Just got a keggel and plan on doing some 10 gallon batchs. I have a few beers I brew offten and those are the ones that I will set up. Anything I should know when stepping up batch sizes?
Those of you who brew 10 gallons I have a question. For a brew kettle should I go with a 15 gallon or a 20 gallon? I am still using propane and will continue that in the future. What features do you recommend getting. In general I brew low hopped beers say sub 40 IBU.
Those of you who brew 10 gallons I have a question. For a brew kettle should I go with a 15 gallon or a 20 gallon? I am still using propane and will continue that in the future. What features do you recommend getting. In general I brew low hopped beers say sub 40 IBU.
If you are buying a new kettle, go ahead and buy a 20G. You wont regret it. You'll also want to consider a pump. It makes a world of difference when working with these larger volumes!
This might sound like a dumb question: How would I / could I use a pump in my setup?
I use 2 Igloo 10 gallon coolers (HLT and MT) and fly sparge via gravity to my brew kettle that sits on the garage floor as it slowly fills.
I struggle to lift that full kettle to my Blichmann with the extended legs.
How would I use a pump in that scenario? I don't see how I could...
Any thoughts would be appreciated!
Just got a kegel and plan on doing some 10 gallon batchs. I have a few beers I brew often and those are the ones that I will stepping up. Anything I should know when stepping up batch sizes?
In *your* scenario it sounds like you've already set things up for gravity and you may not need a pump. It also sounds like your HLT must be pretty high? In that case I might use the pump for transferring the heated water into the MLT up on its perch.
I personally don't like the idea of hot heavy liquids (and a lot of it with 10G+ batch sizes) being so high above me. So *my" setup is much more horizontal and closer to the ground. I use my pump for everything except for draining from MLT to the kettle; that's gravity for me too.
Aside from that, my pump is used for everything else including filling the fermentor(s). Which could be a good use-case for you too if you took those legs off of your Blichmann burner and set in on the floor. My pump is an MVP in my setup.
This might sound like a dumb question: How would I / could I use a pump in my setup?
I use 2 Igloo 10 gallon coolers (HLT and MT) and fly sparge via gravity to my brew kettle that sits on the garage floor as it slowly fills.
I struggle to lift that full kettle to my Blichmann with the extended legs.
How would I use a pump in that scenario? I don't see how I could.
Instead of draining from your mash tun directly into the kettle (which I'm assuming has to be on the floor instead of the burner, because if it were on the burner it would be too high to drain into from your mash tun), I would drain it into a grant instead, then pump from the grant into your kettle.
In fact, this is exactly what I do when I brew 10 gallon batches, because while I can drain from the grant into the kettle initially, as the kettle fills up, it reaches the same level as my grant, and wort will actually flow backwards from the kettle back into the grant unless I pump it.
In case you're not familiar with the concept, a "grant" is simply a small bucket in which you collect the runnings from the mash tun, and then either pump back into the mash tun (recirculating or vorlaufing), or draining/pumping into the boil kettle.
Using a grant has some nice benefits. It provides a convenient place to check the wort's temperature, gravity, pH, and colour, as well as evaluating its clarity (during recirculation) in deciding at what point it's clear enough to begin transferring to the boil kettle. It also allows you to pump wort from the mash tun to the boil kettle in setups like yours and mine (i.e., all on the same level, or not a 3-tier gravity system) without pulling a suction on the grain bed and risking disturbing/compacting it.
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