Can you brew all grain without the hot liquor tank?

[saffellm]

I'm looking to switch over to all grain after brewing a dozen or so extract brews. In almost every all grain set up there's the HLT - MT - BK.

What if you eliminated the HLT? Here's my idea, and please debunk it if you do not think it would work. This requires a brewing rig with two burners:

Heat MT to strike temp, then dough in the grains. Hold for 60 minutes. Raise temp of mash to 172-180. Using two spouts in the MT, have one flow out to the BK. Use the other spout to pump wort back into the MT ala fly sparging. Eventually all the recirculating wort will flow out to the BK if both spouts are set to the same rate of flow.

Would you lose to much efficiency this way? Simple bad idea? Or good idea, but I'd need to up my grain bill a bit? Please critique away.

 

[The Pol]

This is a Brutus 20 really, yes it will work, you may give up a little eff., but you have other gains, so it all depends on what you are looking for.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

fly sparging with wort makes no sense what so ever. You are putting the sugars you extract back in. That is not sparging. That is vorlaufing.

A hot liquor tank is not needed provided you have a convienient way to heat clear water. Otherwise you are just no sparge brewing at a loss of efficiency.

 

[The Pol]

Technically yeah, this is NOT sparging...

But...

You probably will not fit ALL of your water and ALL of your grain in your MLT. This means you will need sparge water from somewhere.

You have this water in your BK....

After the mash, you do exactly what you propose, run the MLT to the BK then back to the MLT and do so until your wort SG is homogenous.

Once this is done, you drain all of the wort to the BK.

This is a Brutus 20

Basically your HLT, is your BK

 

[Scooby_Brew]

Of course you can go without a Hot Liquor Tank. One brewing kettle, one MLT is all you need. Are you going 5 or 10 gal? Fly sparge or batch sparge?

 

[raceskier]

Just think outside the box (bucket) a bit.

My solution is to use the BK to heat strike, then sparge water. Mash in my insulated MT. Then, sparge to a cheap HD LDPE bucket. (Yes it is food safe. Clean LDPE is clean LDPE and its good for 80 C (176F) continuous.) I batch sparge, so a single 5 gallon bucket is sufficient. If you are fly sparging 2 may be necessary for 5 gallon brews. The 2 - 5 gallon buckets are a lot cheaper than a HLT.

 

[Zaphod]

I do the same thing raceskier does. 1 burner under 1 BK/HLT, 1 cooler Mashtun, 1 buck... I mean WORT TRANSFER VESSEL (bucket sounds so pedestrian next to Hot Liquor Tank and Mash Tun).

Picture here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brewingphysicist/3508401075/

Similarly, I head up my mash water, transfer it into the MT. Wait for it to warm up the MT and come to temp, then mash in grains. Drain runnings into the bucket, put the MT on the ground and then batch sparge in hot water from the HLT, lift the MT back onto the barrels and drain the sparge water into the bucket. Rinse (sparge?) and repeat until satisfied. Then lift the bucket onto the barrels, put the BK/HLT on the ground and transfer for boiling.

I call my setup infinitely tiered since I have to do all that lifting off and back onto the barrels.

 

[wyzazz]

Look up BIAB (Brew In A Bag)... ;0)

 

[user 22118]

Back when I first started and didn't have a couple of fancy things, I used my mash tun to heat strike water in, my boil kettle to heat my sparge water in (and then put that hot water into a cooler or some other device, a bucket), then sparge from my mash tun into my heating BK and there you have a one burner system with two pots.

Now though, I heat in my boil kettle while waiting for the mash to finish. Then as mentioned put the water into an insulated container. Hook up my pump from the MT to the BK and start sparging away and heating BK at the same time.

 

[user 22118]

I did this to help you out, click it for a larger picture. Don't mind the paint handwritting, it's tough.

 

[mattmcl]

All you need is a 3 gal. pot for your HLT.

I heat mash water in BK, transfer to MLT for mash. Then batch sparge using 2 rounds of about 2.5 gallons, heated in an old 5 gal. pot, and collect in the BK. You can get a cheap pot like this at Wal Mart, and you don't aerate the wort by using a transfer bucket.

In fact, if you did the calculations, you could probably heat a portion of that water in an 8-quart pot to a high temp, and mix in a bucket with enough cold water to get your volume and temp right. You can get an 8-quart pot at Salvation Army for a buck.

 

[saffellm]

Thanks for all the advice/suggestions. I recently bought two kegs and am converting them to keggles. As the $ is tight, I wanted to run an all grain setup that isn't single tier, and with more than one pump. I looked at the alenut.com site for Brutus 20 inspiration. If I do that, it'll have to be a tiered system to avoid having to buy two pumps.

And I did look into BIAB a while ago, but just don't see that as an efficient way to rinse all the sugar off the grains nor a safe way to handle almost 20 lbs. of hot mash

 

[user 22118]

All you need is a 3 gal. pot for your HLT...
heated in an old 5 gal. pot, and collect in the BK.

That is still three pots for a guy that has two. I think he is asking if two can make be, but that is true what you say, the MLT can be a little smaller sometimes. I find though that for an average 10 gallon batch that I use anywhere from 6-10 gallons of strike water, so that means that I need a full sized pot for both the MLT and the BK.

I brew with two keggles and the beer tastes good. I find that I can use a 5 gallon aluminum pot to heat sparge water more quickly though and as mentioned above they are a fairly inexpensive purchase (like $30). Two pots is my norm though.

 

[beefeater]

No problem!

I brew 21 liter (5.5gallon) batches with one kettle (9.5 gallons), one cooler mash tun (36qt) and one plastic fermentation bucket.

Goes like this:

-Heat the strike water in the kettle.
-Mash in. While mashing, heat sparge water in the kettle.
-When mash time is up, drain first runnings to the ferm. bucket and close valve on cooler-mashtun.
-Add roughly half of your needed sparge water from kettle for first round of batch sparge.
-Wait 5 minutes and drain to bucket until dry, take a note of the amount of wort in bucket and close valve.
-Calculate how much water to add to grains for 2nd. round batch sparge (desired boil vol. minus what's in the bucket).
-Add this amount of water to the grains, stir and wait for 5 minutes
-Discard whatever water is left in the kettle and pour the collected wort into it.
-Turn on the heat and start bringing the wort to a boil.
-Drain last batch of wort to the bucket.
-Add the last wort to the kettle.
-Proceed with boil as with any setup while cleaning and sanitizing the bucket for fermenting the beer in it.
-Have a homebrew!

 

[JonK331]

I use my BK to heat strike and sparge water. I fly sparge into a 6.5 gallon plastic bucket (food grade) same as stated by raceskier and zaphod.

 

[JonK331]

Here's a pic of my relatively cheap set-up during sparge.

 

[Scooby_Brew]

Thanks for all the advice/suggestions. I recently bought two kegs and am converting them to keggles. As the $ is tight, I wanted to run an all grain setup that isn't single tier, and with more than one pump. I looked at the alenut.com site for Brutus 20 inspiration. If I do that, it'll have to be a tiered system to avoid having to buy two pumps.

And I did look into BIAB a while ago, but just don't see that as an efficient way to rinse all the sugar off the grains nor a safe way to handle almost 20 lbs. of hot mash

I brew with 1 keggle, 1 cooler mash tun (56qt), no pumps. The cooler I have was too small for batch sparging 10 gal batches, so I set it up for fly sparging:





I'm fly sparging a 10 gal batch. The BK acts right now as a HLT. The BK sits on the stand on the deck, the cooler sits on the floor of the deck, the buckets sit on the ground below the deck. The sparge water goes from the BK through the MLT into the fermenting buckets. Then I carry the buckets with wort back up to the BK for the boil. This way I have a 3-tier gravity system without using pumps and without separate hot liquor tun.

 

[jfkriege]

I am currently researching and designing a two vessel Brutus 20 type system, and the truth of it is, it can be a very efficient system. It simply depends on what you brew.

The way it works is that maximum efficiency is linked to the amount of water the grain hangs on to (which contains sugar because it is essentially no sparge). Therefore, the lower the OG of the beer, the more efficient the system will be, as there is less sugar the grain is hanging on to, and less grain to absorb that sugar water. For 6.0 gallons left in the kettle at the end of a 90 minute boil, I am not looking to drop below 75% efficiency until I get up to an OG of 1.069.

For that same setup, the theoretical efficiency at 1.045 is 83%, and at 1.100 is 65%. I brew smaller beers for the most part, and so the system is just fine with me. If you dont brew RIS and Barley wine all the time, I would say that it would be just fine for you as well.

The Brutus 20 also nearly eliminates the ability to over-sparge the grain and start extracting tannins, etc. It is also easy; I am a big fan of making things very simple.

Joshua

 

[Reelale]

After the mash, you do exactly what you propose, run the MLT to the BK then back to the MLT and do so until your wort SG is homogenous.

Once this is done, you drain all of the wort to the BK.

Hijack, sort of....So if I am understanding correctly, if doing a no-sparge brew, you don't start with the full volume of water in the BK? In other words, you would reserve your "sparge" water in the BK then recirculate? I was thinking the beauty of no sparge was the entire volume in BK, pump up to MLT, mash-in, then recirculate. 2 vessels, 1 pump, 1 burner. Am I missing something here?

 

[Denny]

I'm looking to switch over to all grain after brewing a dozen or so extract brews. In almost every all grain set up there's the HLT - MT - BK.

What if you eliminated the HLT? Here's my idea, and please debunk it if you do not think it would work. This requires a brewing rig with two burners:

Heat MT to strike temp, then dough in the grains. Hold for 60 minutes. Raise temp of mash to 172-180. Using two spouts in the MT, have one flow out to the BK. Use the other spout to pump wort back into the MT ala fly sparging. Eventually all the recirculating wort will flow out to the BK if both spouts are set to the same rate of flow.

Would you lose to much efficiency this way? Simple bad idea? Or good idea, but I'd need to up my grain bill a bit? Please critique away.

I don't have a HLT per se. I do use 2 kettles, one for boiling and one to heat water. Check out www.dennybrew for details .

 

[jim4065]

I don't have a HLT per se. I do use 2 kettles, one for boiling and one to heat water. Check out www.dennybrew for details .

That link isn't working for me. Can you post another?

 

[saffellm]

use this instead: http://www.dennybrew.com

looks like the .com was accidentally omitted.

 

[Denny]

Thanks for the correction!

 

[jim4065]

Denny, I really like the way that you just used a length of copper tube for the pick-up in your boil kettle. My kettle has a 1/2" female NPT inside, and I'm thinking of a street L to go lower and sideways, then a copper tube like yours in a semi-circle around the inner perimeter. Lots of little holes on the bottom only - and maybe I won't pick up so much hop debris and trub? I'd like to stay out of the middle because I read (somewhere) that you can whirlpool the cooled wort and most of the crap will stay in the center of the pot. Whaddaya think?

 

[Denny]

I think you're on the right track. I now use a side pickup like you're considering. I'm whirlpool dysfunctional, though. If I use pellets, they just go into the fermenter. If I use whole hops, I use bags.

 

[JVD_X]

I'm looking to switch over to all grain after brewing a dozen or so extract brews. In almost every all grain set up there's the HLT - MT - BK.

What if you eliminated the HLT? Here's my idea, and please debunk it if you do not think it would work. This requires a brewing rig with two burners:

Heat MT to strike temp, then dough in the grains. Hold for 60 minutes. Raise temp of mash to 172-180. Using two spouts in the MT, have one flow out to the BK. Use the other spout to pump wort back into the MT ala fly sparging. Eventually all the recirculating wort will flow out to the BK if both spouts are set to the same rate of flow.

Would you lose to much efficiency this way? Simple bad idea? Or good idea, but I'd need to up my grain bill a bit? Please critique away.

Sure... I do it all the time... when I brew on my stove and batch sparge. You only need a 2nd pot to heat the water in.

 

[BargainFittings]

Hijack, sort of....So if I am understanding correctly, if doing a no-sparge brew, you don't start with the full volume of water in the BK? In other words, you would reserve your "sparge" water in the BK then recirculate? I was thinking the beauty of no sparge was the entire volume in BK, pump up to MLT, mash-in, then recirculate. 2 vessels, 1 pump, 1 burner. Am I missing something here?

That is the way I do it. Many people fear using that thin a mash. It works for me.

The downside is the size of the vessel needed to mash goes up.

Wayne.