Hey guys,
Been brewing faithfully on the Braumeister system for exactly a year now. Last year I made over 240 gallons of beer—most of it excellent. I wanted to revisit and offer some tips to those folks new on the Braumeister. These are all strictly my opinions and insights—others may disagree and your mileage may vary, etc.
The Mash—First, with respect to efficiency—I assure you it's EXCELLENT on the Braumeister. Remember, there are two commonly measured efficiencies: Mash Efficiency and Brew House Efficiency. The former measures strictly how much sugar you extract during the mash. The latter is dictated by many other variables like how much trub loss you have, etc. Mash efficiency for me has consistently been 80%+. If your MASH efficiency is less than that, I urge you to look at your mash ph, crush, minerals (you need at least 50ppm of calcium ions for an efficient mash), and the volume of water you're using.
I personally use RO water that I adjust with calcium chloride, gypsum, and a couple of teaspoons of Phosphoric Acid. This ensures I hit that ph sweet spot of 5.25-5.5. Outside of that range, your efficiency will suffer (on all systems). I use a minimum of about 14.5 gallons or so (1/3rd to half way between the last two notches on the middle post) to mash in. Again, your mash will go much better if you use a decent amount of water. The only exception to this is when I high-gravity brew, which I'll cover later.
The Sparge— I don't do it anymore. I've tried things like pumping hot water out of the main spigot back up through the suspended mash pipe/grain. That doesn't work too good—my pump flow is too fast. Using a pitcher to take some wort and pouring it through the top works better, but I've only seen a couple of gravity points of improvement that way. And I'm not going to heat a separate pot of water and watch the temps, etc—so you can forget it
. Bottom line is, if your end brewhouse efficiency is less than 64%, look at your mash efficiency. It's probably fine. You're probably leaving behind a ton of wort as I was in the beginning. Fashion a diptube, or better yet, tip the braumeister to get the last bit of wort when you're transferring to your fermenters. This way you'll need less malt, have less waste (less than 1 gallon loss) and you can easily achieve gravities of 1.050 to 1.060.
The Boil—...Is weak. The insulated jacket helps. Honestly, this is the one thing I wish the engineers at Speidel would have improved. I've gotten docked some points in competition due to DMS off-flavors. After that, I simply do a 90 min boil standard, and haven't had any issues. It takes me exactly 90 minutes to boil down from 13.5 to about 11.1 gallons. After cooling loss and trub loss I end up with right around 10.5 gallons or so... roughly a boiloff rate of 1.4 gallons per hour.
High Gravity Brewing—Yes, it's possible goddammit. Double mashes aren't fun, so I prefer an extended boil to make a 5 gallon high gravity batch (1.080+, if it's under 1.080 I just make 10 gallons and add DME to achieve my gravity). Doing an extended boil can be a bit tricky, because you don't want to be there all day, so what I do is use as little water as I can—just enough to complete the pump circuit. For my 55L unit, this works out to be around 10.5-11.5 gallons or so, depending on how much grain I have in there (usually I do not exceed 24 lbs.)
My mash efficiency definitely suffers, pumps kind of struggle initially, but gents—you can do 1.100+ with this method. After grain absorption, I'm usually left with about 9.75 gallons of very sweet wort, which I proceed to boil down to about 6.25 gallons or so (2.5 hour boil). After chilling and trub-loss I end up with about 5.25 Gallons. This method is great for making big dopplebocks, monster scotch ales, and other big beers. Double-IPAS are tricky because you will definitely get some color from the extended boil, so if you try this, omit any dark crystal malts and use very light base malt. Happy to answer any other questions on this topic.
Cleaning— This was the biggest nuisance to get used to when I switched from my old turkey fryer setup. If you can afford it—as I can guess you can, since you bought the ****ing Braumeister—buy yourself a 50lb bucket of pbw at the local homebrew shop (have them order it). That stuff is incredible and works with ANY water, and I have some HARD water. Oxiclean will not do it like PBW can, I don't care what you say. After you pump/pour all the gunk out of your Braumeister, close the valve and spray/rinse it out with some hot water. Next, fill with about 6-10 gallons of water and add like 5-10 scoops of PBW. Turn the heating elements on to about 45 C or so and run the pumps. Stir to make sure the pbw is dissolved. This soak will totally eliminate your need to scrub the heating elements as the stuff comes off TOTALLY. Believe me, I scrubbed for a while before i discovered the power of PBW in my braumeister.
I use a regular ass dishwashing brush to scrub the inside of the Braumeister, dunking the brush in the warm pbw solution. Every few brew days or so, turn the clean braumeister upside down and unscrew the pumps and peek in there to make sure there is now grain or gunk stuck in them. That's IT!
Hopefully you found some of this info helpful. Feel free to follow up with any questions. Here's to another year of delicious Braumeister Brewing.