Making the jump. Need a few pointer

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Liquidicem

I love lamp!
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I think I am going to make the jump to AG with one of my next batches. I've got most things worked out with the MLT and temps but one question left. For those of you with only one burner like me, how does your brew day go?

I figure I will use my boil kettle to heat water to my strike temp and then pour the desired amount into the pre-heated MLT. I will then add the grains and wait for an hour. In the mean time I will heat water up to my sparge temp (I will be batch sparging).

I'm not sure what to do at this point. Do I put this water into a bucket, then drain the MLT into the boil kettle, and then dump the sparge water into the MLT? Does someone have a better way to do this?

Hopefully I'll be able to come up with a second boil kettle to use a HLT before then but if not, does anyone have any suggestions on how to make things run smoothly?

Thanks!
 
I drain into my bottling bucket, and add that to the pot after I have dumped the sparge water in.

Then drain the sparge directly into the pot.
 
I have a keggle and a 24 qt. kettle that I use to heat sparge water.

In lieu of a 2nd pot, cheezydemon's got it right. Use a bucket.
 
You will want another kettle of some kind to heat your sparge water. I've actually brewed indoors by heating my sparge water on the stove, but I always boiled outdoors.
 
With only one kettle and burner you have two choices.

1. Collect wort into a bucket until you're done with the sparge water.
2. Collect sparge water into bucket (or another cooler) and collect wort in your kettle.

Option 1's downside is having to wait until the end to start heating to a boil
Option 2's downside is if you lose too much heat in your sparge water, your efficiency suffers badly. I've been doing #1 until I get my 2nd pot/burner going.
 
Do you have another cooler? You could always heat the sparge water and pour it into another cooler to keep it at temp or close to temp.
 
I roll option 1 from Bobby_Ms post. When I have added the last sparge water, I begin to siphon wort into my brew kettle from the collection bucket as the MLT is draining.
 
My keggle is used for heating strike water, sparge water, and the boil. I collect the runnings in 5 gallon buckets until all the sparge water is out of the HLT. I then start the boil. Someday I'll get another keggle but for now, building up the corny inventory and getting a draft tower are higher on the priority list.

It adds more time as I wait for the wort to come to a boil but I use that time to clean out the MLT.
 
Get on down with a MLT made from a cooler. It'll work better, and you won't need a burner. I have a keggle MLT, but find myself going back to the Coleman time and time again because it is WAY easier to clean and holds temp to 1 degree over 90 mins. The keg drops several degrees in that time. I have a pretty decent single tier rig, but I find myself heating sparge water on the stove (while the mash rests) like Ed does because I'm paranoid about using too much propane. If I could do it all over again, I woulda bought less burners.
 
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