All grain equipment - one burner, one kettle

Howdy.

So, I am venturing into all grain brewing, and I wanted to see if anyone has tried this equipment configuration.

I plan to do infusion mashes and batch sparge.

First, I have one 8.5 gallon kettle (Aluminum) It has a weldless spigot on it and a drain tube....
I have one 48 quart Igloo Marine cooler fitted with a spigot and a manifold (Thanks Palmer).

I have another orange Rubbermaid drink cooler - 10 gallons fitted with only a spigot, no false bottom or screen.

Anyhow, my problem is a lack of a boiling pot I guess - since I only have my 8.5 gallon one.

This is what I'm thinking of doing -
*use my square 48 quart Igloo cooler for my Mash/Lauter Tun
*use my 8.5 gallon pot and burner for my hot liquor tank (to boil water for the mash and the batch sparge)
* use my 10 gallon Orange Rubbermaid cooler to catch the sweet wort from the mash and the batch sparge.
*once the sparging process is done, transfer the sweet wort caught from the orange cooler to my 8.5 gallon boil pot and boil.


Of course, through all of this when catching the sweet wort from the mash/lauter tun, I'd be careful not to splash up the wort coming FROM the tun and going INTO the boiling kettle.

Does this approach sound reasonable? Or am I risking too much oxygen exposure to the wort?
I'd just sooner not to have to buy a new boiling pot if I didn't have to.

Thanks!

Oxygen exposure is not an issue pre-boil. Aside from the extra labor of filling, then dumping a holding tank, there's nothing wrong with your approach.

In my limited experience I'd say it'll work. Boiling is going to remove oxygen anyway (which is why we shake or otherwise oxygenate the wort when we pitch the yeast).
Are you buying milled grains?

I would suggest this

Heat mash water in pot.
Mash grains with water in 48 quart cooler.
Heat sparge water in pot
Put sparge water in orange cooler.
Collect wort in pot.
Pour in sparge water.
Collect sparge wort in pot.

The difference is your not transferring the wort an extra time, less risk of spilling it that way. If you lose your hot sparge water due to an accident you just heat more, lose the wort and your day is over. Well after a large cleaning operation its over.

Gonefishing said:

In my limited experience I'd say it'll work. Boiling is going to remove oxygen anyway (which is why we shake or otherwise oxygenate the wort when we pitch the yeast).
Are you buying milled grains?

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Interesting to know about the boiling taking out the oxygen. The reason I was being cautious about splashing is that Palmer suggests in his All-Grain chapter that you should have a long enough tube coming from the tun to the boiling pot to prevent splashes. (pg. 205, , on #9, Lautering)
I'm not sure if he's being overly anal or what - so I guess his precaution is not really necessary?

As far as milling, I'm going to have it crushed for me, for now.... but I hope to get a mill eventually.

Yunus said:

I would suggest this

Heat mash water in pot.
Mash grains with water in 48 quart cooler.
Heat sparge water in pot
Put sparge water in orange cooler.
Collect wort in pot.
Pour in sparge water.
Collect sparge wort in pot.

The difference is your not transferring the wort an extra time, less risk of spilling it that way. If you lose your hot sparge water due to an accident you just heat more, lose the wort and your day is over. Well after a large cleaning operation its over.

Click to expand...

This makes sense too - though, I'm hoping that my orange cooler keeps the sparge water up to temp. That was my basic concern, as I'm doing this in unheated garage.

MTHarrington said:

Interesting to know about the boiling taking out the oxygen. The reason I was being cautious about splashing is that Palmer suggests in his All-Grain chapter that you should have a long enough tube coming from the tun to the boiling pot to prevent splashes. (pg. 205, , on #9, Lautering)
I'm not sure if he's being overly anal or what - so I guess his precaution is not really necessary?

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I'm not sure that boiling does take out the oxygen. I'm pretty sure that oxygen introduced this way (hot side aeration) binds in such a way that it isn't "boiled off," though I'm no chemist.

Nonetheless, I think that the fear of HSA is one of those things that's overblown in a homebrew situation.

"This makes sense too - though, I'm hoping that my orange cooler keeps the sparge water up to temp. That was my basic concern, as I'm doing this in unheated garage. "


I would actually not bother transfering sparge water to the cooler. I would just collect my initial wort runnings into the cooler or a bottling bucket. Send the final runnings to the kettle which will be empty at this point, and then transfer the initial runnings to the kettle. KISS

Ditto on using the cooler for a HLT. Wanna know what I did? I went to Target about this time of year 2 years ago and bought a turkey fryer set with a 7.5 gallon pot on clearance for under $20.

wilserbrewer said:

"This makes sense too - though, I'm hoping that my orange cooler keeps the sparge water up to temp. That was my basic concern, as I'm doing this in unheated garage. "


I would actually not bother transfering sparge water to the cooler. I would just collect my initial wort runnings into the cooler or a bottling bucket. Send the final runnings to the kettle which will be empty at this point, and then transfer the initial runnings to the kettle. KISS

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a lot of people use a cooler as a HLT. you can get your water up to temp and ready to go, and then your kettle is ready so you don't have to pour wort back and forth. much better IMO.

the following is just a suggestion (don't want to complicate further with all these ideas)

with the cooler as your HLT, instead of doing a batch sparge, you could try a "splash sparge". it's what my friend and i do for almost all of our brews now. basically, you match the runoff into your mash tun to the runoff to your kettle. just let it pour into the top of your mash tun on top of a piece of foil or something so that it doesn't upset the grain bed too much. works great.

i'm convinced fly sparging is just an expensive way for brewers to try and emulate commercial breweries. splash sparging is just as effective without all that silly equipment

I think you've got a great setup with what you have. I used the same setup for my first 8-10 batches...actually with less equipment than you have.

Your 8.5 gallon kettle can serve double duty as your HLT and your Boil Kettle. Use your big cooler as the mash tun of course, and just add your strike water to that. All you need is one more vessel to collect the wort. Once you're finished with heating the strike water, you can transfer the wort into your boil kettle.

Alternately, you could heat up your sparge water and store it in your 10 gallon cooler, serving as your HLT. Then just use typical 3 tier gravity setup:

HLT (round cooler) -> Mash Tun(big cooler) -> Boil Kettle

Any way you do it will work just fine and make great beer. For just 5 gallon batches, 3-4 gallons of water at a time is really not that heavy.

BierMuncher said:

Oxygen exposure is not an issue pre-boil. Aside from the extra labor of filling, then dumping a holding tank, there's nothing wrong with your approach.

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I just want to warn that this is controversial. There was that nagging article by Hoyle in BYO that referred to hot side aeration occuring in the mash. It is logical to think that any O2 introduced would be boiled off but from my limited reading on the topic, the compounds are created with oxygen present in hot wort and can't be undone. I personally can't back up those statements but I THINK they were discussed in that article.

meh. i've had many beers where i poured the wort pre-boil into each other with plenty of splashing and then aged them 6 months in the bottles. no oxidation taste as of yet.

HSA is still a homebrewer myth.

I do almost the same thing, except the container to catch the sweet wort in is my bottling bucket. Works just fine.

DeathBrewer said:

meh. i've had many beers where i poured the wort pre-boil into each other with plenty of splashing and then aged them 6 months in the bottles. no oxidation taste as of yet.

HSA is still a homebrewer myth.

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I'll second that...after pouring my mash back and forth between mash tun and bottling bucket trying to relieve a stuck mash, there was still no evidence of HSA. Not to say this isn't possible, but I'd say it's not plausible. Hey, this calls for a MythBusters homebrewing special!!!

Aluminum vs. Stainless Steel
Starter vs. None
HSA - truth or myth?
Mash Out or not?

DeathBrewer said:

meh. i've had many beers where i poured the wort pre-boil into each other with plenty of splashing and then aged them 6 months in the bottles. no oxidation taste as of yet.

HSA is still a homebrewer myth.

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I don't disagree with you but here's a devil's advocate angle. Your beer is of certain quality. It would be hard to know if reducing hot side aeration would markedly increase the end product because beer flavor is on such a delicate sliding scale. Of course, if you're happy with it, there's nothing to worry about.

I like to think that although I'm really happy with most of my beers, there's got to be tweaks here and there to make it better. Jury is out on HSA for me though.

MTHarrington said:

This makes sense too - though, I'm hoping that my orange cooler keeps the sparge water up to temp. That was my basic concern, as I'm doing this in unheated garage.

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Your cooler will keep the temp fine. When I mash in my 10 gallon cooler I will lose maybe 1 degree in an hour. You will probably be only putting the water in for 30 minutes and if you time it right it could be for only a couple minutes so I would not worry. But I also recently warped my 10 gallon cooler by heating it with 195F water so be warned that might happen. It still seals fine its just got a bump in the lining now.

This is what I do with a very similar equipment list to what you have:

Bobby_M said:

I don't disagree with you but here's a devil's advocate angle. Your beer is of certain quality. It would be hard to know if reducing hot side aeration would markedly increase the end product because beer flavor is on such a delicate sliding scale. Of course, if you're happy with it, there's nothing to worry about.

I like to think that although I'm really happy with most of my beers, there's got to be tweaks here and there to make it better. Jury is out on HSA for me though.

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i also use tons of different methods, often for the same style beers. i can honestly say that there is no difference in quality between my BIAG PM dunkelweizen and my meticulous, filter at every stage, AG dunkelweizens. granted, these are consumed rather quickly

i have my lazy days and i have my brews where everything is carefully considered and moderated. often we try to emulate commercial setups and styles. all methods put out fantastic beers.

however, i have never seen any evidence of HSA. once you have experienced it, let me know.

once the boogeyman shows up, i'll deal with him.

DeathBrewer said:

once the boogeyman shows up, i'll deal with him.

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Or your avatar will.

I think exposure to oxygen after fermentation is a bigger problem for homebrewers. I had a keg develop a leaky seal and despite careful racking to another keg (I now have a transfer jumper for next time) the beer has a noticeable cardboard off flavor that wasn't there before.