help with process!!!!

Ok I am a little embarrassed asking this but can anyone help me out... I'm looking at upgrading my system and seeing everyone I see had a setup with a hlt, mash tun, brew kettle. Well I am new and not sure how this process works or how to start. Please help me out! Thanks guys

newbrewjay said:

Ok I am a little embarrassed asking this but can anyone help me out... I'm looking at upgrading my system and seeing everyone I see had a setup with a hlt, mash tun, brew kettle. Well I am new and not sure how this process works or how to start. Please help me out! Thanks guys

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Not sure I understand your question...Let's start by hearing about your current setup/process. What kind of equipment do you have?

The way I use these items is

HLT - used to heat water to a specific temerature for mashing and sparging. The hlt empties into the Mash Tun

Mash Tun - Used to hold the grain for both mashing and sparging. This empties into the Brew Kettle

Brew Kettle - The destination of your liquid from your mash and sparge process. Once you have your wort in this vessel you can boil it here.

Well there you have it, unless I completely misunderstood the question.

The BK needs to be the largest vessel. It will hold the largest volume of water at one time. If you're doing 5g. batches you'll want at least a 7g. or larger kettle.

The HLT usually doesn't need to be quite as large s the HLT but should be able to heat about as much water as your batch size, generally. So if you're doing 5g. batches you'll want a 5g. pot. This is because you don't get much liquid from the mash and thus need to sparge with enough to get to preboil volumes (which are more than the final batch size due to boil-off). So you may need to sparge with 4 gallons.

The Mash tun needs to be able to hold all of the grain plus the mash water, which is usually 1.25qts/pound of grain. I'd say this needs to be about the same size as the sparge vessel, perhaps even bigger if you want to make big beers like stouts.

Sorry guys. I currently have a 7.5gal kettle (5 gal batches only) and a propane burner. Aka turkey fryer haha. Have been doing extract brews and now ready to step into the world of all grain.

My main problem is I have done a lot of research on sizes but can't seem to find much on how to use them

Do you mean that you are trying to upgrade to all grain but you don't understand the process or how to use the equipment? Have you checked out the pics and videos on this sticky?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/all-grain-pictorial-video-tutorials-78963/

You need something to mash in. a cooler or another pot. Should be at least 5 gallons. Then your large pot will work for sparging and boiling if you do brew in a bag. That's the simplest way you can get started

thanks everyone