GRABASS Brew Fest

Where was your pressure restriction? The majority of your balancing pressure should come after the randall. That way you can keep it under enough pressure to eliminate flashing when it goes through the orify and depressurizes into the filter body. Ideally you want the randall to be the same pressure as the keg.

Come to think of it, if you could rig a randall together with a counter-pressure filler you'd be stylin'. No flashing across all those changes in pressure=no foam, because there is almost no change in pressure.

Wow, that looks like a blast. Hope some good brew came out of it

Dude said:

Walker--here's a hint--strike temp for your mash water should be 11-12 degrees higher than your target mash temp. SwAMi and I use the same exact coolers and we hit pretty much right on every time now.

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Yeah, I got that part... I guess I should have said that my problem was getting the strike water to the right temp. First too hot, so I cooled it. Then too cool, so I added boiling water. I ****ed with it for about 45 minutes before I had the right temp.

After it was in the cooler and all the grain was in, I came out at a flat 150°F.

Dude said:

For efficiency, check your crush. With that mash pad and false bottom, you should be close to 80% even with a batch sparge. Try stopping the flow halfway through the batch sparge, stir, and recirculate again. Your efficiency will rise 5 points.

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Billy and I had our grains milled at the LHBS. I think the crush was fine.

Mash pad.... wtf is that thing and how do I use it? I thought it was a piece of insulation for if I was using the fly-sparger, so it never got pulled into action this weekend.

-walker

Assuming that that I remembered how to use a hydrometer correctly on Sat, it looks like my efficiency was about 64%.


edit: wait a second. I forgot to account for the near half hallon of wort that was lost in the kettle's deadspace and in Billy's CFC.

That pushes me up to 67%.

Walker-san said:

Yeah, I got that part... I guess I should have said that my problem was getting the strike water to the right temp. First too hot, so I cooled it. Then too cool, so I added boiling water. I ****ed with it for about 45 minutes before I had the right temp.

After it was in the cooler and all the grain was in, I came out at a flat 150°F.



Billy and I had our grains milled at the LHBS. I think the crush was fine.

Mash pad.... wtf is that thing and how do I use it? I thought it was a piece of insulation for if I was using the fly-sparger, so it never got pulled into action this weekend.

-walker

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Crushing at the HBS is your first problem. I'd almost guarantee it isn't crushed enough. Once I started crushing my own grain my efficiency went up almost 15 points (fly-sparging). Make Jeff crush for you from now on--it'll make a difference.

Put the mash pad directly on top of the false bottom. Then your grain and water. It'll do wonders for recirculating.

Walker-san said:

Assuming that that I remembered how to use a hydrometer correctly on Sat, it looks like my efficiency was about 64%.


edit: wait a second. I forgot to account for the near half hallon of wort that was lost in the kettle's deadspace and in Billy's CFC.

That pushes me up to 67%.

Click to expand...

That's pretty close to what the efficiency was on my first batch. I got up to 70% on the second, I'm going to try the pause-the-sparge, stir, re-vorlauf trick next time and see if I can get closer to 75%.

Dude said:

Crushing at the HBS is your first problem. I'd almost guarantee it isn't crushed enough. Once I started crushing my own grain my efficiency went up almost 15 points (fly-sparging). Make Jeff crush for you from now on--it'll make a difference.

Click to expand...

I'll have my own grain mill in the very near future, but I'll try Jeff's or Billy's mills if I brew again before getting my own.

Dude said:

Put the mash pad directly on top of the false bottom. Then your grain and water. It'll do wonders for recirculating.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... Ok. I'll try that. When I first went through all that gear you delivered, I was trying to figure out what that was for. It seemed too clean (pristine white with no husk or anything stuck to/in it) to have ever been in contact with grain, so I thought it just went above the grain. It's got a center hole cut in it with foam that can optionally be removed, and I thought that the sparge sprinkler went through this hole... or... sparge water was trickled on top of the foam to disperse it better.

Now that I know wtf it is, I'll use it next time.

-walker

Some other news-worthy tidbits from the brew bonanza:

(1) Everyone got baptized with Holy Grail porter as I attempted to vent the pressure in my keg from the dip-tube side. Aftermath pictures are here:

• http://digitalninja.org/beer/brew_orgy/IMG_1010.jpg
• http://digitalninja.org/beer/brew_orgy/IMG_1009.jpg

(2) I think we used about 6,000 gallons of water between the four brewers. My back yard has officially been declared a swamp by the town of Cary, NC.

(3) Billy is a AG speed brewing guru. I think he finished his AG stout in about the same amount of time that Richard finished his extract Hefe.

(4) When the brewing was done, my wife took over some of the gear (a 5 gallon pot and propane burner) to do a low country boil for dinner; potatoes, sausage, shrimp, crayfish, corn, onions, etc. Good stuff.

BOSTONBREWIN' said:

When Dude has us up to VA for a group brew I think we're gonna need to rent a U-Haul. You don't realize how much homebrew crap you have until you have to transport it.

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No kidding.... That's going to take some planning for sure.

If hauling gear looks like it will be a problem, we might have to serialize the brews and just take a single mash tun and keggle up.

Walker-san said:

I'll have my own grain mill in the very near future, but I'll try Jeff's or Billy's mills if I brew again before getting my own.



Hmmm... Ok. I'll try that. When I first went through all that gear you delivered, I was trying to figure out what that was for. It seemed too clean (pristine white with no husk or anything stuck to/in it) to have ever been in contact with grain, so I thought it just went above the grain. It's got a center hole cut in it with foam that can optionally be removed, and I thought that the sparge sprinkler went through this hole... or... sparge water was trickled on top of the foam to disperse it better.

Now that I know wtf it is, I'll use it next time.

-walker

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Yeah, the guy never even used that mash pad. What I did with mine was I sewed the center hole to the larger disc, so now the whole false bottom is covered. If you leave that hole out it will just create a funnel to the bottom and it will be worthless.

Dude said:

For efficiency, check your crush. With that mash pad and false bottom, you should be close to 80% even with a batch sparge. Try stopping the flow halfway through the batch sparge, stir, and recirculate again. Your efficiency will rise 5 points.

Click to expand...

For some reason, I can get 78-80% efficiency with my Corona mill, but when I crush my grain at our LHBS (which Walker and I obviously share) I always get around 70%. No idea why...I would say crush, but I know the Kaiser used to get really good efficiency from that mill.

Maybe I need to just break down and by a grownup mill for my Christmas present...

Baron von BeeGee said:

Maybe I need to just break down and by a grownup mill for my Christmas present...

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Let me know if you want to get rid of that Corona.

Walker-san said:

Let me know if you want to get rid of that Corona.

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Obviously you're more than welcome to give it a whirl (haha) whenever you feel the need. If you stock up your grain stash it's a lot more convenient than driving to N. Raleigh!

All these "Barley Crusher" posts have got me thinking.

Julie wanted me to post a message for her to say that she hoped everyone has as good a time as she did on Saturday and that you all were great guests. She wants to do it again sometime soon.

my wife is telling me to have a bunch of guys over again to get drunk, smoke cigars, and brew beer on the deck?

WHat are you guys doing this weekend?

It was great fun and you and Julie are great hosts. We'll definitely host a GRABASS Festivus once we get the child-rearing more figured out, maybe early next year.