cellardoor
Well-Known Member
I was so excited yesterday to get my grains from UPS yesterday I decided I couldn't wait until Sunday to brew and I had to do it last night. It all went well until I needed to sparge. I drained my mash water, put in about 2 gallons for my first sparge and let it drain. So far so good. My second sparge of about 2 gallons is where It all went wrong. Nothing would drain from my MLT. I assumed that I had a stuck sparge and not knowing what to do I stuck my stir spoon down into my cooler and gave it a stir and tried to scrape any grains off my stainless braid. This worked for a little bit but the sparge became all cloudy and grainy (luckily I put the output hose in a measuring cup and not the keggle).
At that point It was getting late, I could think of no solution and I just wanted to finish that I decided to just boil what I had (about 4 gallons) and add my additions as planned. So after the hour boil I ended up with roughly 2.75 gallons of 1.086 wort instead of the 5.5 gallons of 1.056 I intended. I pitched the Wyeast 1056 and hoped for the best. When I got home from work today it has started to bubble already. I have no idea how this is going to taste in the end but it was my 1st all-grain and it can only get better from here on out.
Some questions I have are:
I did a cooler conversion via FlyGuys thread and the conversion itself is leak proof but I'm questioning the stainless braid method. I did insert notched vinyl tubing to prevent the braid from collapsing but I feel that a copper or CPVC manifold system is better. Any thoughts?
Also how does one effectively unstick a sparge?
Thanks and I really hope to solve this problem since I'm brewing another batch on Sunday.
At that point It was getting late, I could think of no solution and I just wanted to finish that I decided to just boil what I had (about 4 gallons) and add my additions as planned. So after the hour boil I ended up with roughly 2.75 gallons of 1.086 wort instead of the 5.5 gallons of 1.056 I intended. I pitched the Wyeast 1056 and hoped for the best. When I got home from work today it has started to bubble already. I have no idea how this is going to taste in the end but it was my 1st all-grain and it can only get better from here on out.
Some questions I have are:
I did a cooler conversion via FlyGuys thread and the conversion itself is leak proof but I'm questioning the stainless braid method. I did insert notched vinyl tubing to prevent the braid from collapsing but I feel that a copper or CPVC manifold system is better. Any thoughts?
Also how does one effectively unstick a sparge?
Thanks and I really hope to solve this problem since I'm brewing another batch on Sunday.