Question about All Grain draining from a MLT.

So I just converted a 10 Gallon rubbermaid cooler (the cylinder type) into my MLT and I have used a SS supply line for my filter. I see tons of pictures of people who don't use any kind of a nylon mesh bag at all when doing AG in theirs. I was wondering if it may be easier if I used one?

I would think that the grain would clog up the filter in a matter of minutes if I don't use one. Someone please help as I'm looking to do my first AG batch here in the next week or so.

I was having mad troubles with my SS braid clogging. Someone on here suggested I go buy a water heater supply line that is bigger. I did and absolutely no troubles now. I do not use anything to filter except the braid before going into the boil pot.

Oh yeah something else I learned is to let the runoff go slow, especially until it clears that helped to not have it plug up.

do you think you could tell me what the ID and OD is for that line so i can purchase a plug for it as well?

GLoBaLReBeL said:

So I just converted a 10 Gallon rubbermaid cooler (the cylinder type) into my MLT and I have used a SS supply line for my filter. I see tons of pictures of people who don't use any kind of a nylon mesh bag at all when doing AG in theirs. I was wondering if it may be easier if I used one?

I would think that the grain would clog up the filter in a matter of minutes if I don't use one. Someone please help as I'm looking to do my first AG batch here in the next week or so.

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The crushed grain husks are the actual filter the braid just provides a passage for the wort to leave
IMHO the nylon bag is just a added thing to deal with not worth the time.

jppostKW said:

The crushed grain husks are the actual filter the braid just provides a passage for the wort to leave
IMHO the nylon bag is just a added thing to deal with not worth the time.

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Well, I guess I'll just be using the water heater hose and no nylon bag then. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. Thanks everyone for the help.

P.S. OhioSteve, can you please let me know the ID and OD of the water heater line so that I can grab one at my local HD.

At my Home Depot the water heater supply line I got was something like 1"x18". The had one with SharkBite brand compression ends on it that I first picked up, then I found just normal threaded nut ends on one for $2 less in the next isle over. I think it cost me $6 which was $6 less than the 1/2"x18" sink line I tried first.

Water heater braid is your friend.

You can make a manifold from CPVC for around 6 bucks also. That is what I did. Haven't used it yet. But hear it works well.
10 feet of pipe was $4.00, some T fittings and 90* elbows for about $.25 each.
No worry about it being crushed by grain, and very easy to take apart (do not glue it) and clean.

Dave258 said:

You can make a manifold from CPVC for around 6 bucks also. That is what I did. Haven't used it yet. But hear it works well.
10 feet of pipe was $4.00, some T fittings and 90* elbows for about $.25 each.
No worry about it being crushed by grain, and very easy to take apart (do not glue it) and clean.

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Hmm . . . not a bad idea. I'm not using a rectangular cooler though. So it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference. I've seen them used in rectangular coolers and they are awesome, I just don't see them in the cylinder like coolers. I'm actually thinking about making the hose into a circle around the edge of the wall of the cooler. I'm kinda hesitant of doing this though because of reading something somewhere that spoke of not wanting to allow the water to go through the sides of the container because it doesn't filter through the grain bed and can actually be bad for efficiency.

Are you going to batch sparge or fly sparge? Manifold design or braid configuration are only important if you fly sparge, since you want the water to flow evenly throughout the grain, without channeling.

If you batch sparge, you're just going to dump the sparge water in, stir to mix well and let it settle for a few minutes. Then, vorlauf and drain. The braid/manifold simply restricts the grain until it compacts into a filter bed.

GLoBaLReBeL said:

Hmm . . . not a bad idea. I'm not using a rectangular cooler though. So it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference. I've seen them used in rectangular coolers and they are awesome, I just don't see them in the cylinder like coolers. I'm actually thinking about making the hose into a circle around the edge of the wall of the cooler. I'm kinda hesitant of doing this though because of reading something somewhere that spoke of not wanting to allow the water to go through the sides of the container because it doesn't filter through the grain bed and can actually be bad for efficiency.

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Here is mine...

pksmitty said:

Are you going to batch sparge or fly sparge? Manifold design or braid configuration are only important if you fly sparge, since you want the water to flow evenly throughout the grain, without channeling.

If you batch sparge, you're just going to dump the sparge water in, stir to mix well and let it settle for a few minutes. Then, vorlauf and drain. The braid/manifold simply restricts the grain until it compacts into a filter bed.

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I will be doing batch sparges. I will probably do the single infusion batch sparge for my first few batches and then maybe switch to another method to gain better efficiency.

Why haven't you considered using a false bottom? I've got a 10 gal round cooler and it works great. These are made specially for these coolers and fit perfectly. They come with the fitting that draws the wort from underneath the screen:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/all-grain-brewing/all-grain-equipment/false-bottoms-screens.html

On a side/off topic . .

If I'm doing a 5.5 gallon batch of all grain and the amount of grains are . .

9.5 Lb. Base grains
1 Lb. Specialty Grains

So total would be 10.5 lbs of grains in the mash. Now, based on the mash calculator online . . I get the following. .

Total Water needed : 9.31 Gal
Mash water : 3.28 Gal
Sparge water : 6.03 Gal

Now, I only want to end up with 5.5 gallons of beer, soo. . . . do I actually have to boil off 3.81 Gal of water? I don't understand how this is going to work? Won't that take a hell of a long time at a rolling boil?

Rebel

The grains will absorb a good bit of the mash water. The sparge water will mostly be recaptured, since the grains will already be saturated. For a 5.5 gal batch, you should probably start with about 6.5 gal in the kettle to allow for evaporation.


EDIT: Generally, you mash with 1.25 - 1.5 qts water per pound of grain. At 1.25 qts * 10.5 lbs = 13.125 qts = 3.28 gals.

pksmitty said:

Rebel

The grains will absorb a good bit of the mash water. The sparge water will mostly be recaptured, since the grains will already be saturated. For a 5.5 gal batch, you should probably start with about 6.5 gal in the kettle to allow for evaporation.

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Well . . what do you mean "start with about 6.5"? Are you saying that using the exact amounts of water that the calc tells me to will result in 6.5 Gal in the kettle after the mash and sparge, and with a boil time of 1 hour it will actually boil off the right amount to leave me with 5.5 gallons of beer?

Frank99 said:

Why haven't you considered using a false bottom? I've got a 10 gal round cooler and it works great. These are made specially for these coolers and fit perfectly. They come with the fitting that draws the wort from underneath the screen:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/all-grain-brewing/all-grain-equipment/false-bottoms-screens.html

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I would like to buy one, but i can get a heater line for like 7 bucks. The build has already cost me about $69, so trying to keep my costs down.

I'm at work, so I don't have access to Beersmith right now. 6 gallons sparge seems a little high to me. (I don't have a ton of experience, though). According to Palmer, you generally need 1.5 - 2 times as much sparge as mash water.

An easy way to do it is measure the wort after mashing, then add enough sparge water (figure just about all of it to come through the grain) to bring your pre-boil level to about 6.5 gallons. Compensate up or down if you know your boil-off rate.

By "start with about 6.5", I mean pre-boil amount in your kettle.

pksmitty said:

I'm at work, so I don't have access to Beersmith right now. 6 gallons sparge seems a little high to me. (I don't have a ton of experience, though). According to Palmer, you generally need 1.5 - 2 times as much sparge as mash water.

An easy way to do it is measure the wort after mashing, then add enough sparge water (figure just about all of it to come through the grain) to bring your pre-boil level to about 6.5 gallons. Compensate up or down if you know your boil-off rate.

By "start with about 6.5", I mean pre-boil amount in your kettle.

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Well, I used the Brew365 Mash and Sparge calculator on the net. It is pretty damn good from what I hear and I put in all the numbers and it gave me the previously said amounts of sparge and mash water.

What do you think?

I boil off about 1 gallon/hr. With those numbers, Beersmith says to use 3.25 gallons for the mash, and 4.62 galloms for the sparge. If you know how much you boil off per hour, simply add the right amount of sparge water to take you to 5.5 gallons + boil off/hr.

that is odd? Why did it give me soo much more?

You raise a great question (probably s/b another thread) and it was addressed in one of the stickies on the AG forum. One of the guys said you have 2 choices: sit around and boil off the entire collected wort (this is what I did last month for my 1st AG batch -it took 2 hours) or add additional grain and stop sparging when you get your desired volume (probably 6.5 - 7 gal since you'll need to boil for an hour). Your efficiency is going to decrease if you collect less sparge water, so you need to add additional grain. I buy in bulk at $0.65/pound, so I'm doing the add'l grain route this weekend...

GLoBaLReBeL said:

that is odd? Why did it give me soo much more?

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I believe your going to have to monkey with your processes for a while to find out your particular boil off, grain absorbtion, Kettle and tun deadspace are etc...

I use beersmith and it took me a few batches to get it right for my setup. An example would be...........I have 8.75 gal of total water for the grain poundage within that recipe. This leaves me with about 7.6 gal of water preboil for 90 min. At the end of that boil I have 6 gal left for 5.5 into fermenter. i check gravity at preboil and adjust with more water or DME as needed.

Obviously this isn't always the case depending on how vigorous the boil is going, grain crush etc....