Speidel Braumeister (brewmaster)

yeddiman said:

Does anybody know what the size and pitch of the center rod is on the 20L.

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does pitch refer to thread? by size do you mean length? happy to help but a bit lost

dinnerstick, you are correct,

the thread pitch and the diameter of the rod, what size nut fits the threads on the rod

Length of the rod would help also.

all for the 20l

Appreciate it

i don't have a thread gauge (nor calipers) so you'll have to wait for someone else to chime in on the thread, but the rod is 41 cm from the bottom of the kettle to the top of the threads. the bottom 1cm or so sits in a base, so only 40cm are proud. the diameter is 1cm, by measuring with a ruler, not calipers. i bet if you ask speidel directly via their website you will get the specs, they are pretty helpful, but i would hope someone on here will reply

OK, thought I'd get a couple of brews under my belt before I posted again. (That and recovered from another neck surgery! )
The first brew was almost an epic disaster, trying to get use to new equipment, and new to all grain brewing, but the machine itself performed as expected. My efficiency was way off, in part due to too fine a crush mucking up the flow, and too short a mash (60 min for a dipa). I brewed the same recipe again, loosened up the mill to 1.2mm, and increased the mash to 90 minutes, and it made a big difference. Came real close to the target gravity, and finished with a much better end result. The recipe was based on Kiwi Crossing IPA from Midwest, I increased the malt bill and the hops, turned out to be one of my best brews so far!
I will be brewing Biermuncher's Tits Up IIPA in the next couple weeks. Looking forward to that!!

Has anyone made an extension cord for their Braumeister that connects to a standard US dryer outlet (220 i think?). Most of the posts I have seen people are installing new receptacles or have modified the standard Braumeister cord. I have modified my Braumeister cord but it is short.

Could I buy this cord and rewire it with a dryer plug?

http://www.stayonline.com/detail.aspx?id=8951

mellowmonk said:

Has anyone made an extension cord for their Braumeister that connects to a standard US dryer outlet (220 i think?). Most of the posts I have seen people are installing new receptacles or have modified the standard Braumeister cord. I have modified my Braumeister cord but it is short.

Could I buy this cord and rewire it with a dryer plug?

http://www.stayonline.com/detail.aspx?id=8951

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I bought this one....

http://www.stayonline.com/detail.aspx?id=11236

The male end matches up with my receptacle and the C13 end matches up with the 20L power port without any further mods. Without seeing a pic of your dryer outlet, it is difficult to provide an answer.

I have the 50L model and I'm turning it on this Saturday. So what I've learned so far. Nobody fully understands power. Saturday, I will! Your dryer/stove runs on 240v but your house doesn't have 240v like in europe. We don't have 240v on one leg and a neutral, we throw 120v down each leg delivering 220v. Check it out, stick a multimeter into your outlet, you'll find 240 across your two leads and 120 between each lead and the ground.

So I'm under the impression that this has not been a problem for anyone.

Md

just thought I'd post my idea on how to hold the mesh to the plates on the BM. I originally used High Temp neodymium magnets (good to 300 F) , but the nickel plating corroded rather quickly and they weren't available with an epoxy coating like the ones I am going to try out. They are good to 176F or 80C, which should hold up. Available from K&J Magnetics #D82E. I will post whether they worked or not after my next brew. Hopefully this might help someone else out.

Hi all, I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on a BM, but I can't decide between the 20L and 50L. I am looking for a top of the line solution for recipe development. In the short term i will brew probably only 20L batches as I refine recipes, but in the future there may be situations where i want to brew double batches, and thus this flexibility would be great to have. The cost difference fortunately is not really a factor as I consider this to be a life long purchase.

So I would like to understand the cons of using the 20L malt pipe in the 50L unit as opposed to brewing 20L in a 20L BM. I know some posters have been brewing mainly 20L batches in the 50L systems, and some have mentioned wanting to switch to the 20L. What are the reasons for this?

What I can think of:

- 50L has larger footprint and hence more difficult to handle
- 50L more difficult to clean
- 50L with 20L malt pipe might make dumping grains into the mast ton more difficult as you need to drop scoop lower into the unit?
- more awkward to pull mash ton out after mashing?
- 50L needs 15amp plugs, fortunately my apartment is fitted with these so not an issue
- would need a larger conical fermenter (to be prepared for future 50L batches) and use this mainly with 20L batches, but i think this is a non-issue as I understand it is fine to ferment 20L in say a 55L fermenter.

Anything I missed?

On the plus (doing 20L in 50L BM) I think I get a more vigorous boil, better circulation due to dual pumps meaning I can really push the max gravity limits of the system.

The other option would be to buy a 20L and when double batches are required to do 2 consecutive brews (although) this is a bit more work, specially if double batches are needed more often down the road.

Any input is greatly appreciated!

Since you are looking long term on this and money isn't an object then I would go with the 50.

It will give you a better boil and more options for the long haul.

Pretty sure they sell a smaller grain pipe for brewing smaller batches with the 50l.

Since we're in the topic how do you brew smaller batches on the bigger systems? I'm going to need to do this soon because my recipes grain bill's are too big for the smaller systems.

You can also modify the 50l malt pipe as I did to brew smaller high gravity batches.
look up what Batfink did in an earlier post (#1631 pg 164). I have brewed 6 gallon double IPA's using his modification, and can plug the holes with stainless bolts if i ever want to brew a larger batch. I used a Greenlee 1/2" hole punch to pop the holes in the tube. For a 16lb grain bill, I had to use 9 gallons of water, lost 2.5 gallons to absorption and boiloff, and 1/2 gallon to trub. Not sure how this will work with lower gravity beers, might want to get the smaller malt tube if you're going to brew those.

Thanks for the reply's, I pulled the trigger on a 50L and picked it up yesterday from Brouwland here in Belgium.

tequilatom said:

You can also modify the 50l malt pipe as I did to brew smaller high gravity batches.
look up what Batfink did in an earlier post (#1631 pg 164). I have brewed 6 gallon double IPA's using his modification, and can plug the holes with stainless bolts if i ever want to brew a larger batch. I used a Greenlee 1/2" hole punch to pop the holes in the tube. For a 16lb grain bill, I had to use 9 gallons of water, lost 2.5 gallons to absorption and boiloff, and 1/2 gallon to trub. Not sure how this will work with lower gravity beers, might want to get the smaller malt tube if you're going to brew those.

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Very interesting, I was thinking about this myself, didn't get far enough into this thread to see that it had been done. Great to be able to read up and see how people actually executed this and what results were obtained.

If one does a careful and clean job with the hole drilling and covering up with bolts/rubber o-rings I'm sure the 50L malt pipe can be setup to basically do anything you want it to; high gravity 5L/10L/15L batches etc.

I purchased the small malt pipe but may consider returning this if customising the 50L malt pipe is fairly straightforward. Will look to see how people have done it in the thread.

I had a strange event occur during brewing the other day with the Braumeister. During the mash, single infusion at 67C, the BM went into a pump rest at about 50 minutes in. When the pump break was over, the temperature showed 69 degrees, then rapidly increased to 102 degrees, shutting off the pump and heater. Measuring the mash, the temperature was actually 67 degrees.

I was unable to get the mash to finish, so I drained the malt pipe. I completely reprogrammed the BM, setting all mash phases to zero minutes. The BM went to the boiling part of the program, showed the correct temperatures, and finished the boil without incident.

Has anyone else had a similar problem? What could cause this behavior? Bad temp probe? Computer glitch? Bad connection?

Any help would be appreciated.

rbdanley said:

I had a strange event occur during brewing the other day with the Braumeister. During the mash, single infusion at 67C, the BM went into a pump rest at about 50 minutes in. When the pump break was over, the temperature showed 69 degrees, then rapidly increased to 102 degrees, shutting off the pump and heater. Measuring the mash, the temperature was actually 67 degrees.

I was unable to get the mash to finish, so I drained the malt pipe. I completely reprogrammed the BM, setting all mash phases to zero minutes. The BM went to the boiling part of the program, showed the correct temperatures, and finished the boil without incident.

Has anyone else had a similar problem? What could cause this behavior? Bad temp probe? Computer glitch? Bad connection?

Any help would be appreciated.

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i would email speidel straight away. their customer service is very good.

dinnerstick said:

i would email speidel straight away. their customer service is very good.

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Thanks for the advice.

I reproduced the problem using a test run with water. The BM showed 94 degrees when the water was actually at 53 degrees.

I contacted Morebeer.com and they are having Speidel send me a new temperature probe. I'll also contact Speidel directly to see what they think.

Is anyone having trouble with the flow rate through the malt pipe? I have now done two batches and in both cases have had issues with the flow rate up through the crushed grains. The seal underneath the grain pipe is broken and I can see water escaping/rushing out underneath.

The last brew I ensured a very course crush on the grains (barely crushed open) however the water was still escaping underneath the seal due to low flow rate, particularly at the start of the mashing.

There is no issue with the sealing surface as the empty drain grain pipe sits very flush on the inner surface of the braumeister.

I am using a corona grain mill which I believe might not be giving me the most consistent crush (seems like i am getting some barely crushed grains among some that are almost pulverized). Are people having this issue with the corona mill?

Also, I am using the 20L grain pipe on the 50L model, could this be part of the problem, I assuming this has a higher flow rate than the single pump in a 20L and also dual pumps but with a 50L pipe (which needs to pump up through a longer vertical distance, presumably slowing down the flow rate).

Are you guys generally finding the crush fineness to be finicky with this unit?

Used my 20l tube for the first thus past Friday. I did not notice anything wrong/weird with the flow rate. Fwiw, I use my own mill at a factory setting of .4.

I've noticed that the thread gets very quiet when pjk49202 posts something - I'd look into that disturbing avatar...

Just an update - I upgraded to a JSP roller mill this weekend and did a batch, worked great with this mill... the crush is waay better, husks completely in tact and no flow issues. There was a minor amount of water escaping underneath the rubber seal of the grain pipe even with nut very tight however only a fraction of before with the corona mill.

Can't wait to try my first all grain beer - a 4 hop IPA - in a few weeks!

Yesterday I attempted my first batch with a new 20l Braumeister and it was the longest brew day that I have ever endured. I started heating my water at 4pm and did not finish the boil until 1:30 am. I have looked through the forum several times and have never seen anyone discuss the issues I encountered.

1. It took almost two hours for the system to heat my strike water to 66 celsius. Is that normal? I filled the Braumeister with warm water from the tap and my house temperature was 72 Fahrenheit.

After I doughed in the Braumeister executed the two mash programs without any observable issues. I drained the grains without sparging and then had to wait oven 90 min for the system to start the boil.

2. The system never reached the programmed 102 celsius for the boil. The hottest temp reached was 98 celsius. I did not use the copper dome or insulating jacket. I had programmed a 90 min boil but it took much longer than that (over 2 hours). I don't have exact times and data because I was several drinks into the brew day/night, but my experience with the Braumeister doesn't seem right.

Is my new system a lemon?

Do you use the insulating jacket? Do you keep the lid on as it is heating? Both of these help a lot. I always do both so not sure how much slower without... Also the boil temp does not get above 98c on my machine, even with 20L of wort on the 50L BM with dual heaters. I haven't looked up the physics but I think this is pretty much as hot as water can get before it changes state.

jstafftx said:

Yesterday I attempted my first batch with a new 20l Braumeister and it was the longest brew day that I have ever endured. I started heating my water at 4pm and did not finish the boil until 1:30 am. I have looked through the forum several times and have never seen anyone discuss the issues I encountered.

1. It took almost two hours for the system to heat my strike water to 66 celsius. Is that normal? I filled the Braumeister with warm water from the tap and my house temperature was 72 Fahrenheit.

After I doughed in the Braumeister executed the two mash programs without any observable issues. I drained the grains without sparging and then had to wait oven 90 min for the system to start the boil.

2. The system never reached the programmed 102 celsius for the boil. The hottest temp reached was 98 celsius. I did not use the copper dome or insulating jacket. I had programmed a 90 min boil but it took much longer than that (over 2 hours). I don't have exact times and data because I was several drinks into the brew day/night, but my experience with the Braumeister doesn't seem right.

Is my new system a lemon?

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Are you running it on 110V? If you are then you would be cutting the wattage in half.

No, I did not have the insulating jacket.

Yes, I kept the lid on during the entire process to capture all the heat.

For power I made the modification to the end of the power cord so that I could use the system in my 220v dryer outlet.

I would say you either have a lemon or you are not getting proper current to your element

lemon

I would agree with lemon. I am only a hand full of brews into my 50l unit and I have not had that type of issue.

brian320fo said:

Are you running it on 110V? If you are then you would be cutting the wattage in half.

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Halving the voltage of resistance heat elements results in 1/4 the wattage.

I don't think this is the issue here.

I figured out the issue. I tested the power cord with a multimeter and it's only pulling 120 volts. Later this week an electrician will come out and install a new outlet.

Hey BM'ers,

I am moving from a 3v HERMS to a 50L BM and the first brew in the BM will be a 23L batch.

I'm thinking that I could mash with the full volume of water, Beersmith is estimating 37 litres (9.7 gallons) of water (using BM profiles obtained from this great thread), the grain bill will be around 4Kg (9lb), then at mash out and after lifting the pipe I could run a recirculating sparge from the spigot over the malt pipe for say 15-20 mins to get a little bit more efficiency (I'll use a separate pump for this).

Has anyone used this method in the 50L BM? Are there any issues to running the full volume for the mash?

EDIT: I've just taken delivery of the BM and made a test run with water and the shortened malt pipe, I can fill with 40L and the level outside the pipe reaches to the uppermost hoist bars, this is probably the maximum amount I could comfortably use. Once the pipe is lifted, the bottom of the pipe is clear of the wort which would allow for an easy sparge. I've adjusted beersmith with a BIAB mash profile which tells me to mash with 32 litres of water for 22 litres in the fermenter (4KG grain bill), I think this is what I'll try.

Roll on Saturday.

Cheers,

Tim.

jstafftx said:

I figured out the issue. I tested the power cord with a multimeter and it's only pulling 120 volts.....

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Wow! I'm amazed that you achieved even those times/temperatures with only 500w (2000/4) of heat.

brautim said:

Hey BM'ers,

I am moving from a 3v HERMS to a 50L BM and the first brew in the BM will be a 23L batch.

I'm thinking that I could mash with the full volume of water, Beersmith is estimating 37 litres (9.7 gallons) of water (using BM profiles obtained from this great thread), the grain bill will be around 4Kg (9lb), then at mash out and after lifting the pipe I could run a recirculating sparge from the spigot over the malt pipe for say 15-20 mins to get a little bit more efficiency (I'll use a separate pump for this).

Has anyone used this method in the 50L BM? Are there any issues to running the full volume for the mash?

EDIT: I've just taken delivery of the BM and made a test run with water and the shortened malt pipe, I can fill with 40L and the level outside the pipe reaches to the uppermost hoist bars, this is probably the maximum amount I could comfortably use. Once the pipe is lifted, the bottom of the pipe is clear of the wort which would allow for an easy sparge. I've adjusted beersmith with a BIAB mash profile which tells me to mash with 32 litres of water for 22 litres in the fermenter (4KG grain bill), I think this is what I'll try.

Roll on Saturday.

Cheers,

Tim.

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I might be misunderstanding this, but isn't the BM essentially sparging during the entire mash duration as it is circulating the wort through the grains? Wouldn't an additional recirculating sparge through spigot with a pump as described just accomplish the same thing (except lack of temperature control)? I understand that the lifted grains are saturated with wort so I see the benefit of sparging with heated water (at a water volume near what the grains have absorbed) in an effort to 'drain' the grains of as much sugar as possible + increase efficiency. This may reduce the pre boil OG slightly but can be easily compensated for by slight adjustment of the boil duration to evaporate the excess water and hit target OG.

I'm a fairly new brewer so may have gotten this wrong...

yer gonna need: a new plug and ask them to install a 220V outlet, different from the rest of the plugs so you don't stuck something 110V in there.

jdebonth said:

I might be misunderstanding this, but isn't the BM essentially sparging during the entire mash duration as it is circulating the wort through the grains? Wouldn't an additional recirculating sparge through spigot with a pump as described just accomplish the same thing (except lack of temperature control)? I understand that the lifted grains are saturated with wort so I see the benefit of sparging with heated water (at a water volume near what the grains have absorbed) in an effort to 'drain' the grains of as much sugar as possible + increase efficiency. This may reduce the pre boil OG slightly but can be easily compensated for by slight adjustment of the boil duration to evaporate the excess water and hit target OG.

I'm a fairly new brewer so may have gotten this wrong...

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My initial question is redundant now as I brewed on Saturday and discovered that the 50 litre BM will hold full pre-boil volume for a 23 litre batch using the short malt pipe (with a 3.5Kg grist anyway), the volume was 35.2 litres and 80% efficiency was achieved and I hit all targets with no sparge.

I'm not sure about how far you can push the grain weight in the 50L with short pipe before you can't use full pre-boil volume and would need to add fresh liquor (I'll guess at 4Kg).

With the 20 litre BM you cannot mash with full pre-boil volume due to pot size so lower volume is used initially and fresh liquor needs to be added once the malt pipe has been hoisted, I'm guessing most people will sparge with fresh liquor which will also extract more sugars. A recirculating sparge via the spigot would just increase efficiency but is probably not needed as it just adds more complexity to the process.

I think a sparge is optional with the BM depending on the target pre-boil gravity. So once the malt pipe is hoisted and drained and a gravity reading taken you can decide to extract more sugars or just add liquor without a sparge, there is nothing to stop you recirculating wort at this stage through the malt pipe by filling a jug through the spigot and pouring over the grain bed and the temperature could be raised in the kettle by a couple of degrees to ensure mash-out temp is maintained through the grain bed.

Hope that makes sense !

Please note that when you sparge/rinse you will end up with more beer and the extra sugars you extract pretty much cancel out the drop in gravity.

First two brews I did I didn't sparge, hit the gravity spot on and bottled 15-16 litres. The following 47 brews I have sparged, still hit the gravity and bottle 22 litres.

This is what we BM brewers call a no-brainer - you do the math!

True, depends on how much you sparge though.

I sparged an amount equal to the grain absorption rate (assumed to be 0.85L/Kg average taken from various places) - in my case 5L as I managed to fit just under 6 Kg of grains in the short malt pipe. I measured gravity of each liter of sparge water dripping from the grain bed and the gravity dropped relatively quickly and dropped to around half of that of the main wort pre-sparging where it seemed to level out. Since I overshot my pre boil gravity slightly I used this to level it out. After the 5L of sparging it was spot on. And this was on a 1.083 OG imperial IPA (including the 360g dextrose the recipe calls for, it still required a boil of 155min to hit this, known design limitation of the BM, on traditional systems its around a 90min boil).

Agree that sparging is a no-brainer, even if your post mash OG is too low, just add extra minutes to the boil to compensate (easy to calculate, I found a rate of 5L per hour on the 50L BM to be very accurate, the 20L might be slightly less than this due to its reduced exposed surface area). It's a shame to waste the sugars stuck in the grain bed and not maximise the size of the batch.

I always mash with 26L and sparge with at least 6L, sometimes add a litre to make it 7L. This works for me and my circumstances ie boil, way of sparging, grist used etc, and may of course vary between different brewers - sweet spots probably vary.

Okay Braumeister brewers, I need your help. But first I'd like to ask people to refrain from telling me not to filter. I would encourage people that DO filter to share their thoughts.

What I want:
Diamond bright beer. Not the kind that you see in photos on the forum where people are bragging that it is "crystal clear" but isn't; the kind where I can see and anticipate an assailant's attack while looking directly through a glass of pilsner . I want it that way after cold crashing the finished, racked beer for 2-3 days. I also want to be able to take a keg of finished, carbonated beer anywhere and not "kick up" a bunch of sediment at the bottom making my beer look murky. Those are my goals, and that's why I chose to filter.

My process today is this:

• I brew 10 Gallon batches
• All grain, mash is recirculated (I brew on a Braumeister 50L)
• I usually don't do a protein rest, as my electric system takes time to ramp up to different temps and I worry about the variability of enzyme activity on different ramp times, etc. I want to be consistent, but understand the benefits of a protein rest.
• I control PH by pre-treating RO water, and adding salts (usually 9 grams of calcium chloride to 5 grams of gypsum for malty beers and close to vice-versa for hoppy beers. I split this amount into 2 additions, one for mash, one for kettle, aiming to have at least 50 PPM of calcium ions in the mash.
• I don't sparge, it's kind of like brew in the bag
• I usually mash for 45 min to 1 hour, I don't test for conversion. I taste the mash and I usually hit my numbers dead on.
• I always use whirlfoc at 15 minutes left in the boil
• Quickly cool my wort by using an immersion chiller and running electric kettle pumps.
• I always add gelatin to the keg directly after racking off the better-bottle and just before I throw the keg in my cold refrigerator (32F), although sometimes I don't see a point to it frankly.
• I've tried polyclar on occasion just to see if it would make a difference. Mostly I haven't noticed a difference because I don't think it's chill haze (photos to prove it forthcoming).

So, the idea is to drop the yeast or to clump it with gelatin, cold-filter the beer so that the proteins are clumped as well. First I used a plate filter and got terrible results on the 3-5 micron and 7 micron pads. In fact it may have made my beer CLOUDIER as crazy as that sounds. I attribute that to pushing the yeast with too much pressure and being a total newb at filtering. I did however get fed up with the plate filter and exchanged it for one of those canister ones because of how annoying it was to assemble the unit and constant air leaks everywhere. The canister is much better IMO at holding pressure and keeping air out of the beer, but my results are still dismal with this filter. I used the 1 micron nominal, don't know the manufacturer.

I brewed a very tasty blonde ale fermented with Belgian Strong Ale™ 1388 (very low floc, you know if you've ever brewed with it). It took it's sweet time to ferment (4 weeks) before showing ANY signs of dropping, I then racked it to a keg, threw a packet of knox gelatin (dissolved in hot water) over the top, closed, purged keg, and stuck it in the 32F fridge overnight. Next day, I filtered using the canister w/ the 1 micron nominal disposable spindle-style filter. This is what I got today:

46.8F

-52.2F

- 58 F

No change so this is clearly not chill haze, and it looks the same as the third pic at room temp. WTF is going on here? Filters don't work like that! I need some HBT insight.

Soviet said:

Okay Braumeister brewers, I need your help. But first I'd like to ask people to refrain from telling me not to filter. I would encourage people that DO filter to share their thoughts.

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So reading through your process it looks like everything you are doing is correct to remove haze, however you did mention that when filtering one of your beers that it came out cloudier.

Now...I know nothing about filtering, but I do know that fining and temperature play a large role in the removal of chill haze. So as an experiment maybe you could fine & chill a future beer then split it, filter one batch and leave the other batch in the fridge at near 32f and see what happens after a couple of days?

Nothing in your process appears to point to the BM being the cause though.