (Jeff Frane) Subject: Mashes & Spigots Date: Fri, 3 Jan 92 13:46:59 PST Aaron Birenboim asks about pale ales, fruitiness, what not: I would strongly recommend steering away from sugar, etc. for a beginning brew and stick to a nice, all-malt recipe. You can arrive at the desired fruitiness by choosing a good yeast and plenty of tasty hops. If you can get British ale malt, use that, along with .5 to 1 pound of British crystal malt. Maybe toss in 2 oz. of flaked barley for a good head; you can also throw in a pound or so of CaraPils (stay away from malto dextrin; you're an all-grain brewer now!). For five gallons, you probably want to have a total of 9 pounds of malt. Try hopping with 3/4-1 oz. of high alpha early in the boil and throw in something tasty (1 oz or so) like Fuggles, Goldings, Willamettes or Cascades at the end of the boil. Save the molasses and brown sugar and whatnot for experiments; same, IMO, for toasted malts in a pale ale. The WYeast British ale has a very nice fruity quality; the American Ale (aka Chico, aka Sierra Nevada) is clean and crisp. With a camp cooler, it's not really necessary to raise the mash temperature to 165F; since the bed hasn't been distrubed since strike temperature was reached, you don't need to have a lauter rest; just run your sparge temperture at 170 and you shouldn't have any trouble with the mash breaking down your dextrins. You can also try something along the lines of George Fix's suggestions and add the crystal and dextrine malt at the strike temperature rest (if you're using British ale malt, though, you don't even need any protein rest: just go in at 150-156 and hold it until the iodine test sez to sparge). On spigots: my camp cooler mash tun has a copper tube that protrudes from the grain bed and out through the cooler drain hole; it fits very snugly and doesn't leak. On the outside, a plastic hose fits snugly on the copper and a simple plastic valve controls the flow. Purty simple. On slugs: Here in Orygon we feed our slugs beer to make 'em big and tuff. Anyway, I put out some Imperial stout to protect the tomatoes; as far as I can tell, the slugs ate the plants and washed them down with the stout. On oxygen: Y'know, I'm just as careful as the next guy, and just as skeptical of people who say several hundred years of brewing knowledge is irrelevant and too much work. But... I really think there's entirely too much hysteria here about oxydizing wort. The only damaged beers I've encountered have been clearly attributable to mishandling at racking and bottling. Some British breweries *deliberately* oxygenate the hot wort to darken the beer. So let's stop worrying new brewers about oxygen in the sparge water and what all. Really. If you've got a problem with you beer, then starting backtracking and checking everything out. Otherwise, give yourself a break! Jonathan Knight: Cidery beer is virtually always a result of there being too much sugar (as opposed to malt) in the beer recipe. It's not impossible that your problem is related to repitching; it's not the repitching that's the problem, though, but some failure in your procedure. When the beer is ready to drink, you can better judge the problem. Lots of times unfinished beer can seem a little weird; when the final product is tasted, you may well forget there was ever a problem. ------------------------------ From: chip upsal <70731.3556@compuserve.com> Subject: cooler/lautertun Date: 04 Jan 92 09:55:14 EST >water cooler for Christmas, but I'll be DAMNED if I'll stand there holding >that button in for the whole sparge! Anybody have any ideas >where I might find a suitable tap? The drum taps I've always used are >just >too big for the hole in the cooler, and enlarging that seems a dubious >proposition, at best. Suggestions? Yes, I used a regular water valve attached to 1/2" (or perhaps 3/4") ridged copper pipe. The pipe passed through the spicot opening and in the cooler it is attached to a network of drilled pipe that makes up the false bottom of the tun. Chip ------------------------------ From: Tom Bower Subject: Mash/Lauter Tun Construction Date: Mon, 6 Jan 92 15:40:48 PST Being more of an ale than a lager fan, and wishing to enter the ranks of all-grain homebrewers, I've been trying to accumulate the necessary equip- ment to do single-temperature infusion mashes (and sparges) in an insulated container. I'd like to hear from the net on mash/lauter tun construction. Assuming some kind of picnic/water cooler to be adapted for this use, I've got some questions: +Which shape works better (and why?) - Cylindrical (water jug) or rectan- gular? What size works well assuming perhaps some barleywines as worst- case mash quantities, 5-gallon recipes in general? Any other good things to use besides insulated ice chests & water coolers? +What is the ideal arrangement for straining out the runnings? I've heard people describe slotted copper tubing, plastic bucket-bottoms with holes drilled or slots melted through with a hot knife, with or without the use of grain bags. If I could construct the ideal false bottom, what would the average size and geometry of the openings be, and what % of open area overall would there be? I'm thinking of getting some stainless steel screen/mesh. What are the consequences of the openings being too small? Too large? Too infrequent? How about the amount of space under the false bottom? Is there a type of construction that makes a grain bag unnecessary, or would it just be easier to make an over-permeable false bottom and rely on the grain bag for the straining effect? What say ye? Feel free to reply here or via e-mail, if there's interest I will summarize & post. Thomas G. Bower (bower@hprnd.rose.hp.com) Roseville, CA ------------------------------ From: Jim White Subject: Spargin blues...... Date: Mon, 06 Jan 92 20:34:38 EST Awhile ago I surveyed the all-grain brewers. The purpose of this survey was to determine why 'you brew the way you brew'. The results, (posted), ran the gamut from mysticism to economic necessity. Agreement was nearly unanimous, however, that the final brew tasted better. Thus I was motivated to invest in the equipment and give it a try. After about 7 batches, a few observations..... I like it. It's fun. I think the beer is tastier. I doubt I'll go back. I bought 55 lbs. of Munton and Fison 2-row pale for $.65/lb. For less than $10.00 one can make 5 gals of top quality all malt brew. Neat ! I try and do things simple. I use a single temp infusion mash with a cooler. I boil in a 33 qt porcelain on junk metal boiler. Wort chiller is a coil of 1/4 i.d. copper tubing inside my cooler filled with snow (when available). Things usually go fine, with one possible exception....... Yeah you guessed... Sparging is the downside of all-grain brewing. I can usually get a decently clear flow, and decent extract rate, but it's a pain, and this leads to a question. Why not just drain the sweet liquid from the mashing vessel, through a couple layers of chessecloth, and into the boiler..... once. No re-cycling! Then run the necessary amount of 170-180 F water through the same grain bed and cheesecloth, (again just once), to make 6 gals.... and be done with it. It'd take minutes, rather then 1-2 hours. I'll probably try this anyway in my next batch (call it an experiment) but I'd be truly interested in the opinion of the HBD'rs. Has anyone tried this, or something similar? Would you expect the grain bed to be a better filter bed? Would you expect the extract rate to suffer? I have tried both a 'double bucket' and a grain bag approach to sparging. I like the grain bag better, but mine (I guess) is too fine, and get's clogged. I find the double bucket too time consuming and I don't like the extra items to clean. Am still waiting for a better sparging system ....... Jim White The new auxiliary Wort chiller arrived on New Year's Day, but so far.... it's bust. When I needed it cold, it was about 40 F and raining. ------------------------------ From: BAUGHMANKR@CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU Subject: Cleaning copper, sparging Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1992 23:59 EDT Mike sez: >Back when this came about, I think I was the main advocate of >cleaning. My batch of tubing had a pretty bad case of "grease" >inside, to the point where, when I let water (cold or hot) drain >out of it, the leaving the last few drops to fall on the counter. >Silvery specs appeared to be floating on these water drops, but >this was really small pools of grease/oil. I felt it worth pointing out that this is indeed an extreme case. I'm not sure where Mike bought his copper but the tubing I buy from the local plumbing supply never has anything remotely similar to the stuff Mike describes. >contortions related to cleaning the copper deleted< ..an admiral tale of perseverance, Mike! >It's important to note that when you're done brewing for the night or >day, you're not done until you run lots of hot water through the >chiller to get out any remaining sugars, and then work it around in >a circle to drain it and prevent mold. I usually follow this procedure with a quick siphon of my clorox solution and store dry. The little bit of clorox will help insure sterilization but it's not enough to cause any appreciable corrosion. In fact I used to store my chillers with a clorox solution inside them from one brewing session to the next and the chiller held up fine. When I pull out my chiller for the next session, I boil up about a gallon of water and siphon it through the dry chiller to insure sterilization prior to taking the wort through it. Jim asks: >Why not just drain the sweet liquid from the mashing vessel, through a >couple layers of chessecloth, and into the boiler..... once. No re-cycling! >Then run the necessary amount of 170-180 F water through the same grain bed >and cheesecloth, (again just once), to make 6 gals.... and be done with it. >It'd take minutes, rather then 1-2 hours. I'm all with you on this one, Jim. I usually re-cycle once just to set the grain bed. Then I drain the lauter tun completely to get the thickest runnings out of there. After that, I run a normal sparge until 6 gallons are collected. 45 minutes. No reason to take 1-2 hours. Cheers! Kinney Baughman | Beer is my business and baughmankr@conrad.appstate.edu | I'm late for work. ------------------------------ From: Mike Sharp Subject: Re: Homebrew Digest #797 (January 08, 1992) Date: Wed, 8 Jan 92 18:28:35 EST George Fix writes: > Several years ago I used an ill-conceived horizontal mashing system where > hot wort was transfered via a "pump" from the mash tun to the brew kettle, since I'm considering making a recirculating infusion mash system with a pump to transfer to the boiler: should I be concerned? How did you redesign? Just a simple gravity feed or was there more to it than that? The basic ideas of my design are below. Any comments are appreciated. Vessels: 1/2 of a stainless steel drum, ~27.5 gallons with a false bottom (perf. stainless 30% open, 1/8" holes) resting on a stainless angle iron X. 1/2" stainless steel nipple mig welded 1" up from the base of the vessel (affectionately known as the mash-tun from hell -- currently sitting in my hallway) (probably) two 15.5gal kegs welded one on top of the other. (cut the top off one, the bottom off the other, step a lip into one and weld. 1/2" nipple in the bottom from transfer both in and out. I have yet to make this one. The mash tun (1/2 drum) will have a pump attached to its nipple. This will pump to a set of valves which either directs the flow through a tube flash heater or to the boiler nipple. If the flow is through the heater it is then directed to a set of nipples up the side of the drum. Only one of these will be open. This will allow the recirculation to occur at the highest level possible without going over the top of the mash. These nipples will be on the opposite side of the vessel so flow must be across the grain. I do plan to do a lot of stirring to distribute the heat. Heater control will be via a little bit of techie wizardy -- a microcomputer which will control both flow as well as clip the AC to the heater. The boiler, two kegs welded together, will have at least one hot water heater affixed to the bottom a la a *big* BrewHeat. Yes, I know some people believe this will lead to scorching, but I havn't had such a problem with the BrewHeat & I believe with care this will not really effect things much, if at all. The input/output to/from the boiler will be through the single nipple in the bottom. A valve will be attached to allow input from the mash tun pump or output to a cooler and eventually an output keg (gravity fed). --Mike "Its nice to have your own MIG" Sharp ------------------------------ From: Mike Sharp Subject: Re: mashing/boiling vessels Date: Fri, 10 Jan 92 7:20:50 EST Bob Jones writes: > I tried your idea on a recirculating mash tun, al la R. Morris/Zymurgy. > I screwed around with it for about a year, and had BAD luck. The problem > most likely is with the mash tun geometry. Too tall a mash tun will cause > too much grain compaction therefore slowing the flow thereby burning or > overheating the liquid. I think you have the wrong picture. The mash tun is ~1.5' high with a diameter of 2'. I don't expect to use it at anything near its capacity. If anything I thought this would be a bit on the short side. The boiler is the tall skinny vessel. I couldn't see any reason why it couldn't be (& kegs are cheap too). FWIW, the boiler (made of two kegs welded one on top of the other) won't be used at capacity either. Since my targetted batch size will be about 15.5 gallons (the oak casks I use are 15gal) post boil, I wanted enough room for the initial wort (figuring a 4-6 hour boil -- traditional for lambics) as well as a little room left over for the inevitable attempt at boil over. > Also there is a problem with just how much heat > or energy you can get from household voltage. Yes, I'm somewhat concerned about this. I'm going to have to experiment. The area in which I brew has a 40A 220V line. I'll just keep adding more water heater elements to the boiler until I can get ~18-20gal to boil. I don't have any delusions about doing this quickly. Current plan is to wire the heaters to run at 110 so I don't go scorching everything during the boil. I'm not sure if I'll wind up running them at 110 or 220. Time will tell. > You can get much more energy from a burner of any sort. Quite true, however I believe my landlord would be quite upset when I ran this in my appartment. Not to mention there is the problem of not melting through the flooring and the in-flow/out-flow of air. I've worked out numerous burner designs, but having to run ducting through the apartment as well as the noise of a burner running full blast has lead me to scrap the idea. Then there is the general danger of a 200KBTU burner running in a 10x12 room... Trivia question for the physically capable: Hot water heater elements are sold with ratings like 9KW. Does anyone know how I'd go about figuring the BTU output (assuming that its running full blast for an hour)? I'm sure I could figure it out if I dug out Halliday&Resnick, but someone out there must know... ARF -- ??why?? > From: arf@gagme.chi.il.us (jack schmidling) > Subject: ADS > Subject: STUFF Jack! Get a clue! I've never seen such an utter waste of bandwidth. Please do a quick reality check and realize that these postings were made quite a while ago. I'd rather not read your tirades that time forgot. As far as using this as a tool to redeem yourself in the eyes of HBD and for besmirching those that opposed/offended you, it just makes you look like a fool. (said in a moderate, instructional, matter of fact voice, NOT a beligerant, ranting, attacking one). ARF -- his grain mill FWIW, I did like the review of your grain mill. sounds like an interesting unit. Did you make the supporting castings yourself or were they left-overs from something else? I've wound up going the route of welded plates due to casting costs. Did you wind up using stainless for the rollers or some form of tool steel? I've been thinking about a tool steel approach but I'm somewhat worried about someone trying to clean the unit (mine) by popping it in the dishwasher. Perhaps I just need a big sticker on the side that says 'Dont even think about getting this wet.' --Mike ------------------------------ From: agerhardt@ttsi.lonestar.org (Alan Gerhardt) Subject: RIMS/MashTun Details Date: Mon, 20 Jan 92 16:52:24 CDT I got several requests in response to my last posting, so for what it's worth, here's some details of my setup. I have used the RIMS unit itself for several months, and it works great except for the temperature controller, and just finished my new mash tun. I just tried out my new mash tun this weekend, and it works great. I built my mash tun by getting a 15.5 gal keg, using a metal cutting blade in a circular saw to cut the top off at the top seam where the handle ring is welded on. As it turns out, the groove at that weld tends to guide the blade, so it is easy to get a straight cut. Be sure and use safety glasses, however, because sparks and metal bits will be flying. Make sure you follow all the normal safety tips for working with kegs as well. I then drilled a drain hole in the bottom, and used a brass "cooler drain" fitting. The fitting has a nut and a gasket, which gives a good seal, and is threaded on the inside as well. I then attached the required pipe/fittings to connect the drain to my RIMS unit. ======= =======flange =| |=gasket ----------| |------------keg bottom ======= ======= nut || || | | | |other fittings to suit I used a water heater jacket as insulation by cutting it in approx thirds, and wrapping three layers around the keg and securing it with duct tape. For a false bottom, used a piece of 3/8" copper tubing formed in a circle to fit the bottom of the keg, and soldered a straight piece as an extra support across the center. Picture an international "NO xxx" symbol and thats what it looks like. A piece of stainless screen rests on top. I also soldered a 1/2" copper coupling to one side of the inside of the copper ring into which I stick a vertical piece of copper tube as a vent stack which sticks above the grain bed. This limits the compaction of the grain bed by the suction from the RIMS pump. If you're not using a RIMS, then you don't need the vent stack, and you have a conventional mash/lauter tun. My plumbing is set up as follows: |--------| | v | | v=vent pipe | v | | g=grain |gvgggggg| | s=screen |gvgggggg| | |svssssss| | ______________ ---------- --| | |__________| RIMS | | |______________| x drain w/valve On the next installment, I will describe the contruction of my RIMS unit, which is patterned after the original Rodney Morris unit. Cheers, Alan ------------------------------ From: agerhardt@ttsi.lonestar.org (Alan Gerhardt) Subject: RIMS Part 2 Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 14:57:32 -0600 As promised, here's a description of my RIMS unit. I started with the R. Morris basic design and adapted it as needed. I think Rodney deserves a lot of credit for coming up a practical homebrewer's implementation of this idea. His methods sure gave me a headstart. I wanted the unit to be able to do at least a 10 gal batch size, which for me usually equates to 16-20 lbs of grain, so I chose a 5KW heating element from WW Grainger. It is a very low heat density element which is advertised to be able to even run dry. It is a very long element, which has in a "U" shape, and folded over to be about 19" long. It cost about $20, but has turned out to be a very good investment, in that I have seen no evidence of excessive heating (which would kill the enzymes) or scorching. With this element, I get about 1.75-2 degrees/min temperature boost with 18 lbs of grain and about 7-8 gal of water. I used a length of 1.5" (about 21") copper pipe as an element housing, with a cap for each end, and assorted fittings to connect things up. outlet------------------------------------------------- .5" copper pipe ----------------------------------------------- | | | ---- | | ----__ | ------------------------------------- --- | |-_ | |==========================================| | |- | |==========================================| | _|- | ---- ------------------------------------- |__|- ^ ---- | | ---- ^ | | --- __ | element | |||||__ stopper with | head | --- thermistor | | | | ------ copper nut | |-------------- | | | inlet------------| | | ------------| | pump | | | | | |-------------- ------ The inlet and outlet pipes are .5" copper. I drilled holes in the 1.5" tube for the inlet and outlets ( a tight fit is better ), and soldered them in. The trickiest part was the mounting of the heating element. Rodney used a 1" threaded pipe to copper pipe adaptor. Since the adaptor narrows down too much to allow the element I chose to fit through, I cut off the threaded portion, in effect making a copper nut. I soldered the nut outside of the cap ( with hole drilled in it ), and the element just screws into the end of the pipe. The supplied gasket makes a water tight seal. The element is easily removed for inspection/cleaning, although cleaning is seldom required if a clean water rinse and recirculation is performed after use. I put the thermistor inside of a .125" copper tube, and sealed it in epoxy, being careful not to short it out. The tube is inserted through the stopper so that it sticks into the fluid flow. The Radio Shack thermometer Rodney used is no longer available, so I didn't put that through the stopper too. I use an external digital thermometer instead. I put the whole thing into a wood case, with the inlet and outlet tubes sticking out through drilled holes. I connect to the unit using plastic tubing and band clamps. I built a pump speed control per Rodney's design and it works fine. I have not been able to get his temperature controller to work yet, and am currently using a toggle switch instead. As he recommended, I used a GFI outlet inside my box, from which I get all power. That is in my opinion, a very wise investment. I set the whole system up on two Workmates, one for the RIMS unit, and the other for the mash tun. The whole thing disassembles and stores so I have my garage back when done. Observations: (1) At full flow, the outlet stream will sometimes generate a LOT of foam in the mash tun if not properly directed. (2) Sparging is a snap now. I just add as much water as my mash tun will hold, raise to 165-170 degrees, and recirculate for about 30 minutes. My efficiency is typically 30-31/lb/gal, for 6 row malt ( Stew's Brew malt ), just short of Miller's numbers. For larger quantities of malt ( not as much room for more water ), I plan to drain/replace the sparge water as required. (3) A proper grain grind is just as important as always. (4) The wort runs incredibly clear by the time you are sparging, and no husks or other particles make it into the boiling kettle. (5) If you are contemplating building a RIMS, don't scrimp on the pump or the heating element. (6) You have to be crazy or an obsessive tinkerer to go to this much trouble. I hope this helps somebody ! Cheers, Alan ------------------------------ From: davep@cirrus.com (David Pike) Subject: RIMS unit, only computer controlled Date: Fri, 24 Jan 92 12:43:04 PST All this talk about the RIMS units make me want to talk about our setup... Ours is very similar to the one recently described, however pumps can be purchased through surplus houses(JerryCo) from time to time... look around, you'll find one eventually. But, the nifty part about our system is that it is CPU controlled. Take one of the versions of the 68hc11(16 bit motorola part), the one with the built int parallel i/o port and the built in A/D converter. Then get the 1millivolt per degree F temperature sensors and attache to A/D converter. Connect the parallel port to a DC/AC controller(+5v makes the AC go on), and control the Hot water heater elements in the path of the wort pump. Connect the built in serial port the the hc11 to a dumb terminal, or PC, the write nifty user inteface SW(just a matter of software!) , and voila, CPU controlled step masher, mash-outer, and sparger. Gives the brewer the chance to wash bottles (of the previous batch) uninterrupted....., ------------------------------ From: dipalma@banshee.sw.stratus.com (James Dipalma) Subject: Re: Advanced Brewing (NON-EXTRACT) worth it? Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 10:38:09 EDT Hi all, In HBD #937, Walter Gude (whg@tellabs.com) writes: > As of yet I'm still doing partial (1/3 of > sugars) mashes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if when I take the final > plunge (next fall?) that initially the quality of my brews goes down. > Given the same process from the point of the boil on, I've always felt > there are a lot of things you can screw up in the mash/sparge process > (bad crush, poor temp control, oversparging) that could potentially give > you a sorry wort. [...] > There's a lot of variable to get right. While there's a great deal of truth to that, no one who is considering moving to all-grain brewing should be intimidated by it. There is some additional knowledge involved in all-grain brewing, some new techniques to be mastered. However, it is not all that difficult, especially if a brewer is already doing partial mashes with significant amounts of grain. In your case Walter, where you are mashing grain for 1/3 of the fermentables in your brew, you are already closer to all-grain brewing than you believe. Before I "took the plunge", I took advantage of the tremendous wealth of information on mashing and sparging provided by our fellow HBDers. Another good source of information is Greg Noonan's book "Brewing Lager Beer", which contains detailed, easily understandable descriptions of the mashing and sparging processes (usual disclaimer regarding lack of commercial interest applies). I would encourage any brewer considering moving to all grain brewing to *educate* themselves first, poke through the HBD archives, read some of the literature. All-grain brewing is MUCH EASIER than many people believe. In my own case, I brewed my first all grain batch several months ago after 60-70 extract and partial mash batches. It was, IMHO, the best beer I ever made. Each of the subsequent six batches has been an improvement over the last. There's no turning back now, Jim ------------------------------ From: Michael J. Gerard Subject: Re: sparging and time Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 10:13:49 CDT The last time I sparged it took around 1.5-2 hours... I think a lot of it has to do with how dense your filter bed is. I have played with the idea of moving the grain bag slightly. This would speed up the flow; I'm not sure what it would do to the sparge. I think it would speed things up. I used to spage without a lauder tun (just a bag and a collecter). I got good extracts percentage wise in 15-20 minutes but being scaled by 170 F water wasn't worth it. It's easier to sit and have a homebrew and watch the future homebrew trcikle away. I plan to try moving the sparge bag SLIGHTLY next time. I'll use an old recipe and see if I can speed up the flow but still get a high extract percentage. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Benjamin Subject: Re: sparging and time Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 11:02:20 MDT > My question for sparge adepts out there is this: Two hours!? > It takes me no longer than 20 to 30 minutes to sparge 7 gallons of water > at 170 F through 7 lbs of grain. My question is this: 7 gallons!? That seems like an awful lot of water to sparge with for 7 gallons (on the order of 2x what it should be). My usual ration is one-half the number of gallons as you had pounds of grain (e.g., 4.5 gallons for 9 lbs of malt). What kind of gravity do you get out of the tap by the end? If the outflow isn't sweet any more, I stop sparging. But I agree, two hours is an awful long time to sparge. You can extend your sparge time significantly by doing a lot of recycling, but I've found the biggest factor to be the grind of the grain. My sparges were always sticking when I used the old coffee grinder at the local brew shop. Now that I have my Marcato mill, the sparge water drains through as fast as I can pour it. Sparge times are now down to 15-20 minutes. > Currently my best time from starting the mash to pitching the yeast is > about ten hours. Now that seems a little long. I have certainly done batches that took that long, but my basic procedure is now to about 6 hours (I can *almost* do one in the evening after work :-). Let's look at an idealized schedule: hours step ----- ---- (opt) .75 grind grain (can be done day before) 1.5 mash (step: 30m @ 122F, 50m @ 150F, 10m @ 170F) .5 sparge .5 wait for wort to come to boil :-( 1.5 boil & hopping .5 cooling (immersion or counterflow chiller) (opt) 1.0 aquarium-pump aeration ----- 6.25 total time Even if you add "slop" time beyond the ideal schedule, it's still well below 10 hours. Eliminate grain-grinding and use splash aeration, and you're down below 5 hours! The key is to use "dead" time during the mash, boil, and cooling stages to clean up, heat your sparge water, etc. About halfway through the mash, I start my sparge water heating and sanitize sparging implements so that as soon as the mash is done I'm ready to go. During the boil, I sanitize my fermenter, clean up my mash and sparge stuff, prepare the chiller and such. Heck, I sometimes even vacuum the living room or mow the lawn during a brew session. And there's certainly time in there to drink a homebrew or two. - -- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: jlf@palm.cray.com (John Freeman) Subject: Homebrew Digest #938 (July 30, 1992) (fwd) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 10:51:37 CDT > Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 15:35:05 PDT > From: kjohnson@argon.berkeley.edu (Ken Johnson) > Subject: Re: Advanced Brewing (NON-EXTRACT) worth it? > > If your beer quality goes down when switching to full mash beers, then you > are lame. > > kj Then consider me lame. When I first started mashing, before I got some of the right equipment and technique, my beer was not an improvement over extract brewing. I had problems crushing malt, problems mashing, problems with sparging, problems with balancing hops, problems with yeast. It's a wonder I kept at it. Now, mashing seems easy. I've got better equipment - a Corona mill, a five gallon stainless steel pot, a wort chiller, a large burner, nested plastic sparge buckets (I call the Tower of Power). And I've done it off and on for nine years so I know which parts to worry about and which not to. I do a single temp infusion mash in a styrofoam cooler, I don't mashout, I don't recirculate sparge, I don't siphon off cold break. It takes me about four hours to make beer. As blasphemous as it sounds, there is more to life than making beer, and if it took me all day like some, I wouldn't do it. So, if someone is happy making extract beers, I don't see any problem with that. I'm not going to insist they make the investment in time and equipment to do full mash beers. ------------------------------ From: pyle@intellistor.com (Norm Pyle) Subject: Innovative lauter tuns Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 07:55:39 MDT Chris Karras (RKarras@PennSAS.UPenn.edu) writes: >I have been using the 5 gallon cylindrical Gott/Rubbermaid orange cooler as a >lautertun with apparent good results. Rather than use the slotted copper >tubing or window screen over a pipe to filter the wort from the grain, I have >been setting a stainless steel steamer (one of those odd kitchen items that >looks like a flower with petals that unfold to double the diameter and that >has little 1/2" legs). It is just the right size to fit in the bottom of the >cooler and when the grain is in a mesh nylon grain bag sitting on top of the >steamer I suspect that I get a better filtering action than with the slotted >tubes and with much less work/expense. > >Has anyone else tried this, and with what effect? I use this very same apparatus (the steamer) in a large bucket as my lauter tun. (high quality ascii graphics below) It expands to exactly the right diameter. I haven't used it in conjunction with the grain bag yet (I just bought my grain bag), but it seems to do the trick quite nicely as far as holding the grain above the bottom. The filtering action is fine. The only problem I've had is pouring ten pounds of grain from my mash tun (Bruheat) into this contraption without knocking the steamer crooked. This has resulted in a few pieces of grain coming through my outlet hose but never anything worse. \ bucket/ | | | | |^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^| | | | grain bed | | | | | | steamer | |---------------| | | | + outlet hole with hose attached |_|___________|_| This is not earth shattering, but it does show that you don't have to go nuts buying expensive equipment to do full mashes. Now that I have a grain bag, I'd like to hear from others who've used it to mash and sparge straight out of a Bruheat or similar gadget. Problems? What grain/water ratios do you use (this seems to be a bone of contention between Bruheat and Dave Line)? The reason I'd like to do this is to avoid having to dump all that hot grain into a separate lauter tun. Comments and ideas to streamline the process are welcome. Norm ------------------------------ From: Chris Shenton Subject: Innovative lauter tuns Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 15:10:07 EDT Chris Karras (RKarras@PennSAS.UPenn.edu) writes: > I have been using the 5 gallon cylindrical Gott/Rubbermaid orange > cooler ... I have been setting a stainless steel steamer (one of > those odd kitchen items that looks like a flower with petals that > unfold to double the diameter and that has little 1/2" legs). And pyle@intellistor.com (Norm Pyle) replies: > I use this very same apparatus (the steamer) in a large bucket as > my lauter tun. I haven't used it in conjunction with the grain bag > yet (I just bought my grain bag), but it seems to do the trick quite > nicely as far as holding the grain above the bottom. The only > problem I've had is pouring ten pounds of grain from my mash tun > (Bruheat) into this contraption without knocking the steamer > crooked. > Now that I have a grain bag, I'd like to hear from others who've > used it to mash and sparge straight out of a Bruheat or similar > gadget. OK, I'll bite: why use the stainer gizmo if you're gonna put your grain in a porous grain-bag anyway? I use a set up similar to you two, but I have a large, round plastic collander which fits snugly and seals tightly around the edges when pushed to the bottom of the cooler. I wanted to avoid the grain bag because when I first started mashing (with the Zapap lauter tun), much of the sparge/wort ran down between the bag and the walls of the tun - -- path of least resistance and capillary action I imagine; it avoided the grain and gave a low extraction rate. Also, the collander fits tightly enough that it doesn't budge when you dump all the grain or mash onto it. (Remember to run some string through it so you can pull it out, though!) Your milage may vary, blah, blah, blah. :-) ------------------------------ From: dougd@uts.amdahl.com (Douglas DeMers) Subject: Brewing time (was Re: Advanced Brewing (NON-EXTRACT) worth it?) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 10:24 PDT In HBD #938, gak@wrs.com (Richard Stueven) writes: [...] >You and many others refer to the mashing process as "Advanced >Brewing". In my opinion, that perpetuates the myth that mashing is an >arcane and difficult process that novice brewers can't possibly do >right. That's simply not true...ANYBODY can do it! All you need are a >couple of extra plastic buckets* and maybe another 1.5 to 2 hours of >brewing time, and you're set. Having recently started all-grain mashing, thanks to the encouragement and help of members of this esteemed forum (special thanks to Martin Lodahl!) and The Draught Board (brewclub), I agree with all of what you say _except_ the time involved for all-grain. There are many, many factors which will affect the amount of additional time for all-grain brewing, so to state categorically that "only" another 2 hours time is required is unfair. A more accurate statement (IMO) would be that _at least_ 1.5 hours more of brewing time is required. Typical all-grain brewing from start to pitch for me has averaged around 6-7 hours. True, experience shows certain shortcuts and the things which can be done in parallel once the methodology and the process are understood. I'm still learning, too, with many great beers yet to be brewed and for me they'll be all-grain. To me, all-grain brewing is worth the additional time and trouble, but I'm always looking for ways to decrease the time involved while increasing the quality of my beers. The additional time required for all-grain brewing can be greatly affected by the mashing technique (is it infusion? step? or decoction mash?), the beer style (for example, a wheat beer will require a protein rest which is additional time), and the equipment the brewer has at his/her disposal. (For example, my "cajun cooker" can bring 5 gallons of sparge water to temperature in under five minutes!) A discussion concerning sparge time is already in progress elsewhere in this forum, and it certainly appears that sparge time varies wildly >from brewer to brewer. As a personal aside, my time is more valuable than obtaining the maximum theoretical extract percentage, so I'd opt for using more malt rather than a 2 hour sparge! However, at the suggestion of Russ Wigglesworth (thanks, Russ!) I increased my sparge time from 20 to 40 minutes and was pleased with the results. Folks considering all-grain should definitely read _The Complete Handbook of Homebrewing_ (David Miller, 1988, Garden Way Publishing, Pownall Vermont, 248 pages) or _The Complete Joy of Home Brewing_, (Second Edition) by Charlie Papazian. Also, one of the _zymurgy_ special issues (probably the All-Grain Issue) has a "staggered brewing" article which I recall has some other time-saving hints. Here's my thumbnail time budget at the front-end of all-grain brewing, with things which can be done in parallel indented. Note also that in all-grain brewing, the boil time is often 90 or even 120 minutes. A maximum of 60 minute boil is highly recommended for extract brews, to keep carmelization to a minimum. crack grain 10-20 minutes (0 - buy pre-cracked) heat mash-in water 1-20 minutes (depends on equipment!) mash-in 3+ minutes (check/adjust Ph, etc.) protein rest 45 min. (depends on brew, most not needed.) raise to conversion temp. 5-15 minutes starch conversion 20-120 minutes. heat sparge water 5-30 minutes. mash-out 5-15 minutes sparge 20-120 minutes (sparge into the boiler) begin boil [... here we join the extract-only brewers ...] Quickest time would be to use pre-cracked grains in a single temperature infusion mash with a quick (20 minute) sparge. With my equipment, that would probably be around 1.5 hours additional. I'd recommend an all-grain-wannabe brewer get Miller's book (above) and try a partial mash or two, just to get the feel for the process. Then, if it feel right, jump right in! If not, don't feel bad. Remember that award-winning beers are brewed from all-grain, partial-mash, _and_ extract recipes. The important thing is to just brew it! ------------------------------ From: sherpa2!CCASTELL.ELDEC%mailsrv2@sunup.West.Sun.COM (CCASTELL) Subject: Re: Bruheat Cleaning & other Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 16:38 Brett asked how to clean a Bruheat heating element. First off, its a lot easier to clean if you remove the element from the "kettle". Brillo does a fair job, but the best thing I've found is the copper pot scrubbers available at most supermarkets. If you clean it up after every use with the pot scrubber, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds or so (brillo used to take me 5-10 minutes!). Be careful when you remove the heating element not to damage the rubber (?) washer. You'll have to remove the washer to clean the element, but I've had a good deal of trouble with that. Experience has shown my washers only have a lifetime of 10 batches or so. Of course the local homebrew store doesn't carry spares (even though they sell the bruheat), and plumbing places have not been helpful. You don't really need the washer to create a good seal. It IS important as an insulator for the thermostat. When I tried not using a washer, I couldn't get the darn thing to boil! (Now I'm using a homemade cardboard washer and am having no problems at all!) Someone wrote an article in Zymurgy a few years back about the care and feeding of the Bruheat. He always started each batch by boiling a bleach solution, then running that through his wort chiller. I never saw the need to be overly concerned about sanitizing something I'm going to be boiling in, so I don't boil bleach in the kettle. (Of course the wort chiller should be sanitized as best as possible.) Ken Johnson writes: > If your beer quality goes down when switching to full mash beers, then you > are lame. I think that might be a little harsh. There are several variables to be concerned with when you make the step to all-grain brewing that aren't a concern to extract (and partial mash) brewers. First, your equipment. If you're brewing on the stove, and you have an electric stove, its a lot of work to keep the proper temperatures. (See the Zymurgy special issue on all-grain brewing. Ekhart shows a log where he's having to change his settings every minute or so. Hardly my idea of relaxing and having a homebrew.) Another important consideration is your water. Sure, there is information available on how to properly prepare your mash water, but it is something an extract brewer hasn't been concerned about. Then, of course, there's the time element. When doing an extract brew (or all-grain when you get to the boil), you can pretty much ignore what's going on and attend to other pressing needs (having a homebrew, changing diapers, or whatever). When making an all-grain batch, you're committed to a longer time period, and since temperature is pretty critical, it demands more of your attention. That's fine if you have the time. Unless you've read a bunch about all-grain brewing, or helped somebody else do it, I think it is very possible that you might have a slight degradation in quality for your first few batches as you come up the learning curve. For a professional brewer to experience these problems, I think maybe the term "lame" applies, but for the casual homebrewer, I don't think I'd consider someone "lame" just for experiencing a learning curve. (There seems to be a presumption that there are no beer styles that are adequately represented by extracts. Granted, you can produce an infinite variety of styles if you use all-grain, but I dare say there are some styles that can be done quite well using extracts, possibly with specialty grains or partial mashes. If this were not the case, there would be NO medal winners using extracts. Probably the majority of the medals are won by all-grain, but the fact that some folks are still placing with extracts would lead me to believe that you can still brew some fine beers from cans/powders.) ------------------------------ From: ithaca!amber!phoebe@uunet.UU.NET (Phoebe Couch) Subject: Mash and Hops Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 12:11:45 PDT First I'd like to thank everyone out there for all the advice on the net, I didn't ask the questions but read the answers all the same. Thought I will tell y'all about my setup, I recently started doing all grain, and we have 2 setups: 1) Mash in the oven in a stainless pot sparge in 2 plastic bucket with holes in bottom of the inner bucket and spigot on outer bucket. 2) Mash in a 48 qt cooler with slotted copper pipes(15 ft) and faucet fitted to it. (The leftover copper tubing (~30ft) became a 2 layer wort chiller and it works fast too. ) sparge in same. I don't know if we were too impetuous and checked too often, but setup2 can't seem to keep a constant temp and we ended to having to reheat the grain a lot and ended up putting all the stuff in the oven. But either way it came out good, the mashing process took about 6 hours the first time (cooler) because of all the hassles and 4 hours the second time because it kept tasting sweeter everytime we checked on it. IMpale ale was made with setup2 and was dry hopped with Saaz pellets(cos I like the smell, but can't buy it freash) The beer that came out was a lot clearer and smoother than extract brewing. I will highly recommend all-grain brewing, we had a BBQ outside while the enzymes were working, so that wait was no problem. IMpale ale was very tasty, but the hop flavour seemed to have become stronger as it developed in the bottle. It's like drinking malty flower juice. Anyway I have a question about hops, I am growing cascades, williamette, nugget and Mt Hood in the backyard, the cascade is the only one with what ressembles flowers, but they are small bases with white spikes sticking out and not leafy like the stuff you buy. I am worried that I may have been sold a male plant instead of a female plant (if there is such a thing for Hops) Does anyone out there know? P. ------------------------------ From: Nick Zentena Subject: silcone again Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 11:19:19 -0400 Hi, Well since I started this I guess I should report on my progress. With all the various ideas flying back and forth I called GE Silicones and asked them.[I figured they should know-)] Well they sent me a sample of Ge Silcone RTV102 that is FDA/USDA and NSF tested. The silcone will leak acetic acid during curing. But that doesn't worry me just makes me hungry. Thanks for the help. Nick ***************************************************************************** I drink Beer I don't collect cute bottles! zen%hophead@canrem.com ***************************************************************************** ------------------------------ From: volkerdi@MHD1.moorhead.msus.edu (Patrick J. Volkerding) Subject: Sealing mash-tuns Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 11:30:49 -0500 Hey now! With all this talk about horrible potentially toxic glues and sealers getting used in mash tun construction, I thought I'd offer an alternate approach. First off, if your cooler already has a drain in the bottom, I wouldn't try to modify it. My impression is that it's a lot easier to make a leak-proof drain from scratch. Get a 15/32" drill bit and file the sharp edges near the point dull. This will help it to scrape through, preventing the plastic from chipping or shattering. Drill carefully through a flat section of the inside of the cooler, and then shove a piece of 1/2" OD vinyl hose through it. It will fit snugly enough that it won't leak. You can then fit 3/8" OD copper tubing to either side by just sticking it in the tube. Pat ------------------------------ From: homebrew@tso.uc.EDU (Ed Westemeier) Subject: Lauter tuns & hop drying Date: 28 Jul 1992 11:23:29 -0400 (EDT) Tom Feller asks about building a cooler lauter tun using a round picnic cooler and copper pipe filter network. For the past year, I've been using a variation of the Phil's Sparging System, by Listermann Mfg. Co. They advertise in _Zymurgy_ and the products (like Phil's Philler) are available in many homebrew retail outlets. Besides the basic system using two plastic buckets, assorted tubing and fittings, sparging sprinkler and perforated plastic plate, they also make the plate in sizes to fit 5 & 10 gal. round coolers (the "Gott" model (Rubbermaid brand) orange drinking water coolers that you often see used by highway construction crews. Using this system with a Gott cooler, I have been enjoying easy mashing/lautering and relaxing a whole lot more than I used to. The Gott cooler holds the temperature of contents to within a few degrees for 2 hours or more, and the perforated plastic screen element is easy to clean. In short, it's both simple and effective. Usual disclaimers, but ask your retailer to order the sparge system sized for one of these coolers. As I recall, it was well under 20 bucks, and the cooler was available in my local K-mart for about 12 bucks. Also, Carl West asked about sun-drying hops. Not a good idea, IMHO. That's why hop growers build oast houses. Direct sunlight has a deleterious effect on hops AFTER they have been harvested. Dry them in the shade and you'll be a lot better off. - --Ed ------------------------------ From: dipalma@banshee.sw.stratus.com (James Dipalma) Subject: RE: sparging questions Date: Tue, 4 Aug 92 10:21:32 EDT Hi All, In HBD# 940, Tom Feller asks: >What is the difference between mash-out and sparging. I understood >that if you mash out at 170 deg.F you raised the temp of the mash >to 170 deg.F and then keep it at this temp for some time. That's a pretty accurate description of mash out. It's done to stop enzyme activity and to help avoid a set mash. >How could it take 2 hr to run water sparge water through your >grain bed unless the sparge was stuck(set mash?). Two hours seems a little lengthy to me as well, but it is certainly possible. My first all grain batch, I set the tap on the lauter tun for the merest trickle, i.e., if I just nudged it the runoff would stop entirely. Two hours of sparging later, the runoff still measured around 1.053. Anxious to get on with it, I opened the tap, and ran the remainder of the sparge water through quickly. I've done a half dozen batches since then, each time increasing the runoff rate and carefully recording the SG and final volume. At the moment, I'm averaging 5 gallons sparge water through 9-10 pounds of grain in just under one hour, and still getting 30-32 points/pound/gallon. The plan is to keep increasing the runoff rate until I see a significant dropoff in extraction, in an attempt to achieve a good time/quality tradeoff. I mention this because of the recent thread regarding sparge times. I think it's interesting that the times reported by other net.brewers vary so much. Anyone else out there drawn this sort of correlation between sparge time and extraction? >My plan is: >Fill my cooler with grain add hot water for a final temp of 155 deg.F This is single step infusion mashing, works well with highly modified malts. >Let this sit until conversion about 1-2 hrs. I'll use the iodone test Using iodine is a good practice, you want to be sure conversion is complete. I suspect it won't take 2 hours for conversion though, especially with highly modified malt. I'd start iodine testing at 45 minutes to 1 hour. >Recirculate until the run-off is not cloudly. >Run 170-175 deg.F water(sparging?) throught the grain bed keep the water level about 1/2-1 in about the grain bed untill the run-off is not longer sweet or I reach my 7 gal. volume. I use both the hydrometer and the taste test to determine when to quit sparging, and have found that the taste of tannin first becomes noticeable around 1.020. At about 1.015 - 1.010, there is no longer any detectable sweetness, this is when I stop. Surprisingly, these three events (no sweetness in runoff, 1.010 on the hydrometer, and full pre-boil volume achieved) all seem to occur at just about the same time. >Did I discribe this right? You did, and you're on the right track, your plan looks good to me, should work just fine. Happy Brewing, Jim DiPalma ------------------------------ From: Ruth Mazo Karras Subject: lauter/mash tuns Date: 04 Aug 92 14:36:25 EST Crhis Shelton asks why use a strainer/steamer if a grain bag is also being used. Although I have not experimented without both the steamer and bag, the theory is this: the steamer raises the level of the grain above the drain (which is set into the side of the tun) so that as the grain is sparged the sparge water drips from the grain bed with a horizontil cross-section equivalient to the daiameter of the tun and then collects beneath the steamer and flows to the drain; the grain bag provides a finer filter for the bottom of the grain and generally keeps the grain bed together to make clean up easier. Not using the steamer may lead to plugging the drain and not using the grain bag might lead to grain falling through the steamer and flowing through the drain. A collander filter in the bottom of the tun probably does much the same thing as I have described, but I would guess clean up is tougher than with a grain bag. With the bag, I just lift out the grain, set in in the sink to finish dripping and carry it out to the garden. Since I am keeping the sparge water to within a half inch of the top of the grain bed to keep it afloat, I have not had a problem with sparge water running down the side of the tun and not sparging the grain. At least I think I do not have that problem. Another reader aske whether a grain bag really makes it easier to clean up, since the bag has to be emptied and washed and what not. Putting the grain bag in the tun takes about 15 seconds and removing the grain in the bag less time. Rinsing out the tun after removal of the bag is quicker than it would be if the bag were not used, I think, since there is less grain to rinse out and cleaning the bag consists of dumping the grain in the garden, turning the bag inside out and rinsing it for a minute or so in the sink. I have not been sanitizing the bag as it is nylon and the wort does get boiled. I do not think this is a big deal, and makes it easier to move the grain out--but the $7 for the bag might not be worth it to everyone. Chris Karras (RKarras@PennSAS.UPenn.edu) ------------------------------ From: korz@ihpubj.att.com Subject: Re: Sparging Date: Thu, 6 Aug 92 12:29 CDT Larry writes: >In HBD #941 Al writes >>... >>You're right about the difference between mash-out and sparging. There are >>two reasons for mash-out that I can think of: 1) stopping conversion ... > >This is the conventional wisdom. There is no way a 10 min mash out at >170f is gonna stop conversion. I can name at least two local breweries >that MASH at 160-162f! (Thomas Kemper and Hales) and I suspect a lot >more around the PNW do as well. Another 8-10f isn't going to magically >kill the enzymes. Enzymes are the closest things to magic on earth, really, and they are proteins, so it's not surprising that 8 or 10F *could* denature them in a very short time. I'm only going by data from Fix, Papazian and Miller, but all three mention deactivating enzymes in the mash-out. Unfortunately, George and Charlie are a bit sketchy on the temperature at which Alpha-amylase (a-amylase) and Beta-amylase (b-amylase) really, denature, but Dave says that 5 minutes at 168F will "stop all enzyme activity positively." Now, I don't exactly agree with this, but we must consider the actions of these two most important enzymes. A-amylase breaks long chains of glucose molecules (starches) into dextrins (liquification or dextrinization). B-amylase produces glucose, maltose (two glucose molecules) and maltotriose (three glucose molecules) from the starch molecules (saccharification) but is limited when it hits a 1-6 link in the starch chain. A-amylase works best at warmer mash temperatures (149-153F) whereas b-amylase prefers lower temps (126-144) and according to Charlie, b-amylase will "become deactivated within 40-60 minutes at a temparature of 149F." Therefore, temperatures favoring b-amylase produce worts that are more fermentable and temps favoring a-amylase produce worts that are less fermentable (so, since I love beers that tempt you to spread them on toast, I can't wait to try Thomas Kemper and Hales beers during next years conference! -- BTW, the Winekeller Breweries here in metro Chicago, mash at 153F and their beers are like having sex in a canoe). What I was talking about in my post, was primarily refering to stopping conversion in the context of making highly-dextrinous worts, although I probably did not mention it (oops). From what I've read and experienced, 170F may not stop a-amylase from cutting a few more large dextrins (let's hope there's no starch left) into smaller ones, but will effectively stop the b-amylase from creating more fermentables from the remaining dextrins. Al. ------------------------------ From: Jay Hersh Subject: grain bag in a 5 gallon cooler Date: Tue, 04 Aug 92 17:04:25 EDT Jack asks: > I can't help but wonder how messing (literally) around with a grain bag fits > into your "less work" equation. > > It seems to me that filling, installing, emptying and cleaning a grain bag is > far more work than hosing out a bucket or kettle with a built in strainer. > Of course you can reduce the work by using a new one each time but then the > cost goes up. > I use a Gott cooler with a copper tube with slots in the bottom. The grain bag gets set into it when dry, and tied down around the cooler top. Then I add water and grain, alternating and stirring. The grain bag really is no problem. In fact I think it makes cleaning a little easier. When I'm done I can carry the cooler out to the compost pile, lift the grain bag out, and invert it to dump out the grain. Then I simply rinse it and let it dry. I certainly wouldn't say it makes things any harder, and perhaps makes cleanup a little easier. While I know plenty of folks who use a collander or vegetable steamer false bottom and no grain bag approach with good results, using the grain bag what and slotted pipe combination as I have also works fine. > Am I missing something? I won't touch that one :-) JaH ------------------------------ From: Paul dArmond Subject: Cooler Lauter Tun Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1992 11:32:04 -0700 (PDT) I also use a lauter tun made from a Gott/Rubbermaid 5-gal drink cooler. My grain bag was obtained at the local homebrew/wine shop, sold as a "press bag" for a winepress. Many of the mailorder beer/wine-making catalogs carry these. I think mine was made by Wine-Art. It is very strong and I have no difficulty carrying up to 12 pounds of wet soggy spent grain over to the nighbor's cows. The upper lip of the cooler has a flexible lip that forms a seal when the lid is screwed down. This lip is handy for tying the bag in place with string. If you aren't using a bag yet, I highly reccomend it. The stainless steel vegetable steamer under the bag is necessary part. If you just use the bag alone, it will not leave a liquid space at the bottom. This will force the wort to channel through the grain and leave a "dead space" on the bottom opposite the outlet. The liquid space under the steamer allows the flow to be evenly distributed over the entire horizontal cross section of the grain bed. I put a small stainless collander on top of the grain. This protects the top of the grain bed from being stirred up by the sparge water. It also holds the small submersible pump that recirculates the wort to clarify it. My pump is made for aquarium use. It is rated at 16 Gal/Hr. In twenty minutes the wort is crystal clear. I'm very pleased with how it works, and my arm no longer gets tired from pouring the recycled wort back in the top of the lauter tun. The collander is handy during sparging, in case my attention wanders and the liquid level drops below the grain. Sparging takes about 40 minutes. I will run much faster than this, but I find I get a better yeild with pauses. The next time you are sparging, and it is starting to lighten up, take a sample and stop draining for 5 minutes. After the pause, take another sample. It will be richer. I suspect that this is far more elaborate than is necessary to brew good beer. Yeild isn't all that important: Stronger beer takes more grain. If it tastes good, you did it right. ------------------------------ From: BOB JONES Subject: Mashing from Micah Millspaw Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 07:39 PDT Adding to the mash discusions. I suggested the use of the insulated cooler type mash tun because it can be used with both single temp. infusion mashes and upward step infusion mashes. It is a simple thing to increase the mash temperature by adding more hot water at the time it is needed for the step increase. The mash out can be conducted the same way. This approach to mashing is a part of the gentle mash that can reduce the effects of hot oxygen reactions. By way of explaination, I start the mash fairly tight 20-24oz per lb. and add sufficiently hot water to make the temperature steps I want without exceding 32oz per lb grain to water, for a normal mash. For a first run only mash I use up to 48-50oz per lb. Also no stirring as the hot water is either underlet or sprayed or both at the same time. My mash\lauter tun is loaded with temp. probes and it works very well. I have been mashing in this way for the past four years and have many ribbons to show for it. Also it is easy and I'm lazy. Micah Millspaw 8/12/92 ------------------------------ From: R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas) Subject: all grain stuff Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 10:11:37 -0400 (EDT) Good list of all-grain equipment/steps. I'd recommend a 10-gallon (or more) cooler though; it allows you to add all the sparge water at once, and then drain it all off without having to babysit it. My last batch had 70% efficiency that way, which is fine with me. A quick efficiency primer: Points per pound (PPP) only work if you are using a single type of grain; different grains have different maximum PPP's. I figure out efficiency as follows - Multiply the pounds of each grain by it's max. PPP (found in the literature, actually I use the numbers in the Brew Recipe Formulator). Total these up, and you have the maximum possible points from your grist (ie. 100% efficiency). Take the original gravity of your wort, subtract the 1.000. Multiply this by the number of gallons, and you have the number of points of your wort. Divide this by the max. possible points, and there's your efficiency. Along a similar note, the first-time all-grainer said he had very low efficiency. Actually, you weren't too bad. The formula above gives 60% efficiency, more or less (again from the BRF, I should send Chris some money I guess). Use more pale malt next time; that should help convert more of the wheat. Wheat beer is not very high OG anyway, so relax and enjoy it, it sounds like a fine summertime drink. Finally, I haven't gotten the answer I'm looking for re. stirring an infusion mash. I infuse the grist to conversion temperature, then put it in an insulated box. It stays well within 2 degrees. My question is, is it better to stir the mash occasionally, or best to just let it sit? It's not a matter of evenly distributing the heat, but rather of mixing up the enzymes/starches/sugars. Russ ------------------------------ From: "Spencer W. Thomas" Subject: sparging manifold design Date: Wed, 19 Aug 92 11:08:09 EDT I finally took the leap (step?) to all-grain this weekend. After reading posts about "slotted pipe" manifolds for sparging, I realized that I had everything I needed to build such a setup (well, I had to get a tee and an elbow). I took some 3/8" tubing from my mega-chiller-from-hell (50' of tubing is *too much*), cut slots every 3/4" to 1" with a hacksaw, crimped one end, bent the other, and attached the bent ends to a tee fitting. I cut another length of tubing just tall enough to reach the top of my rectangular cooler and attached it to the center of the tee. An elbow at the top connects to 6' of pvc tubing to make a siphon hose. Total expenditure: <$5. Wonderful ASCII graphics drawing: /---------------------------------\ / | | | | | | | | | /------------------------------/ | | /---\ Top view | | <--Tube coming up from tee. \---/ | | Slots are in bottom of tubing, cut about 1/2 way through. | | | \------------------------------\ \ | | | | | | | | \---------------------------------/ It worked. Sort of. I had to "back flush" it with air (translation: blow into the end of the siphon tube) to clear husks (I assume) out of the slots to really get it started. It took over an hour to drain 4 gallons of first runnings from the cooler (this was a barleywine recipe). Before I use it again, I'm going to widen the slots. Since it siphons 7 gallons of plain water from the cooler in about 20 minutes, I am assuming that the slowness is at least partly due to the slots getting blocked by husks or grain particles. If a few come through at the beginning, it's easy enough to dump that bit of wort back into the cooler until the filter bed gets set. Any other suggestions or comments (preferably based on experience with a similar setup) would be appreciated. (Jack, I know about your system, but I want to try to collect over the entire bottom of the cooler, especially as it is longer than it is deep.) =Spencer W. Thomas HSITN, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 spencer.thomas@med.umich.edu 313-747-2778 ------------------------------ From: Jeff Benjamin Subject: Re: sparging manifold, Kolsch Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 13:09:00 MDT "Spencer W. Thomas" says of his new copper sparge manifold: > It worked. Sort of. I had to "back flush" it with air (translation: > blow into the end of the siphon tube) to clear husks (I assume) out of > the slots to really get it started. It took over an hour to drain 4 > gallons of first runnings from the cooler My manifold is similar to yours, except perhaps the slots we cut with a hacksaw didn't go through quite as far (maybe 1/4 - 1/3 the tube diameter). I suspect that the grind of your grain is at fault; I've got a Marcato roller mill, and usually can drain as fast as if there were no grain at all. Also, did you put the manifold in *before* you started mashing? I can easily see it getting clogged if you try to push it through all that wet grain. waflowers@quantum.qnx.com (Bill Flowers) asks me to share my partner's Kolsch recipe. Here it is: Fat Wanda's Kolsch Klone 7 lb pale malt 1-3/4 oz Hallertau (5.0%) 1-1/2 lb Vienna malt 1/2 oz Tettnang (4.5%) 3/4 lb wheat malt Wyeast European Ale O.G. 1.042, F.G. 1.009 Yield: 5.8 gallons To keep hop aroma low, the last addition of hops should come no later than 20 minutes before the end of the boil. The trick to this beer is to cold condition it. After 4 days primary and 4 days secondary fermentation at ale temps (~65F), rack again and cold condition at 40F for 12 days. Then prime and bottle as usual. This beer should be very pale, and taste "clean" like a lager but with an ale's body and fruitiness. This beer took first prize in the "pale ale" category at the local (Northern Colorado) AugustFest competition this year. It's not *exactly* like drinking in Cologne, but darn close. - -- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: smanastasi@mmm.com Subject: 10 Step All Grain Process - Revised Date: Mon, 24 Aug 92 12:22:46 -0500 Thanks to all who helped by adding refinements to this. I recieved almost as many requests for the final version as I did advice. This 10 step process for all grain brewing is ONE way of going about all grain - not THE right way. Of course, all of us "new allgrainers" will soon discover THE right way. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All Grain Brewing for Extract Brewers New Equipment: - 5 (or 10) gallon cooler with a false bottom and improved spigot system. - 10 gallon brew pot - preferrably stainless steel. - Immersion or counterflow wort chiller. - Grain mill (or access to one). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - EASY 10 STEP ALL-GRAIN PROCEDURE 0. Prepare grains: Crush grains such that each kernel is broken into several parts but not flour-like. 1. Place grain in cooler: Add 135F water and grain to cooler simulataneously kneading the grain into the water. All grain should be wet with no air pockets. 2. Protein rest (optional): Non highly-modified malts may required a protein rest. Let grain sit in 122F - 131F water for 30 minutes. Protein rest is required when using more than 40% wheat. 3. Starch conversion: Elevate the temperature to 155F - 158F by adding 170F - 175F degree water. Let sit for 1.5 to 2 hours. Don't let the water temperature drop below 150F. Try not to exceed 32 oz of water per pound of grain. 4. Mash out and Sparging: Add near-boiling water to bring water temperature up to 168F - 170F. Let this sit for 10 minutes. Set grain bed by slowly drawing 1 - 2 gallons of wort. Pour the wort back into the cooler. Slowly draw wort out of the cooler while sprinkling 170F water (sparge) into the cooler. Wort should be dispensed very slowly at about 3 to 7 minutes per gallon. The water level should stay above the grains. Continue until 5.5 to 7 gallons have been collected. (Note: Using a 10 gallon cooler allows for all sparge water to be added at once.) 5. The Boil: Bring wort to a soft boil and add hops during boil as if doing an extract brew. 6. Chilling and cold-break: Use a wort chiller to cool the wort to 70F to 85F. Proteins will coagulate and drop out of solution forming the cold-break. 7. Transfer to fermentation vessel: Siphon cooled wort off of cold-break and into a carboy. Wort should be allowed to airate as it enters the carboy. 8. Etc.: Pitch yeast, dry hop, transfer to secondary, prime and bottle as if doing an extract brew. 9. Enjoy: Enjoy a far superior beer due to all sorts of "all-grain" advantages well documented in the Homebrew Digest. * - * - * - * - * Steve Anastasi St. Paul, MN ------------------------------ From: envkas@sn634.utica.ge.com Subject: manifold for cooler mashing Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 08:48:04 EDT >To Spencer.W.Thomas@med.umich.edu, I too use a cooler for mashing and sparging... My manifold is made of rigid 1/2 in copper tubing connected with fittings at the corners. The trick I use is not to solder the fittings (no lead in my beer please) so that when I am done, the whole contraption can be taken apart, cleaned and stored with ease. Here is an ASCII version of the setup... / flush tube to clean out manifold before sparging / / e--t-t-t--e - | | | | | = 1/2 in rigid copper tubes w/ slots in bottom of cooler | | | | T = 1/2 by 3/8 t fitting | | | | e = 1/2 in elbows | | | | t = 1/2 in t fitting | | | | - = short pieces of rigid copper tubing to space long tubes e--t-T-t--e - | | 3/8 in clear plastic drain tube thru end of cooler The flush tube runs vertically up the end of the cooler and has a cap on it during the mash stage. When I am ready to start sparging, I run about a gal of 170 F H2O thru the flush tube until the run off is clear. The run off is then recycled onto the top of the cooler to filter back thru the mash. This flush idea came from Brewing Lager Beer by G. Noonan. I adapted it to the cooler manifold concept and have been very happy with the outcome. I have also been very happy with the decoction mash techniques he describes in the book. Does anyone else have comments on the decoction method??? Karl Sweitzer envkas@sn610.utica.ge.com (315) 793-7696 ------------------------------ From: thomasf@deschutes.ico.tek.com (Thomas D. Feller) Subject: Metal Taste and Mashing Questions Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 11:17:15 PDT I again want to thank everyone for the help and ideas about my first all grain brews. Thanks!!!! Now to the problems/questions, I have been using my SS soda kegs for both primary and secondary fermenters for the past year and I have been quite happy with the way they work. On the pickup tubes of my two primary kegs I have short(~1 in.) pieces of copper pipe with caps on one end. These work like the caps on sphioning tubes to keep me from picking stuff of the bottom of the kegs. I got the idea for these caps from an article in Zymurgy about transfer from keg to keg. I transfered my Blueberry Wheat beer from the primary to my secondary over the weekend, I took a sample and tasted it. It has a very bitter metal taste, I also notice this metal taste in a Blackberry Stout I made about a year ago. With the stout the taste when away in about two weeks but I used much less berries than my Blueberry wheat and of course the stout flavor could have hidden some of the metal taste. I figured I would give my wheat beer a month or so and see if the metal taste went away. Well,last night I cleaned out the primary keg which had the wheat beer in it and when I remove the copper cap it looked like it had been etched by an acid. I had cleaned it well before putting the wheat brew in it and at that time it was smooth. I use iodophor as my sanitizer so I don't think it was etched by my sanitizing agent. I believe the berries are the cause, what does the HBD think? I am going to throw all my copper caps away and use a SS pickup tube with about 0.75 in cut off the bottom. This should do the same job as the caps and elimate the question of the copper. The only problem is that all the fresh Blueberries are gone so I will have to frozen but that is the way we lrean. Ok, now about my second all grain brew. I got a stopped sparge, I tried blowing in the drain tube, it would flow again for a minute or two and then reduce down to just the smallest of flow. I poured the grain out and cleaned out my Phil's Phalse bottom, I thought the hose which comes out of the bottom was cloging before the grain bed could set. After much messing about I got it to flow again but only a trickle. I used a right angle water shut off value like you see under sinks, so I removed the valve part from the assy. and used a wire to check for clogs. Everything was clear, so I am sure the problem was with the grain bed. I used the grain mill at my local homebrew store and I believe I got too fine a crush and this caused my mash problems. It did slow down my sparge rate from my first brew but this is not the way I wanted to do it. So the point here if you have a poor flow rate look to the crush first and not the size of the holes in you manifold. Tom Feller ------------------------------ From: "Rad Equipment" Subject: Acidifying Sparge Caution Date: 15 Dec 92 09:08:00 U Subject: Acidifying Sparge Caution Time:8:40 AM Date:12/15/92 With all the talk of acidifying sparge water it is possible that this is one of those practices which is on its way to becoming abused. Here is my caveat. If your wort falls below a pH of 5.0 you may not get much of a hot break (Miller). The pH of the wort will go lower as a result of the boil (also Miller). Water is a poor buffer especially when it is in the neutral range (6.5 - 7.5) and will become more acid when added to an acid mash rather than the reverse. Dark malts are naturally acid and mashes which include them often need to have their pH raised in order to maintain the 5.0 - 5.5 range. My local water is soft and runs in the pH range of 6.3 - 6.8. My pre-boil wort tends to be right at the lower edge of the acceptable range (5.0) even without any dark malt. I tend to get a very poor hot break. What this is leading to is this: Don't acidify your sparge water just because other brewers do it. Check the pH of your water and your runnings to determine if it is necessary. Certainly if you have hard water and you detect a tannic flavor in the runnings you may want to make some adjustments, but a simple pre-boil of the sparge water may be all you need. Even if you do acidify your sparge, you may not need to do so for every recipe. If you do it for a pale ale you may not need to do it for a stout or porter. Monitor all the points in the process so you know what's happening. Now, no doubt someone will ask, "What happens to wort pH after the addition of the hops?" I don't know. I'll have to take some readings the next time I brew. Perhaps George Fix (et al) will comment on my observations and add some expertise to the discussion. RW... Russ Wigglesworth (INTERNET: Rad_Equipment@radmac1.ucsf.edu - CI$: 72300,61) UCSF Dept. of Radiology, San Francisco, CA (415) 476-3668 / 474-8126 ------------------------------ From: bliss@csrd.uiuc.edu (Brian Bliss) Subject: sparge/next day boil/too-dry cyser Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 14:01:58 CST >I use a zapapp lauter tun (bucket in bucket). It was made from >2 6.5 gallon buckets. all this talk about sparging and solution >concentration had me thinking about my technique. when sparging >and adding sparge water, are you supposed to let the water level >start to drop below the the top of the grain before adding more >sparge water. OR do you never let this happen. All the books >are pretty grey here. Don't do it. All my sparges used to stick, until I (in order of apparrent importance: 1) stopped letting the sparge water level drop below the top of the grain bed 2) mashed out at 168F & insulated my lauter tun to keep the heat in 3) stopped trying to fit 20 lbs of grain in the thing. 4) got a rollermill (a MALTMILL) I shouldn't have used the word "stuck". the sparges just used to take 4-5 hours :-) Now they take about 1 hour (2 if I put 13 lbs of grain in) - ---------------------------- >Don't just stash those second runnings to brew another day; it >won't take long for them to turn sour. Yes, you will boil the >wort. Too late: the damage has been done, use them in a dry stout, or a belgian somethingorrether, where a slight sourness is not objectionable. A 12 hr lag period until the next morning does not seem to produce any noticeable off flavors, anyway (at least for me), so you can't rely on them producing the sourness, either. - ---------------------------- >I racked a gallon of cyser today. Using M&F dry, the gravity fell >from 1082 to 1002 in only 3 weeks. I was somewhat disappointed: >I used ale yeast instead of, e.g., champagne yeast to get a higher >final gravity. I figured the alcohol would kill off the yeast >somewhere around 8% alcohol by volume, leaving me an FG of 1020 >or above. Then keep adding sugar until it stops fermenting away. I started a batch of cider at 1.067 a few months ago and pitched withbread ale yeast, and have added ~900g extra corn sugar so far. Most of it ferments away, but it leaves a little more sweetness every time. It's finally in the dry stage (as opposed to the arid extra dry stage) SG ~ 1.002 or so. bb ------------------------------ From: johnston@cs.utexas.edu (Mark Stuart Johnstone) Subject: RE: Cooler Mash Tun/Lauter Tun & sparging questions Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 11:31:03 -0600 Hello, I too am new to mashing (actually, I do partial mashes so that I can make mistakes with the grains, and still get a passable beer). Anyway, I decided to go the way of Phil's Phalse bottem in a 5 gal gott cooler. I was told to go with the gott cooler over any of the others because it is designed to work with hot liquid also (coffee). So far, it seems to work well. I get no stuck sparges, and everything seems to be going as according to the books (Miller and TNCJOHB). As to sparging, I use a Phil's Sparger, which is a rotating sprinkler system. It was cheep, and works very well. No chance of disturbing the grain. The spray is really fine, so I find that I have to use boiling water in order for the water to be at 170 when it hits the grain (heat loss in mist from the spray). You might want to wait for more net wisdom from people who have more experience than I do on this topic, but I thought I would put in my $0.02 worth. - --Mark ------------------------------ From: johnston@cs.utexas.edu (Mark S. Johnstone) Subject: Cooler Mash Tun/Lauter Tun & sparging questions Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 13:19:47 -0600 From: neilm@juliet.ll.mit.edu ( Neil Mager ) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 13:53:07 EST References: <9212171731.AA21995@boogie.cs.utexas.edu> Mark Stuart Johnstone writes: > Anyway, I decided to go the way of Phil's Phalse bottem in a 5 gal gott > cooler. I was told to go with the gott cooler over any of the others > because it is designed to work with hot liquid also (coffee). So far, > it seems to work well. I get no stuck sparges, and everything seems > to be going as according to the books (Miller and TNCJOHB). > > As to sparging, I use a Phil's Sparger, which is a rotating sprinkler > system. It was cheep, and works very well. No chance of disturbing > the grain. The spray is really fine, so I find that I have to use > boiling water in order for the water to be at 170 when it hits the grain > (heat loss in mist from the spray). > > You might want to wait for more net wisdom from people who have more > experience than I do on this topic, but I thought I would put in my > $0.02 worth. At this point, I may have to wait until spring to find the cooler around here! I didn't know that the Gott cooler was designed for hot liquids also. Thats good to know. Thanks. I have a couple of other questions for you, hope you don't mind! How do you get the sparge water into the rotating sprinkler? Is it gravity fed or is there a pump? Also, do you recall what you paid for the cooler, Phil's Phalse bottem and Phil's Sparger? Some of the discussion in hbd was about keeping the water level slightly above the grain to reduce the chances of a stuck sparge. It sounds like you don't do that and you haven't had any problems. Correct? Thanks for the help, Neil The sparging system that I got (from St. Pats of Texas (standard disclaimers)) came with a 6.5 gal bucket with a hole in the bottom. I put one piece of tubing into this hole, and the other end onto the sparger. I then put the bucket on my kitchen counter, and the cooler on the floor with the sparger sitting on top. I pour the boiling water into the bucket, and by the time it gets out of the bucket, though the tube, and out of the sparger it is at 170 degrees (Jack S. suggested the boiling water, and I think he is correct. If I were to put 170 degree water into the bucket it would be quite cool by the time it hit the grains). So, it is gravity fed. I only paid something like $15 for the cooler. They had it at Sams (same as Cosco, and the Price Club). The Phalse bottem was on the order of $7 or $8, and the sparger was about $10. I don't remember for sure, but it was cheep enough that it didn't bother me. The thing about keeping the water level above the grains is two fold. First, you want to support the grains (they are buoyant), and when you pour in your sparge water, the water can drill holes in the grain bed. If you have an inch or so of water above the grains, the grains are buoyant, and it lessens the effect of drilling the holes in the grain bed when you pour in the water. However, with the Phills sparger, I keep the level of water right at the top of the grain bed (perhaps just a little over so that I know where the top is). The grains are still buoyant, and there is no chance of drilling any holes in the grain bed. The sparger just sprinkels a fine mist of water very evenly over the grains. Only once when I first started to use the system did I get a stuck sparge, when I let the water fall below the level of the grain. So, I sucked on the hose comming out of the cooler, and started a siphon which pulled the wort out and kept the sparge going. So, like I said, it works well for me, but I'm not a brewing net guru so there could be better ways of going about this. BTW, I do a single step infusion mash in the cooler and get good results. The cooler keeps the grain at the correct temperature for the entire time of the mash (pre heat the cooler with hot water so that it is easier to hit your strick temperature). I like doing a partial mash, because I get to fool with different grains, it is cheeper than an extract brew, and I can make lots of mistakes and it still comes out ok. Cheers, Mark ------------------------------ From: R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU (Russ Gelinas) Subject: sparge correction Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 9:26:33 -0500 (EST) The concept was correct, but I had things backwards. "Step" sparging, ie. adding/draining in steps, or "continuous" sparging, ie. continuously adding and draining, will result in the sparge becoming increasingly *higher* in pH, not lower as I stated. The result is as I said: more tannins will be extracted with these methods than with "batch" sparging, ie. adding all the water at once, and draining it all off at once. An easy way to remember is that water is generally less acidic than wort. So adding water to wort will increase the pH (decrease the acidity). Perhaps I should change my terminology also. A "normal" sparge is not really done in steps; more often it is done in a way to produce a continuous outflow. So how about "Continuous" for the first two types mentioned above, and "Batch" for the third type? In summary: Continuous Sparge - higher efficiency, higher tannin extraction Batch Sparge - lower efficiency, lower tannin extraction Thanks to Al and Larry for pointing out the inconsistancies. Russ PS. I'm also dismayed by Zymurgy's lack of usefulness. 6 or 8 good articles in a year (if that) does not warrant *my* $25. With their new binding and layout, I wonder if they're putting the emphasis on appearance rather than substance... ------------------------------ From: Jay Hersh Subject: cylindrical cooler mash tun Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 14:27:01 EST OK many folks are interested in my mash/lauter tun arrangement. It's real simple. I obtained the following parts 1) 3/8 inch right angle brass fitting. This has 3/8 inch male threads on one side and a 3/8 inch compression fitting on the other. 2) 6 feet of 3/8 inch copper coil 3) a 3/8 inch right angle spigot. The kind you find under your sink and in any good hardware store that carries plumbing supplies. It has an oval handle on it, a 3/8 inch female thread and a 3/8 inch compression fitting 4) a rubber washer to go around the 3/8 inch male threading of (1) 5) a 6.7 gallon nylon mesh grain bag from a homebrew supply shop So what you do is to unsrew the spigot in the cylindrical cooler. You cut slots or drill holes every 1/4 inch along the length of the 6 ft copper coil and pinch the end that is in the inside of the coil closed. You put the coil into the compression fitting side of the brass right angle fitting and put the male thread sticking out of the cooler where the original spigot once was so that the copper coil is seated on the bottom of the cooler and the 3/8 male thread sticks out of the cooler. Then you put the washer around the 3/8 inch male thread and screw the right angle spigot onto it. You seat the grain bag in the cooler, and you're done.... a stainless stell collander that sits in the top of the cooler to disperse sparge water is a nice additiona to this set up as well. JaH - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts ------------------------------ From: Jay Hersh Subject: Re: cylindrical cooler mash tun Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 13:55:27 EST I know near me Service Merchandise stocks this cooler year round and gets ~$30 for it. Ooops I see you're at Lincoln Lab. I know the service merchandise in Twin City PLaza in Cambridge on McGrath Hwy stocks it year round. Others may too.. (I shopped around in season and got mine for $20 at the hardware store in Porter Sq...) Jay ------------------------------ From: trl@photos.wustl.edu (Tom Leith MIR/ERL 362-6965) Subject: Extract Rates Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 08:36:46 -0600 Jim White says: >I used about a 1 1/2 hour Infusion mash at 152F, (fell to 149F by the end). >For 5 U.S. gallons, this yielded on O.G. of 1.042. I had expected a higher >O.G. out of this, whaddayathink? I don't know the details of my water, like >hardness/softness/ph etc. Hi Jim -- Do you know how to calculate an extraction rate? It goes like this: pts = Original Gravity - 1.000 pts X Gallons extract_rate = ----------------------- lbs of grain 42pts X 5gallons So your batch was ------------------- = 20 points/pound 10.5 lbs of grain And as you said, this is on the low side. I typically get 28 ~ 31 points. I've heard claims of 33 from other people. So, possibility #1, "Everything's copacetic" seems to be out. Unless about 1/3 of the grains are un-crushed, poor crush wouldn't account for the problem. However, from your description, I think the crush isn't ideal. Another possibility is poor-quality malt. Might not have enough enzymes to do the conversion. This is unlikely. That leaves water chemistry and technique. Since technique is discussed to death on the net, I'll give you a couple suggestions about water chemistry. If you live in a public water district, you should be able to get an analysis by calling and talking to the chemist. Be careful not to sound like an eco-freak out to hang him. Tell him why you want to know. You probably won't get a number; you'll get a range. You want to know pH, total hardness, calcium content, and sodium content. You can also go to your local aquarium shop and buy test kits to tell you pH and total hardness. These are the two main things to know, and pH is far-and-away the more important. In fact, if you just get a pH test kit and test your water, you'll probably get the answer you want. Your sparge water should be around pH 5.7. Your mash, after the mash-in step, should be around pH 5.3 ~ 5.7 also. If its not, you'll want to adjust it before your starch conversion step. Generally, if you have moderately low total hardness (total hardness below 80 ppm or so) and fairly neutral pH (pH around 7.0), the natural acids in the grains will make the mash "just work". Its the sparge water that becomes important then. ALL of the water you use for brewing should be boiled before use. If you fill your kettle with COLD water, with plenty of aeration (the normal sink aerator works fine), bring it to a boil, and maintain a hard boil for 30 minutes, this is sufficient. Leave the lid off, especially if you live in a public water district, so you can drive-off any chlorine or other volitile nasties that might lurk in the water. After boiling, cover the kettles and leave them sit overnight to cool. If you see a lot of white flakes at the bottom and on the sides of the kettle in the morning, your water was pretty hard. The white stuff is the precipitated hardness. Rack the water into another container, leaving the white stuff behind. You'll want to use Lime-Away(tm) or other bathroom cleaner to clean your kettles. Adjust the pH of your sparge water, and your mashing water if necessary. Now, try brewing. In your recipe formulation, figure 25 points of extraction. Hopefully, this will be low. If you don't get the gravity you want, stir-in enough dry malt extract to bring it up to snuff. This way you'll get a good beer even if your extraction wasn't what you wanted. If your gravity is too high, just add some water. But in any case, write down everything you did. This is all covered in great detail in Dave Miller's _The Complete Handbook of Homebrewing_. I reccommend this book most highly. There's enough theory to help you move in the right direction when things go wrong, and plenty of pragmatic advice too. If you want a copy, you can send e-mail to "Roy.Rudebusch@travel.com" and order one. Other homebrew shops should have it too. If you have more questions, you can send me e-mail, and I'll do my best... t ============================================================================= Tom Leith InterNet: trl@wuerl.WUstl.EDU 4434 Dewey Ave. CompuServe: 70441,3536 St. Louis, Missouri 63116 "Tho' I could not caution all 314/362-6965 - Office I still might warn a few: 314/362-6971 - Office Fax Don't lend your hand 314/481-2512 - Home + Infernal Machine to raise no flag atop no Ship of Fools" ============================================================================= ------------------------------ From: kelly@els.cray.com (Matt Kelly) Subject: Sparge question Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:21:41 CST Neil, I have built a cooler-with-a-slitted-copper-tubing-manifold lauter tun, and have used it for a few batches now. You asked: > On a related topic, there's been some discussion about not disturbing the grain bed during sparging. Solutions to this range from resting plates and bowls on top of the grain to sprinkling water on top. Has anyone tried resting something like Phil's Phalse bottom on top of the grain so the sparge water doesn't disturb the grain, yet drains evenly through the grain. Seems to me, if you keep the water level above the grain it would distribute the sparge water better then if you had a plate or bowl on top. What I did was take a small food-grade plastic rectangular (my lauter tun is rectangular) container, the clear type with a snap-on lid (rubbermaid, I think). I drilled a bunch of 1/8 inch holes in the bottom, about 1 inch apart. This wedges into my lauter tun and holds tight about 2 inches above the top of the grain bed. When I need to add sparge water, I just open the cooler, dump as much as will fit into the hole-y container, and close up the cooler again. The water seeps out thru the holes in the hole-y container, and the grain bed is not disturbed. The only thing to be careful of is this: if the water level falls below the bottom of the hole-y container, the seeping water will splash a bit into the sparge water below, potentially causing OXIDATION. Just make sure the water level doesn't get too low, and you're in business!!! It works great for me!!! Good luck and keep on brewing, Matt K. ------------------------------ From: rush@xanadu.llnl.gov (Alan Edwards) Subject: Re Cooler Mash Tun... Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 10:45:13 PST | I'm about to dive into all-grain brewing. I'm planning on building | a combination Mash Tun/Lauter Tun out of a cylindrical cooler. Go for it! That's what I use. Mashing is simple with it. The great thing is that you don't need to transfer from mash tun to lauter tun. It's also good having the lauter tun insulated. | I have several questions. A few people have mentioned Phil's | Phalse bottem. How far off the bottom is it supported? I use Phil's false bottom. It fits exactly into the Gott Rubbermaid 5 gallon cooler. There is a space above the bottom because the false bottom is curved. Kind of like this (excuse the poor ascii graphics): | |<--- cooler hose barb to connect a hose | | | | to your customized spigot | | | | | | | | | | mount your | | | | false bottom V spigot here | | | | | .___,,,,, \ || | | | | ._,,,,, ---> | | V _________________| |_________________ || | | _______/ | | \_______ | | | | __/ thingy sucks --> | | \__ | | | |_/ wort out from under the false bottom \_| | | |_______________________________________________________________| | | | |_____________________________________________________________________| There is no need for a grain bag with this setup because the false bottom has hundreds of small holes drilled in it--small enough to sparge with. A few grains get through at first, but you just dump that back into the cooler and continue. | How much is it? I don't know that because someone gave me the false bottom, which actually came out of "Phil's Sparger". (Phil's sparger is just a plastic bucket with this false bottom and some other gadget for sprinkling water on the grain--not reccomended.) I have heard that Phil Listerman sells false bottoms specifically for coolers, so it would be worth looking into. I had to get a brass spigot from the hardware store, but Phil might have a solution packaged with his false bottom. | Does it work better than a stainless steel steamer? I've never tried that. If you do, I think you would have to use a grain bag (from what I hear). Have fun! - -Alan ------------------------------ From: strasser@raj3.tn.cornell.edu (Tom Strasser) Subject: RIMS Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 13:43:05 EST } From: umehara@NADC.NADC.NAVY.MIL (M. Umehara) } Subject: Recirculating Infusion Mashing System } } I'm looking for information on several topics. The first is } the recirculating infusion mashing system (RIMS) in the last special } issue of Zymurgy and I am thinking of building one. :-\ Has anyone out } there built, used or seen one? I built one from an previous article Rodney Morris wrote for the Maltose Falcons (LA, CA) newsletter. I have been using it for a year and a half, and am quite satisfied with the system. It gives very easy, sensitive, temperature control over the mash. There were a couple of minor mistakes in the article I made the system from, however I believe these have been corrected in the latest Zymurgy article. It takes a motivated person to get through the construction of one of these, but when finished I think it is worthwhile. An observation on my part though... The heating elements recommended are capable of scorching the liquid of the mash as it is heated during recirculation. This is mostly a problem in mashes where wheat makes up a substantial portion of the grist (> 50%). It appears that something in the liquor (possibly proteins, as they are abundant in such mashes) sticks to the heating element, and eventually scorches, leaving a residual burnt flavor in the wort (which is not pleasant, as other burnt or smokey flavors can be). This problem has been mentioned regarding non-RIMS systems as well, where someone (Jeff Frane?) reported wheat mashes scorching on a heating element in direct contact with a wheat mash. The previous problem can be minimized by using lower heat density elements and maximizing the recirculation rate. I only pay special attention during a wheat beer mash, where I typically will use boiling water rather than the heater to raise the temperature of the mash. Other than this, I must say I have been very happy, and would recommend the RIMS to those ambitious enough to build one. } ... Also, I purchased the counter-pressure } filler from Fox and it works terribly. :-c How well do the others work? } (ie. Melvico and Benjamin Machine Products) There has been some negative press here regarding the Foxx filler, where apparently the large number of valves which require excessive turning are a problem. I use one from DeFalcos which is all stainless steel & uses a single valve to control two input sources (CO2, beer) and it only requires only 1/4 turn either way to go from no flow to fully open. I recommend this model highly. That being said, counter pressure filling is a somewhat complicated process, where your problems may be arising from a source other than your filler. So if you could me more specific as to what you problem is, your problem may be solved without a new filler. } ... And, I've kegged beer } several times and I can't seem to get them to carbonate naturally and } have to force carbonate them. Although they taste fine, why won't } they carbonate naturally? :-t You likely are not getting a good seal on your kegs after priming them. To check this, after sealing the keg, tip the keg on it's side while you are finishing your cleanup. After you are done, check the sealed areas on the keg, and see if any beer has leaked out. If there are leaks (which are common) you should use your CO2 tank to put added pressure in the head space until the seal test is passed (typically 5-15 psi). It is likely good practice to do this with all your kegs, it's up to you. This is almost certainly the problem with carbonation, as otherwise it would indicate no fermentation was occuring to carbonate the beer, the result of a weak or absent yeast. That being said I must say I now almost always artificially carbonate my beers in a keg. The reason being the control you have over the finished beer. When I started kegging I thought that forced carbonation was a shortcut which reduced the quality of the final beer. However with experience I can tell you that some of my best beers have been force carbonated, and the control you get by this process is invaluble. Auf ein neues, Tom Strasser...strasser@raj5.tn.cornell.edu...strasser@crnlmsc2.bitnet ------------------------------ From: arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) Subject: KETTLE MASHING Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 09:00 CST The following article was rejected by Zymurgy's editorial department for some obscure reason, so I will post it here in serial form. KETTLE MASHING By Jack Schmidling Mashing and sparging in plastic buckets of one form or another has become so universal that the method I am going to discuss might seem like something new. However, it is more or less the way beer had been made since time immemorial. Until that is, a certain very popular book on home brewing appeared. Kettle mashing, as I call it, has some advantages and some disadvantages over the now "traditional" plastic bucket method and until one understands both approaches, a commitment to one or the other can lead to a good deal of unnecessary frustration. Kettle mashing is simply using a kettle with an appropriate secreening device and spigot to "cook" the mash in and once the mashing is complete, the same kettle becomes the lauter tun. After sparging in the lauter tun, the kettle is used for boiling and if it has a close fitting cover, can be used as the primary fermenter. The most fundamental advantage of the approach is the ease with which the transition from extract to all grain can be made. The only new requirement is a straining device in the kettle already used for boiling extract beer. The investment required to "give it a try", is quite minimal and if you decide you don't like the program, you end up with a great brew kettle that sports a spigot that won't get clogged up with hops and specialty grains. The other advantages are a bit more technical and I will point them out when we get to them. The key to the system is the screening device and the spigot for the kettle. The first one I made was to be used in conjunction with an overlaying false bottom. The false bottom was a stainless steel plate the size of the kettle bottom with a zillion holes laboriously punched into it. It created no end of problems on the very first batch. Mash got under it and scorching was just about impossible to control. So in disgust, I pulled it out, continued the mash and assumed a disaster was at hand. Much to my incredulous delight, when I opened the spigot, the wort ran clear after less than a cup of turbid runnoff. I have since made about 30 batches using only the screen device and get very consistent and respectable extract yields. We will begin the discussion, by describing the screening device and spigot that is installed in the brew kettle. The first one I made was made from galvanized pipe fittings and window screen, installed in a 32 qt enameled canning kettle. The current version is all brass, copper and stainless installed on two stainless kettles, a ten gallon for mashing and fermenting and a sixteen gallon for boiling. Having two kettles allows one to be prepared for the next operation while the other is doing its thing. Fig. 1 shows an exploded view of the spigot and strainer. The strainer is simply a 2 x 6 inch piece of screen, rolled into a six inch tube and clamped to the copper tube. The last half inch is bent over itself to seal it off. The copper tube has a slight bend in it to allow it to be rotated so that the end is right on the bottom leaving almost no wort behind. It is easily removed for cleaning. The spigot passes through a clearance hole drilled in the kettle and is retained by the female connector and a washer to take up the treads and make a tight fit. All the parts are available at a good hardware store. For those not inclined to hunt down the parts, a complete kit is available from the author. Once the spigot/strainer device is installed in the brew kettle, you are ready for the plunge. If you are shopping for a kettle, my only advice is the bigger the better. I consider the 32 qt canner about the minimum for a 5 gal batch. Continued............... ------------------------------ From: arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) Subject: KETTLE MASHING Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 10:20 CST KETTLE MASHING, Part 2 The following procedure is intended only as a starting point that I know works well enough to assure a successful, first, all-grain experience. I do not want to get into endless discussions about the pros and cons of the procedure at this time nor do I even claim that I brew beer this way. There are an infinite number of variations that could be fodder for future articles but the object of this one is to introduce the approach and brew a simple batch of all grain beer. MASHING The first step is to dump 8 lbs of crushed pale malt into the kettle. Don't forget the screen! Add 3 gallons of warm tap water and mix thoroughly. Apply heat and raise temp to 155F. Stir frequently to avoid caramelizing and to distribute the heat. Hold this temp for 30 minutes by adding heat and stirring as necessary. After 30 mins at 155F, crank up the heat and continue stirring until 178F is reached. This step is known as "mashout" and is difficult or impossible to do with the plastic bucket approach. It is my opinion that it eliminates one source of a common problem with first all grain batches known as a "set mash. Hold this temp for 10 minsutes, then turn off the heat and let it rest while heating water to a boil on another burner. Use a pan that holds at least two quarts of water. SPARGING The level of wort in the kettle should be about an inch above the grain when it settles. Lay a small bowl on top of the grain to distribute the sparging water and minimize the disturbance of the grain. Open the spigot just a trickle and run the wort into a cup until it runs clear. Pour the turbid runoff back into the kettle. With this setup, it will run clear after a few ounces. Again, as comparison, it sometimes takes gallons with the other system and this must be recycled back into the mash till it does run clear. The object of sparging is to extract as much sugar from the grain as possible. The longer it takes, the more efficient the extraction. Adjust the outflow so that it takes at lest 10 mins to fill a gallon jug. Pour the boiling water into the bowl as available or necessary to keep about an inch of water over the grain. The availability of boiling water will probably be the limiting factor on sparge rate. Most brewers will tell you that the sparge water should not exceed 170F but if you use boiling water in this system, the average temp will be far below 170F and you will be lucky to keep it above 150F. You can fiddle on your next batch. Trust my on the first. The first runoff should be about 1.080 and you quit when it gets below 1.010. The total blend will produce 6 to 7 gallons at about 1.035 which, after boiling will yield 5 to 6 gals at 1.040. Collect the wort in gallon jugs or five gallon plastic buckets (can't get away from them). Continued............ ------------------------------ From: arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) Subject: KETTLE MASHING Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 09:20 CST KETTLE MASHING, Part 3 BOILING THE WORT When the wort is collected, dump the spent grain on the compost pile and rinse out the kettle. I always save a few pounds in freezer containers for beer bread. The seven gallons of wort will barely fit into the kettle for the boil so it is best to bring a smaller portion to a boil initially to avoid boilover. After evaporating some and getting the boil under contro, the rest can be added. A minimal one hour boil will evaporate about a gallon so you can play with the volumes in various ways. You can increase the gravity by more boiling or boil less and have more beer. Add half of your hops as soon as boiling begins. Save one forth for the end and the remainder at regular intervals during the boil. If you need a suggestion, try 1.5 oz of Chinook for your first batch. CHILLING AND FERMENTING After the boil, the wort is cooled, either overnight or with a wort chiller if you have one. I draw it off, after chilling, a gallon at a time so that I can shake it vigorously and "glug" it into the primary to oxygenate it prior to pitching yeast. If you hold the chilled wort in a carboy or gallon jugs, you can clean out the kettle and use it again as the primary fermenter if the lid fits well. Just boil a cup of water in it with the lid on for about 5 minutes to sterilize it. The kettle seems to be universally available for about $35 and the rest of the stuff can be had for under $20, making it a pretty inexpensive system. So, that's what kettle mashing is all about. Try it, you may like it. js Addenda............. Here is the list of parts required: 1. Brass "air cock", 1/8" male pipe thread at one end, bibb spout at the other and lever on top. 2. Brass "female connector", 1/8" female pipe thread at one end, 3/8" copper tubing compression fitting at other end. 3. 6" length of 3/8" copper tubing flared at one end and bent so the end rests on bottom. 4. 4 X 6 inch screen (window, brass, copper or ss) rolled into tube and clamped to flared end of copper tube. (flare prevents it from falling off at inconvenient times) All it takes is a 3/8" hole in your kettle, near the bottom. If you run a 1/8" pipe tap into the hole, you can screw on the air cock and it will not leak. However, as most kettles are too thin to provide enough threads for a safe and permanent fit, I modify the fittings by rethreading the aircock and connector with STRAIGHT pipe threads. This allows the connector to be screwed on to the aircock in such a way that you achieve a snug fit by compression instead of relying on the tapered pipe threads. Aside from the brass screen, you can find this stuff at a good hardware store. I used window screen for months and see nothing wrong with it. js ------------------------------ From: gjfix@utamat (George J Fix) Subject: Sparge Temperatures Date: Wed, 15 Jan 92 16:28:25 -0600 It is possible that the time honored temperature range 168-172F for sparging seen in many books on home brewing are a carry over from older commercial practice. I know from direct experience at some regionals using older brewing practices (e.g., Straubs in St. Marys, Pa. and Pittsburgh Brewing to cite two examples), considerable effort was extended to achieve this temperature range throughout the grain bed. The rational behind the procedure was to terminate all enzyme activity in a predictable way. Both breweries were sensitive to even small changes in the wort % fermentability as well as to yield. I use to do the same until a few years ago Mark Carpenter of Anchor suggested an alternative. At Anchor, after conversion they raise the mash to only 160F, and sparge with water at 168F. (Russ, please help if my numbers are not current). I tried this and found that for most beer styles the change was positive in terms of finished beer flavors. In my system there was a drop in yield, but also less husk based material was extracted. (Russ, does Anchor have any other reasons for using this procedure?) A very radical procedure that was discussed in the commercial literature, was to lower the mash temperature to 32F-34F, hold for a definite period, and then sparge with water at that temperature. After that the mash was heated back up and boiled as usual. The authors claimed only small reductions in yield, and at the same time a ten fold reduction in anthocyanogen levels. This article appeared in a peer reviewed journal, which means their results were likely checked with care. I have personally tried the procedure for a 5 liter batch, and the results were consistent with their findings. Having said that, let also say that I have zero interest in trying it with a 50 liter batch for obvious reasons. I now believe that the traditional numbers should not be seen as engraved in stone. If a particular brewer finds a particular combination of temperatures which consistently gives beers to their liking, then to quote a well known personality from my neck of the woods, "end of story". ( Well, at least I didn't use the phrase "you people" in this post.) George Fix ------------------------------ From: STROUD%GAIA@leia.polaroid.com Subject: Phil's Phalse Bottom Date: 18 Jan 1993 14:59:37 -0500 (EST) In HBD # 1056, Jim Busch commented on the commercially available "Phils Phalse Bottom.": >My complaint with the Phils system is that the tube >from the false bottom has to rise up out of the false >bottom to then exit the bucket. This can lead to a >problem with an air bubble forming inside the tube. >I have seen extremely slow runoffs that I think are > due to this design. For those people who are not familiar with this piece of equipment, it consists of a circular piece of plastic shaped like an inverted dome. This sits on the bottom of an Igloo/Gott-type cooler. It is perforated with small holes, effectively operating as a false bottom by holding back the grains/husks, but permitting sweet wort to pass through unimpeded. The amount of "dead space" under the dome is reasonably small, certainly much less than with a Zapap-type of lauter tun. There is a 90 degree plastic elbow that rises up out of the centerof the false bottom, and a connection can be made between this elbow and the outlet hole at the bottom of the cooler with plastic tubing or a rigid tube. A friend of mine bought one of these this past fall and I have used his a couple of times. The first time I simply ran a piece of plastic tubing from the elbow through a rubber stopper which was wedged into the outlet hole. I then attached an adjustable tubing clamp to control flow and directed the effluent from the lauter tun directly into the bottom of the boiling kettle. Unfortunately I ran into the exact problem described by Jim. Try as I might, I could never get a very quick flow of sparge from this setup. Lke Jim, I first assumed that I had an air bubble stuck in the line that would not permit flow of liquid. However, upon examining the situation more closely (and reading the directions that came with the Phalse Bottom!), I concluded that the problem actually was due to the collapse of the plastic tubing in the lauter tun, caused by the relatively hot temperatures of the mash/sparge water. When I used the Phalse bottom a second time, I butted a rigid plastic tube right up to the plastic elbow and connected them with a VERY short piece of plastic tubing. The rigid tube was then run through a stopper wedged into the outlet hole in the cooler, and a piece of tubing was attached to direct the sparge into the boiling kettle. This arrangement worked quite well, and I had no trouble with a slow runoff. When used this way this false bottom works reasonably well and is a cheap way to quickly convert an Igloo-type cooler to an insulated lauter-tun (though there are other even cheaper ways of doing this that aren't much more work). I think that it certainly superior to the grain bag/vegetable steamer combo commonly used by many homebrewers. I think that the holes in the false bottom are a bit large and would like to see this unit manufactured with smaller holes and more of them. It would also be easy to replace the plastic elbow with a threaded copper one, so that one could attach a piece of copper tubing to this via a compression fitting, by-passing the use of plastic tubing entirely. Steve Stroud ------------------------------ From: bickham@lynx.msc.cornell.edu.UUCP (Scott Bickham,C17 Clark Hall,56079,2737038) Subject: Re: extraction efficiency for all grain Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 15:07:15 GMT > In a previous article, keithr@pathogen.med.umn.edu (Henry Keith Reding Rogers)) says: > >>How do I determine the mash and extraction efficiency for all grain >>brewing? Thanks for your help in advance >> The formula is: eff. = (O.G. - 1)*1000*(no. of gallons)/(lbs. of grain) So for example, say you brewed 5 gallons of 1.050 beer using 10 pounds of grain. The efficiency would be eff. = (.050)*(1000)*5/10 = 25 Typical values are between 25 and 30, but of course it's possible to get extractions out of this range. I usually get about 28 with pale ale malt and 30 with lager malt, which isn't as highly modified. Cheers, Scott ------------------------------ From: Kieran O'Connor Subject: Andre Pruitt 8000 Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 11:23 EDT FWIW here's the Andre Pruitt 8000, mashtun and lauter tun set up. I have finally made an all grain batch and I was trying to make a set up with a combo lauter and mash tun. Here's the set up--thanks for the tips from you folks: Igloo 10 gallon cooler. Plastic Fermenter Bottling Spigot OK--her'es the deal. Origianlly I was oging to hook up a Phil's False bottom to my cooler and replace the spigot with a 1 inch bottling bucket valve. My friend, Andre Pruitt, said, forget the false bottom-- use a bottling bucket. So I drilled a bazillion holes into the bottom of my original plastic fermenter. I also cut off the first "ring," the first inch or so of the fermenter. The I drilled a bazillion holes in the lid also. Andre drilled the spigot hole to 1 inch--but be careful--dont just use a wood bit--use the kind which drills a pilot hole first, and put osmething inside the cooler so the drill wont shake while you drill. Now--to the brewing: Put the fermenter into the cooler, and put the grain inside. Mash in. Then let it mash for the time specified. To sparge, we put the lid on top of the fermenter and sparged through the holes. I'm going to cut the lid so that it will sit right on top of the grain. You can alter the speed of the sparge with the bottling bucket valve-- so it was quite nice. Over the mash--it lost 2 degrees in 50 minutes. At the end, pull out the bucket, put it into another, and then you dump the grain! Volia, the Andre Pruitt 8000 Mash/Lauter Tun. Comments welcome--suggestions too! Kieran O'Connor E-Mail Addresses: Bitnet: oconnor@snycorva Internet: oconnor@snycorva.cortland.edu ------------------------------ From: benji@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Jeff Benjamin) Subject: Re: Improvements in All-Grain Equip. Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1993 18:39:25 GMT > I have been somewhat frustrated by the two bucket lauter tun system. > Difficulties in maintaining a sparging temp of 168-170 is difficult, > controlling the flow, and recirculating the runoff/adding sparge water is > difficult. > > I've heard of people using 5 gallon cooler that has insulating > properties. What do people do to convert this to a lauter tun system, i.e. > perforated bottoms and flow control? You don't say what you use for a mash tun, but I use a copper manifold system that can be used in a stove-top kettle or a cooler (no separate lauter tun), is very simple and cheap to make, and doesn't require modification to your mash tun. Since this subject seems to come up fairly often, I'll post my entire, somewhat long write-up. Have fun. ==================== The manifold is made up of 1/2" copper tubing, along with tees, endcaps, and elbow fittings. It looks sort of like a tree branch; a main stem with arms coming off of it, alternating left and right. One end of the stem is capped, the other end leads to an elbow that angles up 90 degrees to a standpipe. Here's an ASCII pic I hope will make it clear: _ end cap | tee +---------] cap | [--------+ | +---------] | [--------+ | elbow \ 90 deg up --------------->========== standpipe siphon hose (this would be coming out of the screen) The length of the stem and the length and number of arms can be adjusted to fit whatever kettle or cooler you use. The manifold should fit exactly in the the bottom of the vessel when you're done. The arms of the manifold each have a number of slots cut in them, spaced a couple of centimeters apart, not quite halfway through the tube (I used a hacksaw to make them). You can also use a hacksaw to cut all the other pieces of tubing, but buying a $5 tubing cutter will make life a lot easier. The tees, caps, and elbow fitting will already fit very neatly, so you don't even have to solder anything together. When assembled, the slots will face down to the bottom of the vessel. This is to keep the grain from clogging them, and so you don't leave a half inch of wort in the bottom. The standpipe should come up the side of the vessel to just below the rim, so you can put the lid on. You will need to come up with some way to connect your siphon hose the the 1/2 inch standpipe. We found a 1/2" to 3/8" reducer fitting that works okay, but they may be difficult to find: -----=== | \__------- 1/2 inch copper |redu | siphon hose | cer_| | / ------- -----=== Also, the reducer needs to be soldered so it doesn't suck in air, since it's the only fitting that sits above the liquid level. As you might have guessed by now, you don't need a drain hole in your vessel at all; just have the standpipe up the side of the kettle and siphon from there. You could somehow attach the manifold to a drain, but I don't think it's worth the trouble. The manifold rests right on the bottom of the vessel, and my "spigot" is simply a hose clamp at the end of the siphon hose. Buy one of the plastic hose clamps that has variable click-stops. Clean the manifold with hot water. Since it isn't soldered, you can just disassemble it when your done. You can clean it with a small bottle brush if you like, and if you're worried, you can soak the pieces in a metal-safe sanitizer like ChemPro. Whatever you do, *don't* try to clean it with bleach. Bleach and copper don't get along very well. And clean the manifold thoroughly with soap and hot water before using it for the first time to remove oils and such used while manufacturing the tubing. Here's how the thing works: assemble the manifold and place it in the vessel, slots down. Add your mash water and grain on top of it. When the mash is done, attach the siphon hose to the standpipe and start the siphon going into another vessel. As the level of the mash water drops, add your sparge water so the water level stays an inch or two above the grain bed. When you run out of sparge water, or decide to stop adding water, let the siphon run until all the water has been siphoned out. You'll be amazed, this system gets almost every single drop! The speed increase over a double-bucket sparge system has several reasons: 1. You don't have to transfer the mash to another container 2. No transfer means your grain bed will maintain its temperature. 3. No transfer means your grain bed won't get compacted, so your sparge won't stick. 4. You're using the suction of a siphon, not just gravity, to draw off the liquid. This also lessens the chance of a stuck sparge. - ---- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: "Spencer W. Thomas" Subject: sparge manifolds Date: Mon, 15 Mar 93 10:07:08 EST I use a 10-gal Gott cooler, with a "three-pipe" manifold of 3/8"OD copper, slotted every .75 - 1 in. It's arranged as a circle with one diameter. One end of the diameter connects to the spigot, the other end has a "down pipe" that I use for underletting and suction breaking. I have a ball valve on the outside that lets me easily control flow rate. I get great flow and decent extraction from this setup. This weekend, I made a "wit" beer (thanks to Phillip Seitz for the recipe). Depending on whether I counted the unmalted wheat, I got somewhere between 28 and 31pts extract in a 45minute sparge (5lbs Belgian Pilsener malt, 3 lbs M&F wheat malt, 1 lb soft wheat "berries"), stopping at 1.010. The grain bed was about 6" deep (to the 3.5 gallon mark in the cooler). I opened the valve so that I got between 2 and 3qts/5min flow. I recycled about a gallon. I had absolutely no problem with sticking, despite the wheat (there was a layer of icky gray-brown sludge on top of the grain bed when I drained the cooler). I won't belabor the advantages of the slotted-pipe system, except to note that I think the "downpipe" is a fantastic addition to the usual setup. I find that underletting my infusions makes it a lot easier to get a consistent temperature throughout the mash because you're putting the hot stuff at the bottom, whence it will rise, instead of on top, where it will just sit. I'm happy with this system, that's for sure. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Benjamin Subject: Copper lautering manifold, Part 1 Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 10:12:42 MST I've had enough requests for instructions for my sparge manifold that I decided I'll go ahead and post them. The article will be split into two parts so the digest daemons won't reject it due to length. The manifold is made up of 1/2" copper tubing, along with tees, endcaps, and elbow fittings. It looks sort of like a tree branch; a main stem with arms coming off of it, alternating left and right. One end of the stem is capped, the other end leads to an elbow that angles up 90 degrees to a standpipe. Here's an ASCII pic I hope will make it clear: _ end cap | tee +---------] cap | [--------+ | +---------] | [--------+ | elbow \ 90 deg up --------------->========== standpipe siphon hose (this would be coming out of the screen) The length of the stem and the length and number of arms can be adjusted to fit whatever kettle or cooler you use. The manifold should fit exactly in the the bottom of the vessel when you're done. The arms of the manifold each have a number of slots cut in them, spaced a couple of centimeters apart, not quite halfway through the tube (I used a hacksaw to make them). You can also use a hacksaw to cut all the other pieces of tubing, but buying a $5 tubing cutter will make life a lot easier. The tees, caps, and elbow fitting will already fit very neatly, so you don't even have to solder anything together. When assembled, the slots will face down to the bottom of the vessel. This is to keep the grain from clogging them, and so you don't leave a half inch of wort in the bottom. The standpipe should come up the side of the vessel to just below the rim, so you can put the lid on. You will need to come up with some way to connect your siphon hose the the 1/2 inch standpipe. We found a 1/2" to 3/8" ID reducer fitting and a short piece of 3/8" OD tubing will connect nicely to a standard vinyl siphon hose: -----=== | \__ 3/8" _______ 1/2 inch copper |redu |------|siphon hose | cer_|------|______ | / -----=== Also, the reducer and 3/8" OD copper need to be soldered so they don't suck in air, since they're the only fittings that sit above the liquid level. [Note: soldering copper is easy; it requires a few cents worth of plumbing-safe solder and flux and a $15 propane torch. Ask the friendly folks at your local hardware store.] (to be continued...) - -- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: Jeff Benjamin Subject: Copper lautering manifold, Part 2 Date: Tue, 16 Mar 93 10:14:25 MST (...continued) As you might have guessed by now, you don't need a drain hole in your vessel at all; just have the standpipe up the side of the kettle and siphon from there. You could somehow attach the manifold to a drain, but I don't think it's worth the trouble. The manifold rests right on the bottom of the vessel, and my "spigot" is simply a hose clamp at the end of the siphon hose. Buy one of the plastic hose clamps that has variable click-stops. Clean the manifold with hot water. Since it isn't soldered, you can just disassemble it when your done. You can clean it with a small bottle brush if you like, and if you're worried, you can soak the pieces in a metal-safe sanitizer like ChemPro. Whatever you do, *don't* try to clean it with bleach. Bleach and copper don't get along very well. And clean the manifold thoroughly with soap and hot water before using it for the first time to remove oils and such used while manufacturing the tubing. Here's how the thing works: assemble the manifold and place it in the vessel, slots down. Add your mash water and grain on top of it. When the mash is done, attach the siphon hose to the standpipe and start the siphon going into another vessel. As the level of the mash water drops, add your sparge water so the water level stays an inch or two above the grain bed. When you run out of sparge water, or decide to stop adding water, let the siphon run until all the water has been siphoned out. You'll be amazed, this system gets almost every single drop! This manifold system has a number of advantages: 1. No need to modify your pot/cooler, so it can still be used for other things. 2. You don't have to transfer the mash to another container 3. No transfer means your grain bed won't get compacted, so your sparge won't stick. 4. No transfer means your grain bed won't drop in temperature. 5. You're using the suction of a siphon, not just gravity, to draw off the liquid. This also lessens the chance of a stuck sparge. 6. The wort runs off clear after only a quart or so. Of course, this isn't the only lautering system that has these advantages, but it has worked well for me. - -- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: bszymcz%ulysses@relay.nswc.navy.mil (Bill Szymczak) Subject: Re: Copper lautering manifold Date: Wed, 17 Mar 93 14:47:33 EST In HBD1099 Jeff Benjamin describes a sparge manifold system which connects to a siphon hose as follows: >You will need to come up with some way to connect your siphon hose the >the 1/2 inch standpipe. We found a 1/2" to 3/8" ID reducer fitting and >a short piece of 3/8" OD tubing will connect nicely to a standard vinyl >siphon hose: > -----=== > | \__ 3/8" _______ > 1/2 inch copper |redu |------|siphon hose > | cer_|------|______ > | / > -----=== >Also, the reducer and 3/8" OD copper need to be soldered so they don't >suck in air, since they're the only fittings that sit above the liquid >level. [Note: soldering copper is easy; it requires a few cents worth >of plumbing-safe solder and flux and a $15 propane torch. Ask the >friendly folks at your local hardware store.] Instead of soldering on the reducing coupling you could also use a brass compression reducing coupling. To go from 1/2 inch copper tubing to 3/8 OD flexible copper tubing you will need a 5/8 to 3/8 reducing coupler since the OD of stiff 1/2 copper tubing is 5/8". (Bring samples of you tubing to the hardware store to make sure.) Before siphoning you must make the fitting tight using two wrenches. I've been using a similar setup for my last 2 all grain batches except I use an "I" formation with the standpipe coming up from the center: Looking down from the top tee cap[----x----]cap | | | O tee with standpipe coming up | out of the page | | cap[----x----]cap tee I stole ideas from this forum, possibly from some remarks Jeff made a few months ago, and agree with the advantages he mentions. ------------------------------ From: Jeff Benjamin Subject: Re: Lauter Tuns, PU Date: Fri, 19 Mar 93 16:39:37 MST > _ end cap > | > tee +---------] cap > | > [--------+ > | > +---------] > | > [--------+ > | > elbow \ > 90 deg up --------------->========== > standpipe siphon hose > (this would be coming out of the screen) > > Perhaps I am thick but I do not understand this. Which way is up? I probably wasn't too clear on this. The "stem" and arms all lie on the bottom of the pot/cooler, slots face down; then the standpipe comes up the side of the vessel. Here's a side view: siphon hose ===+ ||<-stand | || pipe |<- pot/cooler || | || arms | |\########| ----------- >The idea for this one came from McHarry and if you find me pushing a shopping >cart full of empty cans, you can blame him. He, of course, stole an idea >from Benjamin but I couldn't understand the latter's drawing so, he beat me >to it. I wish I could say the standpipe idea is mine, but I stole it from someone else, really. You know what they say... "good artists borrow; great artists steal." - -- Jeff Benjamin benji@hpfcla.fc.hp.com Hewlett Packard Co. Fort Collins, Colorado "Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium." - T.S. Eliot ------------------------------ From: "Rad Equipment" Subject: Underletting Strike Date: 22 Mar 1993 13:21:14 U Subject: Underletting Strike Time:12:58 PM Date:3/22/93 The recently turned pro, Micah Millspaw, once spoke about his method of adding the strike water to his grains by underletting (feeding the liquid into the bottom of the grain bed. I tried this over the past weekend. I have a slotted copper manifold in the bottom of a 48 quart cooler. I just ran the strike water in thru the manifold and let it fill the cooler where the grain was already in place. This was for a 10 gallon batch so there was 21 lbs of grain and the water used was 1qt/lb. I cannot report that I was required to do less mixing. Micah felt that the method provided for less dry spots in the grain bed. I stirred for my normal 10 minutes before I was satisfied that the grain was completely wet. The temperature of the grain bed did seem to be more uniform and my target temperature was accurate so the transfer of temperature is the same as my regular method. The greatest advantage to this method was the reduction in grain dust and the ease of combining the two materials. I normally pour the grain in with one arm and stir with the other as the water pours in from my hot liquor tank. By underletting I was able to have more control over pouring the dry grain into the empty cooler and then just opened the valve from the hot tank and added the strike water. All but the top inch of grain was wet prior to my stirring. I expected the grain to float more than it did. I like it! RW... Russ Wigglesworth (INTERNET: Rad_Equipment@radmac1.ucsf.edu - CI$: 72300,61) UCSF Dept. of Radiology, San Francisco, CA (415) 476-3668 / 474-8126 ------------------------------ From: ATKINSON@vaxb.acs.unt.edu Subject: Tower System: Part 1 Date: 22 Mar 1993 17:24:03 -0500 (CDT) Fellow Brewers, This is a long post, so here is... Part 1 I am about to build the Tower System that Bill Owens describes in his book "How to Build a Small Brewery". It is a system which he suggests that is to be used for brews up to 10 gallons. After reading the recent thread on RIMS in the HBD, I realized that there are probably several of you out there that may be familiar with this Tower System. Although not a RIMS, this system seems to be similar to a RIMS in that it simplifies some of the brewing steps. This system uses a high temperature pump to lift water to the highest point necessary, and then lets gravity do the rest of the liquid moving work. I like the idea of this system, and am hoping that some of you can tell me about the pros and cons of using one of these, or perhaps give suggestions for improvement. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Tower, I've tried to sketch it below, and would like your insights also. I believe that one of the great beauties of the system is that it only requires one heat source, and only one kettle. I now have everything but the pump, and I guess I could simply transfer hot water from the kettle to the ice chests in a bucket, but temperature drops would have to be carefully observed. ======== || _____||________ || | | MASH/LAUTER TUN || | | (ICE CHEST & 2 COPPER MANIFOLDS) || | | || | | _______________ || | | | | || |___________|=X========|========= | || | | X - valve || HOT WATER | | || TANK | | || (ICE CHEST) | ==========|=X==== || |___________| || | | || | | || | KETTLE | || | | || | | || ---- | | || HIGH TEMP. HOSE | | | | =======================| |==============________| ---- HIGH ^^^^ TEMPERATURE \__/ PROPANE PUMP / \ BURNER  ------------------------------ From: ATKINSON@vaxb.acs.unt.edu Subject: Tower System: Part 2 Date: 22 Mar 1993 17:24:53 -0500 (CDT) Part 2 Some clarification of the previous diagram: 1. The HOT WATER TANK and the MASH/LAUTER TUN are 58 quart ice chests (58 quart Igloo's can be purchased at SAM'S Wholesale Club for under $20 each). 2. The cooking KETTLE is a converted 16 gallon stainless steel keg (top cut out and pipe fitting welded in place near bottom). 3. The HIGH TEMPERATURE PUMP is a hot water circulator pump (can be ordered out of Grainger's catalog for about $75). 4. The PROPANE BURNER is about 170,000 BTU (mine is a King Kooker, purchased at SAM'S for $50). The system works by placing grains in the MASH/LAUTER TUN while heating water to mash temperatures in the KETTLE. Once the appropriate temperature has been reached, it is pumped into the MASH/LAUTER TUN. This is done for as many temperatures as required for your recipe. After all mashing water has been used, sparge water is heated in the KETTLE and then pumped to the HOT WATER TANK. When ready to sparge, the valves are adjusted so that effluent rate out of MASH/LAUTER TUN is equal to the influent rate from the HOT WATER TANK. The upper and lower manifolds are similar: the upper one is used to distribute hot sparge water evenly over the filter bed; the lower one is used to filter the grain from the wort. This system should allow one to adjust sparging time to as fast or slow as one desires. (I think that I'd try to set my sparge to about 2 hours so that I could leave the system alone while I watched another upset in this years NCAA March Madness!) You sparge directly into the KETTLE, and you can bring the wort to a boil when you have collected 1 to 2 gallons. QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND INSIGHTS (FLAMES?) WILL BE MUCH APPRECIATED! P.S. I have no connection to Owens or his publisher. Sam Atkinson Brew Long and Prosper ------------------------------ From: "Rad Equipment" Subject: Towers Date: 24 Mar 1993 08:16:20 U Subject: Towers Time:7:51 AM Date:3/24/93 Sam Atkinson asks for feedback on the Owens-like Tower: I have a similar tower except I use another converted keg for a hot liquor tank with it's own burner so I don't need the pump. Gravity is certainly the way to go. My only caveat would be the use of Igloo brand coolers. I have a 52 quart Igloo which has made about 22 ten gallon batches. While it is still in use, the interior of the cooler has deformed considerably with time. In fact there were blisters evident after the very first batch. Other brewers who have Igloo coolers report the same results. I still use mine because in spite of the blisters there is no evidence of cracks in the plastic interior. Still, I think that Coleman coolers seem to stand up better to the heat of mashing. I took a survey of cooler users some time ago and the majority used Coleman. I expect I'll replace mine with a Coleman when the time comes. RW... Russ Wigglesworth (INTERNET: Rad_Equipment@radmac1.ucsf.edu - CI$: 72300,61) UCSF Dept. of Radiology, San Francisco, CA (415) 476-3668 / 474-8126 ------- End of digest -------