Recent content by Vabeer

For anyone on Facebook, there is a Williams Mash & Boil User Group. Its a great resource with a lot of good information and people doing interesting mods. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1336301079783114/

I'm only getting mid-sixties efficiency, so it's not helping me that much (going to try conditioning the grain and check my water chemistry next) but there are also other benefits. My wort is clearer, and I don't need a separate sparge water heater. I've been heating about 6.5- 7 gallons in...

That could be an issue, since the M&B temp sensor is located on the bottom, you're only measuring the temperature of the wort below the grain tube. It's also very close to the heating elements, so I think the temp fluctuations could be pretty localized. The manual recirculation could be...

Mainer - what was your mash temp and are you using a thermometer in the grain bed?

Mainer - What's your grain to water ratio in the mash? In the Williams Brewing support blog, they report getting 88% efficiency with an 11 pound grain bill using .3 gallons of strike water per pound. I tried this and its no picnic, the mash gets really really thick - I also compacted my grain...

I'm running a pump also, and I haven't found heat loss to be a big problem. I'm probably running about 4 feet of silicon tubing. I monitor the grain bed temp with a separate thermometer, and when it's about to drop below target, I manually bump up the temperature on the control panel so the...

It was pretty basic, and I'm not skilled. You can install it with a good phillips screwdriver. You flip the M&B upside down and take off the bottom panel -- the thermostat sits under the reset rod. The rod and the thermo are attached to the bottom of the kettle with two long phillips bolts...

Had my best brew day yet with the M&B. I used a 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag inside the mash tube. It fit well with a few binder clips to hold it in place. Saison recipe with a 14.5 lb grain bill. If you use a bag, make sure you remove the mash tube handle before pulling the bag out -...

Had another brewday since my disaster with the compacted grain bed, and it went much better. Adjusted the crush and mashed about 14.5 pounds for a rye pale ale recipe. Used all the good advice from this board - started slow and the recirculating mash went fine - mash temp held steady. Sparge...

I've sent an email asking them to clarify what the differential actually is. The Q&A on their web site has three different answers, a six-degree differential (dropping six degrees from set point before heat turns on), a five-degree differential, and three-degrees above or below the set point...

For those seeing a 12-degree swing, are you using the 1,000 or 1,600 watt setting during the mash? Seems to me the 1,600 watt setting could contribute to overshoots because it would continue adding a little more heat to the wort after shutoff (1,000w would too, but not as much). Also, the...

Second time brewing with the Mash and Boil – it was a disaster, thanks to a cascading series of rookie mistakes. I’m posting the details hoping to spare others. First batch was a hefeweizen using some old grain, hops and yeast I had in the fridge. It actually came out pretty well...

My first batch with the Mash & Boil, I started by heating 6.75 gallons to 172 degrees, then transferred 3.5 gallons to a cooler to hold for sparge water. It took less than a quart of cold water to get the remaining water down to mash temp. It took an hour and 20 minutes to heat 6.75 gallons...