I hope I did you proud. :rockin:
Today was the first brew in my 55 gallon stainless kettle that I got earlier this summer but have not got around to using. This weekend I finished making the pickup tube and wrapping insulation around it. At 8 am today I started bringing everything from the back garage up to the front where I brew.
The guy that lives behind me was looking at me funny when he seen me pulling the brew rig out with that big azz kettle on it. lol
Here it is all set up and ready to go.
I preheated the MLT with 10 gallons of water at 180* then ran that into the kettle where I boiled it for 30 minutes. This did two things. It gave me a better idea what my boil off rate was going to be and I ran the boiling water thru my CFC to clean and sanitize it. Boil off ended up being about 3 gallons in 30 minutes.
I then mashed in with 39 pounds of grain and 43 qt's of water. I missed the mash temp due to my 15 gallon kettle is now being used as my HLT (normally is a 7.5 gallon kettle) and this thing flowed the water a lot faster then the smaller one so less heat was lost. I ended up at 155 when I wanted 150. So I added 2 gallons of water and it did not move it. So I then added 1 gallon of cold tap water and that dropped it to 147, I said that it was just going to have to be good enough. After 15 minutes it all settled out at 145-146*, a lot lower then I wanted but I was not going to add more water. I'll make some adjustments for next time.
Here it is with the full mash at rest.
Today was the first brew in my 55 gallon stainless kettle that I got earlier this summer but have not got around to using. This weekend I finished making the pickup tube and wrapping insulation around it. At 8 am today I started bringing everything from the back garage up to the front where I brew.
The guy that lives behind me was looking at me funny when he seen me pulling the brew rig out with that big azz kettle on it. lol
Here it is all set up and ready to go.
I preheated the MLT with 10 gallons of water at 180* then ran that into the kettle where I boiled it for 30 minutes. This did two things. It gave me a better idea what my boil off rate was going to be and I ran the boiling water thru my CFC to clean and sanitize it. Boil off ended up being about 3 gallons in 30 minutes.
I then mashed in with 39 pounds of grain and 43 qt's of water. I missed the mash temp due to my 15 gallon kettle is now being used as my HLT (normally is a 7.5 gallon kettle) and this thing flowed the water a lot faster then the smaller one so less heat was lost. I ended up at 155 when I wanted 150. So I added 2 gallons of water and it did not move it. So I then added 1 gallon of cold tap water and that dropped it to 147, I said that it was just going to have to be good enough. After 15 minutes it all settled out at 145-146*, a lot lower then I wanted but I was not going to add more water. I'll make some adjustments for next time.
Here it is with the full mash at rest.