The liquid your diptube can't reach

I've got almost 1/2 gallon of liquid that the diptube in my BK doesn't reach. I can easily account for this when pumping water for the mash and sparge, but what do you do with the water that's left over in the bottom of the BK?

I'm inclined to be lazy and just leave it in there and just let my mash drain on top of it rather than pulling my BK out of the rig and trying to dump it. Anyone else do this? Does it wreak havoc with starting volumes and efficiency calculations?

Curious to hear what others are doing,

-Joe

Your dip tube should almost be touching the bottom of your keggle or kettle and therefore should be draining all but maybe a cup or less of liquid. Make a new dip tube or extend it with some silicone tubing.

My kettle is 18" in diameter, so even with the diptube 1/4" off the bottom, that's still quite a bit left over.

-Joe

That's 0.275398268 US gallons give or take, what if you extend it down another 1/8" or put the dip tube to the edge of the kettle and tilt it as it drains near the bottom. The advantage of a keggle is that domed bottom with recess so I don't have that issue.

Thank you both for the replies, but none of that answers my question. I don't have a keggle, but thanks for telling me about the advantages of it.

I brewed today and just left the water in the kettle, adjusting my volumes to suit.

-Joe

nostalgia said:

Thank you both for the replies, but none of that answers my question. I don't have a keggle, but thanks for telling me about the advantages of it.

I brewed today and just left the water in the kettle, adjusting my volumes to suit.

-Joe

Click to expand...

Are you using the BK to pump water to a HLT, or are you using your BK as the HLT? (I'm confused why you have water in there.)

To answer your question, if you had 10 gallons of 1.050 wort, and added .5 gallon of water to it, you'd have 10.5 of 1.0476 wort. Not a huge deal, it would be enough to bug me though. As you mentioned, i would just account for it earlier in your process.

I'm using the BK to pump to the HLT. So when I'm done pumping there will still be some water in there, no mater how good my dip tube is.

Thank you for the reply,

-Joe

My diptube isn't quite as effective as I'd like it, leaving approximately a .25 gallon behind. The decision to dump that small amount into the carboy is directly correlated to my target volume; if I'm a little short, it goes into the vessel. Otherwise, it's assumed loss.

For my system, I transfer 5.5 gallons to the fermenter. YMMV.

I guess my question is directed at those with 1/2 tier pumped systems who use one boil kettle to heat water and boil wort - I should have been more specific.

Basically what I'm wondering is if after pumping from the BK to the HLT and before draining from the MLT back to the BK, is there a proper way to account for the leftover water in the BK. I understand that it will dilute my wort to some extent, but I'm curious about what others do.

I guess I just need to account for that at the very beginning of the recipe formulation. I can always boil a bit more aggressively to make up that volume, but it's going to be left at the bottom of the kettle when I drain to the fermenter anyway.

-Joe