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cweston

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Everything has gone smoothly so far.

I pre-heated my cooler with about 3 gallons of water at about 165.

Mashed in about 10 minutes ago: hit my mash temp with about a pint less strike water than I calculated (not bad). Rather than adjust my volumes on the fly, I just waited a couple minutes for that last pint of strike water to drop to 152 and added it to the mash. Temp still dead on.

At 1.25 Qts per pound of grain, the mash looks a little thinner than I expected. Maybe I should go a little drier next time?

What is the effect of a thinner or thicker mash, anyway?

So far, no worries. I took some pics, but I'll probably take the camera with me to work Monday and upload them from there. (Because I use a Mac at work and that kind of stuff is way easier on mac + iphoto.)
 
cweston said:
What is the effect of a thinner or thicker mash, anyway?
QUOTE]

Basically a thicker mash may help make it easier for you to hit your gravity due to a more concentrated extract.

A Thinner mash may cause you to undershoot your gravity.

That BYO article that Desert provided will give you a more scientific explanation. Be sure to get that mash stirred up good, and try to keep the lid closed on your mash tun in order to maintain your mash temp in the 149-158 range.
 
Holy Crap!

I hit my gravity dead-on.

I was planning to collect 6.5 gals of wort. I actually collected 6.75 gals at 1.041.

I'm shooting for 5.25 gals after boil: target OG was 1.052.

If I boil down to 5.25 gals, my calculated OG will be

41 * 6.75 / 5.25 = 52.714!

I predicted 70% efficiency: obviously, that turned out to be a pretty good prediction.

I think this calls for a beer.

(No, Baron--I haven't read a single paper yet. Oh well--this is much more fun.)
 
Thats awesome! It took me three or four trys to hit my gravity on my first 5 gal batch. Heck, I'm still trying to hit my gravity at 10 gallons
 
Just finished cleaning up: about 4.67 hours start to finish.

Gravity was dead on: about the only hitch was that I lost a lot more wort volume to hop absorbtion, what was left in the kettle, and whatever else than I expected: instead of getting 5.25 gals in the fermenter, I got 4.5. So it'll be a smallish batch.

The siphon tube in my keggle drained painfully slowly: I think I need to re-engineer it with a larger length of stainless steel braid at the bottom.

Otherwise, everything went as planned.

This was my first time ever using 100% whole hops loose in the kettle: is that a normal rate of hops absorbtion? It seems like a lot.
 
cweston said:
The siphon tube in my keggle drained painfully slowly: I think I need to re-engineer it with a larger length of stainless steel braid at the bottom.
What do you mean by this? Were you getting a full flow of wort through the output hose? I use 1/2" and it goes pretty well. I do usually have to squeeze the output hose a few times to get all the air out and get a full flow going.
 
Baron von BeeGee said:
What do you mean by this? Were you getting a full flow of wort through the output hose?

It was fine for about the first three gallons. Once the hops started clumping up around the intake, it got very slow. I just have a couple inches of SS braid on there--I suspected this might be an issue.

Next time I'll try a much larger length of SS braid to maximize filtering area. If that doesn't work, I may engineer some sort of false bottom.

I have a 3/8 inch ball valve. and it's definitely a little slow. But since I use an aquarium pump for aeration, it's really not a big deal (since I need 20 minutes to aerate anyway) as long as it flows reasonably well.
 
ablrbrau said:
That's incredible. I've never finished quicker than 6 hours. How do you guys do it?

:confused:

I batch sparged. That probably saved an hour right there.

I mashed for 60 minutes at 152. I know a lot of single-infusion brews mash for 90 minutes.

No one else was home the whole time, so I had no distractions.
 
Baron von BeeGee said:
Gotcha. I'm using a bazooka T which I got for $17 and am happy with. I've only used my new keggle once and it didn't clog at all, but then again it was a Hefeweizen with minimal hops (whole leaf).

I got to ask something on the bazooka T's, hopstoppers etc. I got my ebay keggle about 3 weeks ago and two weeks ago I wanted to make my SNPA. Even though I didn't purchase a hopstopper or Bazooka T for it yet I just had to use it. It's just got a 1/2" ball-valve and thermometer installed. So I go buy some of that course copper scrubbie stuff and tie wrap it to the inside part of the ball valve. Boiled away the wort that had 2oz pellets and two oz whole hops. Cooled the wort, whirlpooled and opened up the ball valve to transfer to the fermenter. I was transferred in 2 minutes. Since the ball valve is higher; once I got towards the end I just tilted it to get the rest of the wort out. Once complete, I remove the copper srubbie; hose it off and its like new.

Why do I need an expensive filter system again? :confused:
 
Chairman Cheyco said:
You're going to bring NEED into this!?!?!

:cross:

I'll buy about anything that makes my brewing easier and better but with various comments on clogged kettle filters, pains to clean etc I guess I'd choose more efficient and cheaper at the same time. Less fuss to clean too as if it gets too grungy; I toss it. 'twas only .50 cents or so.

I guess I'm saying I don't think I'm getting any more / less break into my fermenter with this method than I did with my auto-siphon and whirlpool.

PS - Don't let LandSailor read this ;).

PPS - This is what I used:

CM24%20page%2032%20chore%20boy%20copper%20SML.jpg
 
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