bcs462 process test
- Thread starter captrichc
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Water test
brewvet
Well-Known Member
Doing this myself now. In my experience so far there has been quite a few tweaks to my process to get it where it needs to be. I am sure once I do the first real test with grain in a few weeks, there will be some more tweaking involved.
Yes... automation ALWAYS requires tweaks!
Wizard_of_Frobozz
Well-Known Member
Water tests are a great way to iron out the bugs in your system. Definitely do that first. Go through the entire brewing process without grains to get your processes set up the way you want them. Do it multiple times if you have to. Water is cheaper (and less heartbreaking) to send down the drain compared to wort.
Keep in mind that a water test isn't quite the same as brewing with actual grain. Lots of things can change, depending on your system. For example, if you are running a RIMS heater in PID control, it will behave very differently during a water run compared to mashing with grains. This is mainly due to the grain bed slowing the flow rate you can achieve. If you have a way to monitor flow rate, that helps, but you really will never know how fast you can recirculate until you get the grain bed in the mash tun.
My first BCS brewing session was done after several water only brew sessions. I chose a very simple pale ale recipe for my first actual brew session, and I still had a lot of tweaking to do. More complex recipes required even more tweaking down the road.
My point is to expect your first couple of brew sessions to be learning experiences.
