First 10 gallon fly sparge batch on my new brew rig

I'm preparing to brew tomorrow, and I'll have a lot of "firsts" on this run. So I have some questions.

My brew process up until now has been a 5 gallon batch using a 13.2 gallon converted keg as both HLT and BK on a propane turkey fryer, while batch sparging in a 48 qt Igloo ice chest MLT. It worked great, and after my first few batches I was able to get consistently good beer and repeatable results on multiple brewings of the same recipe with that setup.

I decided I wanted a 10 gallon brewery, so I built myself a Brutus 10 clone. At this point, it is fully functional but 100% manual. I don't have the gas valves and pilots and temperature control system wired up yet, although I have most of the parts to do it. I'm still working on that but I'm ready for manual brewing.

This will be my first 10 gallon batch, first batch on my new Brutus 10 clone, the first time to use my new 15.5 gallon converted keg HLT, MLT, and BK, my first fly sparge, and my first time to use a recipe with water volumes and temps calculated by BrewSmith. I have brewed this recipe before on my old setup, but I calculated all the variables by hand.

My first question is about priming the march pumps. They are positioned on my brew stand exactly like Lonnie has his on his Brutus 10. Most Brutus 10 clone builders have done it the same way. It is really hard to get them going. It too me several minutes on my first test run (no grain) to get them to move any water. Once they got going they worked great and I got fast flow rates, and I was then able to throttle them to a trickle with the ball valve on the outlet side (top). What's the trick to priming these things?

Next question is about how BrewSmith calculates water for mash and sparge. I set the batch size at 10.5 gallons because that's how much I want in the fermenter at the end of the boil. BrewSmith says my boil size should be 12.57 gallons, which sounds about right. For the mash it tells me I need 26.73 quarts. That works out to 1.25 quarts per pound of grain for my 21.38 lb grain bill. So far so good. Then mash out water volume is 14.97 more quarts. That is a total of 41.7 quarts, or 10.4 gallons. It then says I need 4.71 gallons of water for sparge. Why BrewSmith gives you mash volume in quarts and sparge volume in gallons is a mystery, but I'm not complaining.

The total water amount then, is 15.135 gallons. The grain will hold about .1 gallons per pound that can't be drained completely from the mash, or 2.13 gallons, leaving 13 gallons. Maybe BrewSmith uses a little more than .1 gallons per pound of grain, but it's close enough to the 12.57 gallon boil size. There are other losses in the system anyhow (e.g., hoses and what the dip tubes leave).

My question is about the 4.71 gallons for sparging. According to John Palmer in How to Brew chapter 17, you typically sparge with 1.5 times the mash water. 4.71 gallons is .45 times the mash volume of 10.4 gallons (counting mashout). I've never fly sparged before, so I'm wondering if BrewSmith is calculating the sparge volume correctly or if I've misunderstood something about fly sparging.

billtzk said:

I'm preparing to brew tomorrow, and I'll have a lot of "firsts" on this run. So I have some questions..

Click to expand...

My first question is about priming the march pumps. They are positioned on my brew stand exactly like Lonnie has his on his Brutus 10. Most Brutus 10 clone builders have done it the same way. It is really hard to get them going. It too me several minutes on my first test run (no grain) to get them to move any water. Once they got going they worked great and I got fast flow rates, and I was then able to throttle them to a trickle with the ball valve on the outlet side (top). What's the trick to priming these things?

Click to expand...

If the inlet of the pump points down and you have the pump well below the vessels then as soon as you open the valve on the vessel it should prime the pump. If you then start the pump it should take right off pumping at full volume unless the valve on the outlet of the pump is closed. This would also stop the pump from priming so leave it open until you turn on the pump.

Next question is about how BrewSmith calculates water for mash and sparge. I set the batch size at 10.5 gallons because that's how much I want in the fermenter at the end of the boil. BrewSmith says my boil size should be 12.57 gallons, which sounds about right. For the mash it tells me I need 26.73 quarts. That works out to 1.25 quarts per pound of grain for my 21.38 lb grain bill. So far so good. Then mash out water volume is 14.97 more quarts. That is a total of 41.7 quarts, or 10.4 gallons. It then says I need 4.71 gallons of water for sparge. Why BrewSmith gives you mash volume in quarts and sparge volume in gallons is a mystery, but I'm not complaining.

Click to expand...

You will get used to BS (Beersmith). It calculates just fine as long as your settings are correct when set up in the beginning. You can change the units of measurement so you see what you like for output, gallons, quarts, pints etc. Play with it.

The total water amount then, is 15.135 gallons. The grain will hold about .1 gallons per pound that can't be drained completely from the mash, or 2.13 gallons, leaving 13 gallons. Maybe BrewSmith uses a little more than .1 gallons per pound of grain, but it's close enough to the 12.57 gallon boil size. There are other losses in the system anyhow (e.g., hoses and what the dip tubes leave).

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You will eventually find out where everything goes but it is good to question so you don't make a big mistake.

My question is about the 4.71 gallons for sparging. According to John Palmer in How to Brew chapter 17, you typically sparge with 1.5 times the mash water. 4.71 gallons is .45 times the mash volume of 10.4 gallons (counting mashout). I've never fly sparged before, so I'm wondering if BrewSmith is calculating the sparge volume correctly or if I've misunderstood something about fly sparging.

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Fly sparging works great as long as your water is the right temperature and stays that way during the whole hour or whatever your sparge time is. Just shoot for your preboil volume and you are good.

In answer to your last question, Palmer could be a little inconsistent.
Move on to chapter 18 (the on line version). He recommends a mash thickness of 1.5 qts per lb grain, and says you should collect 6 - 7g wort for a 5g batch.
Assume you have 10# grain. You would mash with 15 qts (10# * 1.5), and you would sparge with 22.5 qts (15 qts * 1.5)
This means you would have used 37.5 qts water in total. Assuming grain absorption of about 0.1g ber #, you would lose 1g or 4 qts to grain absorption, so using his recommendations you would end up with 8.375g wort, which is way outside his target of 6 - 7g.
The other thing to consider is where the mash out volume gets added. You added it to the mash water volume. As it is added after the mash is complete, it should be added to the sparge water volume. That will make a big difference to your calculations.
The ratio of sparge water to mash water is really determined by the mash thickness, the amount of dead space in your equipment, and how much very low gravity wort
is left in the MLT at the time you end the sparge. In my case, I use about 2.1 times the amount of mash water for sparging, and need about an extra 3 gallons to account for dead space and wort left in the MLT at the end of the sparge.

-a.

I usually run a slightly thinner mash of around 1.5 qts per pound of grain in my batch sparge setup, so I think I'll do the same here. I'll just decrease my mash out water significantly or maybe even eliminate it and use the burner with recirculation to bring the temp up for mashout. That'll leave me more water to sparge with. Will that work?

My pumps are well below my kettles, the inlet points down and the outlet where the valve is to control flow points up. I think I had the outlet valve open all the way when I opened the drain valves on the kegs. I think I'll shorten the hoses that go from the ball valve on the kegs to the pump inlet. They droop about 8 or 9 inches below the pumps, and it might prime more easily with less droop.

It doesn't matter how you bring the temperature up. If you can do it with heat and recirculation, that would leave more water for sparging which I agree should be good.

You say you are using Beersmith to calculate your water volumes, but you are mashing at a different thickness. This will totally screw up the water volume calculations. I think you need to create a new mash profile using your figures for Beersmith to have a reasonable chance, and I'd also prepare a few gallons more sparge water than you think you will need. Running out of sparge water really sucks.

Good luck

-a.

billtzk said:

I think I'll shorten the hoses that go from the ball valve on the kegs to the pump inlet. They droop about 8 or 9 inches below the pumps, and it might prime more easily with less droop.

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Be sure to have enough water heated for sparging. You need more than enough due to losses.

I would not shorten the hoses. The outlet of the pump has to be open to room air to prime. If ANY pump outlet valves are closed this holds back the water (due to air being trapped) in the outlet line and the pump may not prime when you open the keg valve. Never run a pump empty!

I didn't get to brew today because I ended up having to work all night long and I'm bushed. I will probably just do another grainless test run today, then take tomorrow off to brew.

ajf said:

It doesn't matter how you bring the temperature up. If you can do it with heat and recirculation, that would leave more water for sparging which I agree should be good.

You say you are using Beersmith to calculate your water volumes, but you are mashing at a different thickness. This will totally screw up the water volume calculations. I think you need to create a new mash profile using your figures for Beersmith to have a reasonable chance, and I'd also prepare a few gallons more sparge water than you think you will need. Running out of sparge water really sucks.

Good luck

-a.

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I'm playing with the BrewSmith features to try to make the calculations work out for my preferred water to grain ratio. BrewSmith is a really powerful tool. I wished I'd have bought it a couple years ago, but I didn't know until someone mentioned in another thread recently that it will run on a Linux system under Wine.

WBC said:

Be sure to have enough water heated for sparging. You need more than enough due to losses.

I would not shorten the hoses. The outlet of the pump has to be open to room air to prime. If ANY pump outlet valves are closed this holds back the water (due to air being trapped) in the outlet line and the pump may not prime when you open the keg valve. Never run a pump empty!

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Good call by both of you on having extra sparge water. I'll definitely heat two or so more gallons than I think I need.

I think you hit on my priming problem. The main problem I had was with my HLT. The outlet of the pump goes to a return on the lid of my kegs. The return is a copper tube that goes down into the HLT about halfway. It was below the surface of the water in the HLT, so even though the pump outlet valve was open, the water in the HLT helped trap the air.

I had less problem with the mash tun. The return on the mash tun is open to the air, but I have a three-way valve on the return lid to route the water to a copper manifold inside the tun for recirculation, or to a spinning sparge arm mounted in the lid for sparging. I'm not sure if it was fully open when I tried to prime.

See my March pump location and orientation here. I used to have absolute fits getting my March pump to prime. I have run it in this configuration on (2) dry runs and one brew session this past week... and it doesnt take time to prime... it pumpf from the start at a rate of almost 7gal/min. It is also using 1/2" fittings and tubing.

Yes, I saw that in the thread you started recently to showcase your new setup. If I continue to have problems with my setup, I'll try that orientation. Unfortunately, I cannot raise my pumps up higher because they are already uncomfortably close to my burners. I'm going to have to add a heat shield to better protect my silicone tubing. I could reorient them at their current height, I believe, without difficulty. That would actually move the tubing further from the heat.

Edit: Someone mentioned possible cavitation problems with your arrangement. I'm not sure what that means, but I would be interested in knowing if you have any issues through your next few brew sessions.

Cavitation would only be an issue of there was not head pressure on the pump. I have run the system twice with just hot water to leak check... and completed a brew session with it as well. I have not had to prime the pump, there has been no cavitation... if there was going to be, it would have happened by now. I have pumped probably 40 gallons through the pump in this arrangement with about 10 starts and stops and there has been no hesitation with the pump actually pumping.

I think the concern about cavitation is null and void at this juncture.

If your pump is mounted low (The POL) shown above or this way shown below it should work but the advantage of the pump below is that if the inlet is on the bottom the air gets pushed up toward the outlet. This guy has a lot of hardware hanging out there and he could bump it with a heavy moving object and snap off the pump housing so I bet he is careful. He could move it back to a safer position though.

See, I had nothing but problems when I mounted my pump with the inlet on the bottom and the outlet on the top like everyone else does. Since I have mounted the pump vertically, and drastically reduced the pump "head" it works like a dream. To each thier own, but I have tried both configs and definately would not go back to the conventional mounting of the pump as it is preached here on HBT.

WBC said:

If your pump is mounted low (The POL) shown above or this way shown below it should work but the advantage of the pump below is that if the inlet is on the bottom the air gets pushed up toward the outlet. This guy has a lot of hardware hanging out there and he could bump it with a heavy moving object and snap off the pump housing so I bet he is careful. He could move it back to a safer position though.

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These are actually BOTH from the POL... one is my OLD config, one is the NEW

Actually water seeks the same level so either way should work if the outlet of the pump is open to room air. If you have the outlet going to another keg and that valve is closed the air is still trapped even though the pump ball valve on the outlet is open. If you have hoses that you can see through then you would see where the water goes and why.

Priming of the pump requires that you open the drain on your HLT or MLT and wait while the pump head fills up with water. It takes longer than you'd think. once full of water, it should take right off, if it still cavitates, cycle the pump on for a second, then off for 10 until you hear the pitch change and it pumps wort.