Equipment upgrade advice

After 2 years of brewing I'm debating a big (for me) investment for new equipment. I'd like some advice on the topic since I only know the equipment I own and I'm making assumptions on the new stuff.

Here is my current equipment and some notes:

• 5g kettle HLT - used to heat water, causes problems when my sparge water calcs are for more than 5g
• 8g kettle - my boil kettle, no real problem with it but no spigot so my process to drain it consists of "spooning" out using a big measuring cup
• 48 qt square cooler - this is my MLT, uses a ss braid, seems to work well but my temps do not hold, I commonly lose 5+ degrees over 60 min

My thoughts on upgrades consist of the following:

1. Round cooler with false bottom - from what I hear this should solve my problem with losing heat during mash, a false bottom should be more efficient, downside is I would need to fly sparge, upside this is pretty cheap
2. 10-15g "fancy" boil kettle - I'm thinking something like the Blichman kettles, get rid of 5g pot and use 8g for HLT, this would add a spigot, downside is cost
3. 10-15g "fancy" kettle MLT - spigot and false bottom are options, replaces the cooler, now can control heat if it's lost during mash, cost is downside and still have issue with 5g HLT
4. Two 10-15g "fancy" kettles - can replace the cooler and 5g pot, 8g pot can be HLT, big cost, would still need to modify 8g pot for fly sparge
5. Three 10-15g "fancy" kettles - all parts now replaced by kettles, spigots everywhere, major cost (imo), might need to rework tables/stands for gravity feed

The main issues I see with my current setup are:

• 5g HLT too small for all recipes
• MLT doesn't keep temp for 60 min
• Boil kettle lacks spigot for easy/clean transfer to primary

I'm just not sure where to focus first, if at all. Each issue can be helped by a new fancy kettle but it's hard to see a big change unless you redo the entire setup.

Thoughts? Anyone have experience with a similar change?

I have a 50 qt Aluminum HLT and a 60 qt Aluminum BK both set with thermometers and ball valves. I got 2 kegs to "upgrade". Cut the top off of one of the kegs. Went to clean in out and realized I really like my pots. For what it is worth, I don't think I am going to use the kegs. I much prefer pots and will save for SS instead of using the kegs.

If it were me I would focus on options one and two first. That seems like it would give you the most bang for the buck.

A new more efficent MLT that holds heat would be an awesome upgrade and should help improve your beer. I personally use a keggle system but if you were able to heat 8ish gallons for water in your HLT that would accomodate most recipes.

pretzelb said:

My thoughts on upgrades consist of the following:

1. Round cooler with false bottom - from what I hear this should solve my problem with losing heat during mash, a false bottom should be more efficient, downside is I would need to fly sparge, upside this is pretty cheap

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Why would you need to fly sparge? I've only ever had round MLT's (10 gallon at first, 15 gallon now) and I've always batch sparged.

pretzelb said:

• 5g HLT too small for all recipes
• MLT doesn't keep temp for 60 min
• Boil kettle lacks spigot for easy/clean transfer to primary

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Why is a 5 gallon HLT too small? I primarily make 5 gallon batches, usually in the 1.050 to 1.055 OG range, and usually have 3.5 to 4 gallons of sparge water.

For the spigot thing... lots of people siphon out of their kettle and into their fermenter, but I do agree that a spigot is better.

Ball valve conversions for brew kettles are available for around $20. All you need to do is drill a hole.

Your mlt can be further insulated, I'll bet you're losing most of your heat through the lid.

You can either further insulate the lid, or go to lowes and pick up a piece of thick foam insulation and some of that reflective insulation tape.

Cut the foam so it sits snugly inside your mlt and cover it in tape. After dough in, sit this piece on top of the mash. Should help immensely.

Thanks for the feedback. In response to some of your comments:

Why fly sparge? I thought I read when using false bottom is was best to fly sparge so if I go with a false bottom I assumed I would need to fly sparge.

Why is 5g too small? I have made a few recipes where the grain bill was small. Last one was the Innkeeper from NB which had corn sugar as an additive. When the grain bill is small, BeerSmith calculates the dual sparge water amounts in excess of 5g. I work around this by stealing from the sparge to about 4.75g and adding to the mash. I'd prefer to just do what BeerSmith says.

Insulate the MLT I've actually tried this. I've wrapped the cooler with thick blankets last few times. I cannot feel any warmth escaping the cooler. It's a mystery. I should say the beer turns out OK but when you know something isn't perfect it's hard to ignore. I do have some R3 foam panel I could cut to size and wrap with tape. I might look into it.

Drill a hole into kettle Funny you should say that. I did this for my 5g pot thinking if it went badly I could just replace it. Eventually it worked but I swear I was drilling for 30 minutes. I have no idea why it took so long to finally make that pilot hole. Once done it was easy but I now realize that nothing is simple for me.

Why fly sparge?

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No, what you read was that you don't want to Fly Sparge if you are using the braid. False Bottom and Manifolds give you options.

Drill a hole into kettle

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Yeah, it should take you seconds. Do you have a Step Bit.

Are you adequately preheating your mlt? I know for a fact I did not last time I brewed, and I would have lost about ten degrees had I not added more water to boost the temp. Fwiw, I use a round cooler.

There is no guarantee that a new mlt will not lose heat either. I know you said you have money to spend, but why spend it if it's not necessary?

pretzelb said:

• 5g HLT too small for all recipes
• MLT doesn't keep temp for 60 min
• Boil kettle lacks spigot for easy/clean transfer to primary

I'm just not sure where to focus first, if at all. Each issue can be helped by a new fancy kettle but it's hard to see a big change unless you redo the entire setup.

Thoughts? Anyone have experience with a similar change?

Click to expand...

First, to address your main three concerns.

HLT is too small.
It has already been said, but I can not believe that you are having trouble fitting all the neccessary sparge water into a 5G cooler. Your post did lack a piece of information; what is your water to grain ratio when mashing? I guess if you use a super thick mash, it would require more sparge water, and that could be your problem. I have a similar sized system (5 gallon mash tun, 5 gallon HLT, 30 qt kettle). I mash at 1.25 qts / lb, and my tun maxes out at about 12.5 lbs of grain using 80% efficiency (allowing me to do all grain recipes of about 1.066). I would say that I usually heat and hold about 2 gallons more sparge water than I need in my HLT and reserve them for cleaning, so I am kind of lost for words on that problem.

MLT loses temp.
Agreed, this is kind of a problem. Maybe more of an annoyance than a quality issue though. I guess if you are using a really large MLT in comparison to your grain bill, you could be having some problems with heat loss. As I noted in my above post, I typically come close to filling my round igloo cooler to the max, so there is not a ton of dead space. I can not say for sure if deadspace in your current MLT is the problem, but that might be something worth looking into. Also, I think that switching away from a cooler to a direct fired/ electrically controlled mash tun is a mistake. Usually, (your case being an exception) it is easier to maintain a mash temp in a cooler than to try to maintain a temp by firing heat against your uninsulated tun over and over again for an hour. IMO, a direct fired tun is a solution in search of a problem.

No spigots.
That is something worth addressing. My 30 qt kettle is aluminum, so it was super easy to drill. I would be a bit nervous drilling a SS pot of my own, but if you want to go for it, do it. It will make your day a lot easier, and really give you some options when laying out your system. I could not imagine brewing without spigots.

For the rest of my post, I will go in a different direction. If you are looking for upgrades, I actually suggest you concentrate on a completely different area in brewing...sink your money into fermentation temperature control and yeast health. It will make a much bigger difference in your end product than equipment upgrades for your brewday. I see people on this site who buy a conical, and just throw it in their basement or garage to ferment - that is nuts. Do yourself a favor; first, buy a stirplate and a 2000ml flask, and use a pitching rate calculator to determine the neccessary sized starter for your brew. Next, (if you do not have an area in your house that is constantly less than 60F) buy a spare/minifridge and turn it into a fermentation chamber. Then get a fermwrap and a digital controller from Johnson or Ranco. If you have a cold area, you can forgo the fridge and just use the heatwrap and controller to keep things happy.

I'll paraphrase Jamil.
"After moving to a full wort boil, the next thing that brewers should be investing in is temperature control."

Joe

jfowler1 said:

I'll paraphrase Jamil.
"After moving to a full wort boil, the next thing that brewers should be investing in is temperature control."

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Completely agree. Like others, I'm not sure how a 5 gal HLT is too small for your recipes, but as soon as you get yourself a dorm fridge and an Auber controller wired together, your beer will jump by 10 points in competition.

jfowler1 said:

For the rest of my post, I will go in a different direction. If you are looking for upgrades, I actually suggest you concentrate on a completely different area in brewing...sink your money into fermentation temperature control and yeast health. It will make a much bigger difference in your end product than equipment upgrades for your brewday.
Joe

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I totally agree with this. Myself, the first thing I did just after going AG was start doing good yeast starters. That definitely improved my beers significantly. The next thing I did was get better temperature control using a fridge and Ranco controller. This has also made a big difference in my beers. To be fair, I haven't had a very long time to sample and compare beers I did before to those I have done since these upgrades, but the results are obvious even still.

+1000 on temp control.

I was using temp controlled fermentation even when I was doing 2.5 gallon boils w/ extract.

pretzelb said:

Why is 5g too small? I have made a few recipes where the grain bill was small. Last one was the Innkeeper from NB which had corn sugar as an additive. When the grain bill is small, BeerSmith calculates the dual sparge water amounts in excess of 5g. I work around this by stealing from the sparge to about 4.75g and adding to the mash. I'd prefer to just do what BeerSmith says.

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I think something isn't set-up right in BeerSmith.

For batch-sparging, a general rule of thumb is that half of your pre-boil volume should come from sparge and the the other half from 1st mash runnings.

So unless your pre-boil volume is greater than 10 gallons, a 5 gallon HLT is sufficient.

I would upgrade the heat-losing MLT first and I would do it quickly...shouldn't cost nearly as much as the other options too.

Second, get a 10G boil kettle and use the 8G for sparge water.

I just did the same thing as #2. I originally had a 7.5G boil kettle and 5G pot for sparge water. Got a 10G kettle and I"m now using the 7.5G for sparge water.

The guy at my LHBS tried to convince me to get the 15G for just a little more, but my reasons were:
1. 5.5G batch size is pretty much the limit on my stovetop (I have one high-output burner) and I don't plan on brewing outside any time soon.
2. The temp probe on the 15G blichmann is at the 6.5G mark. My boiloff rate is low and I usually start with 6.5 or 7G in the kettle. That would barely cover the temp probe. FYI, 10G temp probe is at 4G.

After I brought the 10G home, I was really glad I didn't get the 15G (there was really any doubt in my mind anyway). The 15G would've never fit under my range hood.

Regarding the 5g HLT questions I will give an example. I have my ratio set to 1.25 in BeerSmith but one recent recipe had only 7.5 lbs of grain (Irish red). BeerSmith tells me to use 9.3 qts for mash. For two rounds of sparging I get 2.65g of 165 water each round. Obviously I can't hold 5.3 g of water in a 5g pot. I know 7.5 lbs isn't exactly normal but it's not that odd. I have a few other recipes in my log that have the same issue.

The result is I thin my mash to compensate for the sparge water restriction. When faced with replacing the 5g pot I start down the road of not having to replace again in the future so I look to an expensive kettle. Which just leads to more spending.

As for the loss of heat in my cooler it could very well be the cooler is too large for my grain bills. I do make some heavy beers but nothing huge and it's not often. That does give me a lot of dead space in my 48q cooler. I do preheat by the way but so far this hasn't fixed the problem with heat loss. Perhaps it's a matter of the cooler being too large.

Regarding the stir plate I failed to mention I already own one. I am very happy with it too. It's another step prior to brew day but I can't help but think it has made a big improvement.

Regarding a fermentation chamber ... now that tempts me. I have thought about it. I do have a keezer up and running. Right now I use another rectangular cooler to store my carboy in. Filled with water it stays pretty cool. In summer I have to add ice every day. Only issue is I'm not sure we have room in the house. But it's a very good idea. I think the only reason my wheat beers turned out so good last Oktoberfest was because I worked really hard keeping them at the temperature outlined in Brewing Classic Styles.

Good suggestion really. Thanks for that.

The best upgrade I made to my system last year was to use a 10g rubbermaid cooler as my HLT. I electrified it with a 120 volt hot water heating element and control it with the same ranco I use for my ferm fridge. If I set it up first and load it with hot water from the tap (around 140f) it's ready to go long before I need it. The best part about it is that I can set the ranco and it just does it's thing. I don't need to think about it at all. Coolers are cheap and I think I only paid about $20 for the heating element and a couple bucks for the jb weld and wiring.

Beyond the HLT, a pump was a great addition when I moved to 10g batches. Probably not necessary for 5g batches.

If you're having trouble with dead space in the MLT just get 2 different sizes - 10g and 5g. Coolers are cheap and available at home depot. Just swap the false bottom between the 2.

pretzelb said:

Regarding the 5g HLT questions I will give an example. I have my ratio set to 1.25 in BeerSmith but one recent recipe had only 7.5 lbs of grain (Irish red). BeerSmith tells me to use 9.3 qts for mash. For two rounds of sparging I get 2.65g of 165 water each round. Obviously I can't hold 5.3 g of water in a 5g pot. I know 7.5 lbs isn't exactly normal but it's not that odd. I have a few other recipes in my log that have the same issue.

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Ah! Now I see.

You are sparging too much, IMO.

If you think about it, it makes more sense to use a certain amount of water for a certain amount of grain, doesn't it? If you are instead trying to use a whatever amount of sparge water is necessary to achieve a certain pre-boil volume, it leads you to sparging MORE when you have small grain bills.

Personally, I use 3 qts of water per pound of grain. Period. That might be 1.25 qt/lb mash and 1.75 qt/lb sparge, or it might be 1.5 and 1.5 or whatever, but if there ids X lbs of grain in my tun, then 3*X quarts of water are going to go through it.

If that ends up giving me only 4.5 gallons of wort in my kettle after the sparge because I had a small grain bill, then I just add water directly to the kettle to reach the pre-boil volume I am after.

Walker said:

Personally, I use 3 qts of water per pound of grain. Period. That might be 1.25 qt/lb mash and 1.75 qt/lb sparge, or it might be 1.5 and 1.5 or whatever, but if there ids X lbs of grain in my tun, then 3*X quarts of water are going to go through it.

If that ends up giving me only 4.5 gallons of wort in my kettle after the sparge because I had a small grain bill, then I just add water directly to the kettle to reach the pre-boil volume I am after.

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Maybe worth a separate topic but what's the difference between sparging too much like what I'm doing now and adding water directly to the kettle to reach a pre-boil volume?

You don't need a HLT greater than 5 gallons doing it my way.

Seriously though, it doesn't really matter for a batch sparge process. Fly spargers have to be mindful of oversparging grains because the pH of the wort keeps dropping as you sparge. If it drops too low they risk tannin extraction from the grains (so I've been told). So, a fly sparger will either stop sparging when they have enough wort, or when the gravity or pH of the wort gets to a certain level.

For a small grain bill, this leaves the fly sparger in a situation where he needs to add water to the kettle to get to pre-boil volume.

For batch sparging, it doesn't matter. You are not constantly drawing off wort that is increasingly diluted, so the tannin issue just isn't there.