Anvil Foundry Mash Eff

[dwshotwell]

I recently bought the Anvil Foundry as a way to move from extract to all grain. I've run two batches so far, and efficiency has been low - but at this point I don't know what I don't know. I don't have enough experience with all grain brewing to know where to begin correcting the process.

Essentially I've been following the process outlined in the Anvil instruction manual, and of course cruised You Tube extensively. I've used two recipes from Adventures in Homebrewing (an Irish Red and a Blonde Ale).

There's some great info in this thread, but again I don't know enough to effectively apply it. If some of you more experienced folks could help outline the process of brewing on the Anvil, incorporating the tweaks discussed above, I'd appreciate it (or point me to another thread? I found this one by searching this site for Anvil Foundry but didn't find many others).

 

[Noob_Brewer]

I recently bought the Anvil Foundry as a way to move from extract to all grain. I've run two batches so far, and efficiency has been low - but at this point I don't know what I don't know. I don't have enough experience with all grain brewing to know where to begin correcting the process.

Essentially I've been following the process outlined in the Anvil instruction manual, and of course cruised You Tube extensively. I've used two recipes from Adventures in Homebrewing (an Irish Red and a Blonde Ale).

There's some great info in this thread, but again I don't know enough to effectively apply it. If some of you more experienced folks could help outline the process of brewing on the Anvil, incorporating the tweaks discussed above, I'd appreciate it (or point me to another thread? I found this one by searching this site for Anvil Foundry but didn't find many others).

First off - what do you mean exactly by low efficiency? what were the mash efficiency numbers? Ive brewed 8 times on this 10.5g system and Ive been trying different things on the same style beer (NEIPAs with all about 65% base malts and 35% flaked/malted adjuncts) and my mash efficiencies have ranged from 60%-79% but Ive been changing processes/approaches and making some mistakes along the way. Do you have a grain mill? If you do and have control over your crush that will be a huge help. IMO, you have two choices with this system: 1) abide by the anvil guidelines posted in the manual with using a "moderate" crush which I interpret as a range of gap between 0.036"-0.40" and follow the recirc guidelines OR 2) get yourself a wilserbag and crush fine (0.028-0.32"ish) but don't sweat the recirc for at least the first 30minutes while the mash converts. If you try to tow the line in the middle, thats where my issues were with the grain bills I outlined above. Personally, I think I prefer adding the bag to help with keeping grain out of the boil kettle and going with a finer crush. My best efficiencies (with 30% adjuncts producing a sticky-ass mash) have been with at 0.030" using the wilserbag. Ive also sparged for all my brews. Sparging with finer mashes is obviously tougher than with a moderate grain crush so theres a balance for sure with this system. With my limited experience - I think that the mash will do well in either moderate/finer grain crush approaches, but still seeking the best lautering solutions. Honestly though, after all the trials and errors on brew day, all my brews have been great in the end. My wife likes them too!

 

[dwshotwell]

Yeah, I have a vague idea of what some of the above means. By efficiency all I meant was that my gravity seems lower than it should be, and that's what I thought efficiency meant. I don't know enough to know what I'm doing wrong, and I guess I'll just have to soldier on and figure this out on my own. I have watched the various videos I could find on You Tube, and it seems like I'm doing things correctly. I'll keep lurking here and try to pick up what I can. I do not own a crusher, I just used the one at the home brew store.

 

[doug293cz]

Yeah, I have a vague idea of what some of the above means. By efficiency all I meant was that my gravity seems lower than it should be, and that's what I thought efficiency meant. I don't know enough to know what I'm doing wrong, and I guess I'll just have to soldier on and figure this out on my own. I have watched the various videos I could find on You Tube, and it seems like I'm doing things correctly. I'll keep lurking here and try to pick up what I can. I do not own a crusher, I just used the one at the home brew store.

Efficiency is a measure of how much sugar you collected vs. how much potential sugar was available. Your SG may be low, but if your volume is high, you could still have acceptable efficiency. If you have the same amount of sugar in a larger volume of wort, your efficiency is the same, but your SG will be lower.

Brew on

 

[Oginme]

Yeah, I have a vague idea of what some of the above means. By efficiency all I meant was that my gravity seems lower than it should be, and that's what I thought efficiency meant. I don't know enough to know what I'm doing wrong, and I guess I'll just have to soldier on and figure this out on my own. I have watched the various videos I could find on You Tube, and it seems like I'm doing things correctly. I'll keep lurking here and try to pick up what I can. I do not own a crusher, I just used the one at the home brew store.

There are proactive steps you can take to help your understanding of what is going on. As doug293cz pointed out, efficiency is more than just the gravity measurement. The best thing you can do for your process is to define your actual volumes and your actual process efficiency. This will help you in making your process more predictable and consistent.

Start by tracking your volumes carefully. The more accurately you measure your volumes, the faster you will get to predictable volume in versus out. Measure in your initial strike water volume and sparge volume. Next, your pre-boil volume is important to define how much wort you leave behind in the grain. This volume divided by the weight of the grain gives you a water retention per wt unit of grain (lb/kg/oz/g) so that you can figure out the water needed for this loss as a function of your grain bill.

Next post-boil volume will give you the amount of loss due to boil off. Lastly, your volume into the fermenter will allow you to track how much of your post-boil volume made it there and the difference is the amount of trub and wort you left behind.

Now, the measurement of specific gravity pre-boil and into the fermenter will give you your sugar extraction and eventual process losses.

I step through the process, specifically for the Anvil Foundry and BeerSmith, in a post on the BeerSmith forum which can be found here: http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,20874.msg74583.html#msg74583

 

[WesBrew]

Yeah, I have a vague idea of what some of the above means. By efficiency all I meant was that my gravity seems lower than it should be, and that's what I thought efficiency meant. I do not own a crusher, I just used the one at the home brew store.

Simply put: if you prepare a recipe for 5.0 gallons and you wind up with 5.5 gallons in your fermentor, your gravity measurement will likely be lower than your target. when you oversparge you are collecting less sugars with that extra liquid and diluting your wort in the kettle. if you notice you collected too much wort from the mash, you can always boil it longer to get it to the correct volume.
If you aren't using any brewing software to help with recipe creation or water volume calculations, see the above post on how to calculate it.
I don't have an anvil but its been mentioned that using a biab bag like "wilser bag" in the mash pipe and milling the grain finer would help bump mash efficiency. since you don't have a mill, you could ask your brew shop to double-mill the malts. also, look up online how to calculate mash effeciency.

 

[McKnuckle]

I find it interesting that the Anvil Foundry is the center of an efficiency controversy. It's a well-proven type of brewing device at this point, with many similar products available. They work well and have few if any serious "gotchas." Also, they should not need to be jerry-rigged with an extra brew bag.

You do want to be aware of grist contact time and exposure during the mash. By that, I mean the amount of time during the mash that the grist is fully and evenly saturated with liquor.

There are perhaps three main factors affecting this:

1. The crush, but only to the extent that it's either too fine (inadequate flow) or too coarse (inadequate surface area exposure);
2. The flow pattern through the grist, which, if there are too many escape pathways for the liquid, some areas of grist will not be fully saturated; and
3. Recirculation rate, if applicable, which can exacerbate #2 if too rapid.

From what I've seen of the Anvil's malt pipe, it has a fairly wide band of holes near the bottom. This might encourage wort to channel around the circumference of the pipe, rather than evenly through the center of the grist. I would think that either having no circulation (not ideal for temp control) or very slow circulation would ameliorate that.

The Braumeister, which I use, pumps from the bottom to the top of its malt pipe. The malt pipe has no holes at all in its sides. Only the bottom and top plates are porous. This ensures that the entire cylinder of grain is evenly saturated with continuously flowing wort during the mash.

In any case, no system is perfect. Nothing beats just following generally accepted, consistent practices such as a standard "good" crush, careful volume measurement, dialing in the resulting efficiency, and moving on to simply building recipes that reflect it - whatever it may be.

 

[WeHeavy]

I find it interesting that the Anvil Foundry is the center of an efficiency controversy.
There are perhaps three main factors affecting this:

1. The crush, but only to the extent that it's either too fine (inadequate flow) or too coarse (inadequate surface area exposure);
2. The flow pattern through the grist, which, if there are too many escape pathways for the liquid, some areas of grist will not be fully saturated; and
3. Recirculation rate, if applicable, which can exacerbate #2 if too rapid.

From what I've seen of the Anvil's malt pipe, it has a fairly wide band of holes near the bottom. This might encourage wort to channel around the circumference of the pipe, rather than evenly through the center of the grist. I would think that either having no circulation (not ideal for temp control) or very slow circulation would ameliorate that.

After a dozen or so brews with the Anvil I've come to the conclusion the efficiency problem with it stems from the mash basket tall design with holes up the side. The tall design causes the grains to become compacted and with holes up the side lets the sparge water just run out the sides. I got inconsistent results when trying to sparge. I finally stopped sparging and started treating it like a BIAB and finally started getting consistent results. 72% efficiency.

I still use the 400 micron bag and do a complete stir of the mash every 15 minutes, use the pump to recirculate and set my roller gap at .040

 

[Fidelity101]

So what's the verdict overall? I really like the Anvil Foundry's ability to switch between 120/240v but I also like the brewzilla v3.1 because it doesn't seem to have the same problem with the tall mash basket (with side holes). I also like the Grainfather but it's EXPENSIVE and it's only 120v.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

So what's the verdict overall? I really like the Anvil Foundry's ability to switch between 120/240v but I also like the brewzilla v3.1 because it doesn't seem to have the same problem with the tall mash basket (with side holes). I also like the Grainfather but it's EXPENSIVE and it's only 120v.

The biggest "issue" I see with the anvil foundry 10.5g overall seems to be related to lower efficiency but I really don't think thats isolated just to the foundry. The foundry (I'm on 240V) maintains temps very well to what I set it to. And even though Ive missed my efficiency numbers at times due to experimenting with different variables, the end result has still been great beer! Ive gotten to the point of having mash efficiencies in the 75-79% range with 16lb grain bills that have ~20-30% flaked oats/malted oats/white wheat etc that inherently make the grain bill sticky. I think I can still optimize my mash efficiencies a little better as well as brewhouse efficiencies by cutting down on losses along the way. Its been a fun challenge along the way learning the ropes. Since I do have a bag and a grain mill, I have a lot of flexibility in how I use the system. Again - in the end, its made some great wort for me and especially for the price, I still wouldn't go in a different direction. Lastly - my wife likes the beer Ive produced which is essential in having your life partner backing your hobby .

 

[dwshotwell]

Simply put: if you prepare a recipe for 5.0 gallons and you wind up with 5.5 gallons in your fermentor, your gravity measurement will likely be lower than your target. when you oversparge you are collecting less sugars with that extra liquid and diluting your wort in the kettle. if you notice you collected too much wort from the mash, you can always boil it longer to get it to the correct volume.
If you aren't using any brewing software to help with recipe creation or water volume calculations, see the above post on how to calculate it.
I don't have an anvil but its been mentioned that using a biab bag like "wilser bag" in the mash pipe and milling the grain finer would help bump mash efficiency. since you don't have a mill, you could ask your brew shop to double-mill the malts. also, look up online how to calculate mash effeciency.

Thanks for the above suggestions, guys. I'll build on this with my next attempt. Lots of details. I thought I was ready to go from extract to all - grain, but there's more to the switch than I anticipated, even with an all in one system. I am pretty sure my volumes were as much a problem as anything. I followed the volume calculations that came with the machine, but I don't think I had as much boil off as they expected, so my post - boil volume was high. I'll pay more attention next time around.

 

[WeHeavy]

Thanks for the above suggestions, guys. I'll build on this with my next attempt. Lots of details. I thought I was ready to go from extract to all - grain, but there's more to the switch than I anticipated, even with an all in one system. I am pretty sure my volumes were as much a problem as anything. I followed the volume calculations that came with the machine, but I don't think I had as much boil off as they expected, so my post - boil volume was high. I'll pay more attention next time around.

Before your next brew day, calibrate your equipment.

Check your scale with a known weight.

Weigh out a gallon of water, 8.34 lbs. Then make a permanent mark on your vessel and always use that. Plastic kool-aid pitchers work great.
Never trust the markings on anything, My Anvil's gallons markings are off by 3 pints at the 7 gallon mark, and as many plastic fermenter buckets that I've had, I've never had one spot on.

Check your thermometer by filling a glass full of ice then add water to top off. It should read 32 degrees. Then boil water and check, don't forget to take into account your altitude.
You'd be surprised how many thermometers I've found to be off.

Follow the instructions that came with your hydrometer/refractometer for calibrations

You can really chase your tail if your measurements are off.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

Before your next brew day, calibrate your equipment.

Check your scale with a known weight.

Weigh out a gallon of water, 8.34 lbs. Then make a permanent mark on your vessel and always use that. Plastic kool-aid pitchers work great.
Never trust the markings on anything, My Anvil's gallons markings are off by 3 pints at the 7 gallon mark, and as many plastic fermenter buckets that I've had, I've never had one spot on.

Check your thermometer by filling a glass full of ice then add water to top off. It should read 32 degrees. Then boil water and check, don't forget to take into account your altitude.
You'd be surprised how many thermometers I've found to be off.

Follow the instructions that came with your hydrometer/refractometer for calibrations

You can really chase your tail if your measurements are off.

THIS! couldn't agree more with taking extra time to measure/calibrate/measure all your equipment. I took the time, twice!, to do this with volume measurements and it has helped tremendously rather than eyeballing the volumes based on the stamped markings.

 

[McKnuckle]

I never trust visual liquid volume marks, or my own crappy eyesight!

I weigh all my water and wort in kilograms. Water weight in kg equals liters. There are 3.785 liters in a gallon. Simple math and very accurate.

For wort, divide the result by the gravity to get the equivalent water volume. If very hot (just off the boil), divide again by 1.04 to account for thermal expansion.

I put tare weight markings on most of my vessels to make this easy. Just weigh the full vessel, then subtract the tare weight to get the liquid weight.

 

[dwshotwell]

The world of partial mash / extract brewing didn't require anywhere near that level of precision, so I'd never really thought about it. Thank you all. I'll go through that process before I brew again.

 

[McKnuckle]

All grain brewing doesn't strictly require that level of precision, either. But if you are going to aim for gravity and volume targets, then evaluate and question your results, it makes sense that you need to measure things accurately to have a basis for making adjustments. Later on, when you get your process and equipment settled, you can be less stringent about it if you like.

Today, for example, I went nuts and didn't weigh out 12L of strike water. I just filled visually to the 12L mark on the mash pipe. It felt so liberating.

 

[dwshotwell]

Today, for example, I went nuts and didn't weigh out 12L of strike water. I just filled visually to the 12L mark on the mash pipe. It felt so liberating

Thanks again. Makes sense. I'll be more scientific until I get it figured out. In general I'm not a detail person. I'm a cook, not a baker, and that's carried over to my brewing.

 

[augiedoggy]

After a dozen or so brews with the Anvil I've come to the conclusion the efficiency problem with it stems from the mash basket tall design with holes up the side. The tall design causes the grains to become compacted and with holes up the side lets the sparge water just run out the sides. I got inconsistent results when trying to sparge. I finally stopped sparging and started treating it like a BIAB and finally started getting consistent results. 72% efficiency.

I still use the 400 micron bag and do a complete stir of the mash every 15 minutes, use the pump to recirculate and set my roller gap at .040

I agree with your theory as it has been one Ive used to advocate against biab folks using baskets instead of bags with recirulation. but if this were True wouldnt we see this complaint from all the others using brew in a basket designs with recirculation like brewboss?

 

[jdauria]

I have three brews done on the 10.5 foundry. No sparging, recirculating only and use a bag inside the malt pipe.

Batch 1 - milled at 0.040 69.2% ME 63.2 BH -stirred mash every 15
Batch 2 -milled at 0.035 76.9% ME 68.5 BH - no stirring of mash as sparge plate was stuck in place due to bag
Batch 3 - milled at 0.035 72.1% ME 69.1 BH - stirred twice during the mash

With regular BIAB before the Foundry I was usually around 82-85% ME and 75% brewhouse.

 

[Chucker17]

Probably a simple answer to this question, but it’s been a long 4 weeks with 3 teenagers stuck at home due the current state of affairs. So, Anvil has a mash pipe cover now (and some have made there own). Why, when covering the side can you only do session or lesser volume batches? What am I missing? I assume something obvious. Thanks in advance.

 

[Oginme]

Probably a simple answer to this question, but it’s been a long 4 weeks with 3 teenagers stuck at home due the current state of affairs. So, Anvil has a mash pipe cover now (and some have made there own). Why, when covering the side can you only do session or lesser volume batches? What am I missing? I assume something obvious. Thanks in advance.

The optional side perforation blocker they now offer for the 10.5 gallon unit does not limit anything that the Anvil is capable of doing.

The intent of the side perforations in the mash basket was to relieve some of the downward pressure on the grain bed during recirculation of the wort and thus to help avoid getting a stuck mash. By doing so, it made it more likely, when making smaller batches, that the wort flow would be able to bypass the grain bed resulting in very poor extraction. The blocker reduces this risk.

 

[Chucker17]

Makes sense on the stuck mash. (That had crossed my mind but I can’t even say it was an educated guess!)

I have the Foundry and have made 2 beers, 1 hit the target OG and the other was low, both doing the no sparge methods as set forth in the manual. I was more concerned with operating the Foundry then efficiency. No need, it went smooth. Making my 3rd this weekend and will be implementing the ideas set forth on here. My plan is to sparge this time. I live quite far from a homebrew store so I get my kits online, usually from Northern Brewer, so I only brew 5 gallon batches. My understanding is they mill the grain medium. I’ve had great results in hitting the target OG under my old cooler system.

I’ve been home brewing since 1994, extract up until about 5 years ago when I made the jump to all grain. I am frequently on this site getting answers to my questions. I appreciate the info and help.

 

[mbg]

I’ve strongly considered an all in one system and was leaning towards the Foundry until reading this post. WeHeavy, out of curiosity, what alternative systems have/would you consider that aren’t 3x as much as the Foundry

@blaapple Oh boy, I have the 10.5 on pre-order and getting the same feelings. Did you end up purchasing a system?

@WeHeavy Sounds like you ended up not liking the Foundry. Looks like you did lots of investigation of competitive mash/boil systems but really haven't seen your choice if you were to buy again. Some of the other systems seem to be in another price range than the Foundry. Could you share what you would buy today?

I do agree that the columnar design of all-in-one devices do lead to a higher sensitivity to mash compaction. Anytime you have a deeper grain bed that you pull or push liquid through you create a greater tendency to cause compaction and/or channeling which lowers the efficiency of the system. I have found, for my crush quality, if I recirculate the wort at a little less than a liter per minute that I can keep the grain bed loose and get complete conversion efficiency (98% to 100%) and acceptable lauter efficiency without any sparge step. My mash/lauter efficiency on the Anvil is now settled in at 85 +/- 1% (full volume mash/no sparge) after playing around with crush quality, recirculation flow, and different sparging methods for the first 10 brews.

@Oginme Enjoy your posts in this thread as well as many others. I decided to pre-order the 10.5 system after my initial research until I read through comments here. I already have a tun/boiler system so don't need this to brew but was looking for something to simplify my brew day.

Seems you are getting the best efficiencies from this system than most but I see you have the 6.5. Would like to duplicate (or try to) your excellent results.

Maybe you and others can populate "Best-Practices" for Foundry:

1) Might have missed it but what is your crush gap?
2) No sparge.
3) Low re-circulation - 1L/min or less.
4) Use a mash bag (probably doesn't affect eff.).
5) Block side wall perforations.
6) Add rice hulls.

Thanks
Mike

 

[Oginme]

@Oginme Enjoy your posts in this thread as well as many others. I decided to pre-order the 10.5 system after my initial research until I read through comments here. I already have a tun/boiler system so don't need this to brew but was looking for something to simplify my brew day.

Seems you are getting the best efficiencies from this system than most but I see you have the 6.5. Would like to duplicate (or try to) your excellent results.

Maybe you and others can populate "Best-Practices" for Foundry:

1) Might have missed it but what is your crush gap?
2) No sparge.
3) Low re-circulation - 1L/min or less.
4) Use a mash bag (probably doesn't affect eff.).
5) Block side wall perforations.
6) Add rice hulls.

Thanks
Mike

I will answer as best I can.

1) crush: I use a corona style mill, so there really is no set gap. I have a medium to fine crush with a minimum of flour. I measure my crush based upon the sampling of 100 grams of the grist. I spread it out on a cookie tray and collect any kernels which appear to be intact. I gently squeeze them to make sure they are whole and any which are shattered internally get put back with the rest of the grist. I then weigh the intact kernels to get a percentage of kernels which have not been crushed. I aim for < 1 gram (1%) which is usually made up of petite kernels. I then collect the rest of the crushed grain and what is left is indicative of my 'flour'. This is less than 0.1 grams for a normal grind.

When I first used my Anvil, I backed off a bit from my BIAB grind and was in the mid-70's for mash efficiency. My uncrushed kernels were around 2%, flour almost non-existant. After dialing in my recirculation rate and the impact of using a bag to line the mash basket, I started slowly tightening up on the grind. I eventually ended up at less than 1% intact kernels and 0.22 grams of flour with a mash efficiency at 88.2%. I noticed the level in the mash basket was starting to build up a bit following a 60 minute mash, so I backed off to the position I cited above. I am now consistently between 84% and 86% mash efficiency.

2) No Sparge: This is more of a personal choice. Using the settings I ended up at for crush, I have tried the Anvil recommended sparge and a more traditional split of infusion v. sparge water to achieve approximately equal run offs from each. The traditional split ended up a bit worse, but I also think that I was pouring the sparge water through the grains a bit too fast. The Anvil recommended sparge I tried twice and ended up at 85.3% and 85.9% mash efficiency. While these are at the high end of my data, it is not statistically significant enough to have me move from a no sparge mash, simply because it is easier for me and not enough of a difference to be chasing that little gain.

3) Low recirculation rate: I mistakenly started my first batch with a pretty strong recirculation. While I did not get a stuck mash, I could see channels when I pulled the basket out and the grain bed was pretty compacted. Maybe related, maybe not. Anyway, I figured that I started with 15 liters or so of water and if I recirculated at a rate of 1 liter per minute, the grains would see a change over in wort four times during a mash which is way more than I was getting when I did BIAB on my stove (no recirculation at all).

I dug deep into my Unit Ops texts because I remember doing modeling of liquor flow through a bed of wood chips for making pulp for papermaking. I rediscovered "Darcy's Law" relating to the flow of liquid through a porous media. Basically, the more of a pressure differential created between the top of the liquid column and the bottom, the greater the chance of compacting the media (grain bed). So if you pull wort from the bottom of the basket and deposit it on the top, you create that differential in pressure. The greater the flow you try to get through the media (grains) the greater the pressure differential from top to bottom and the more likely the grain bed will compact.

So I cut the flow rate back quite a bit to around the 1 liter per minute range and have held that ever since. In opening up the top of the Anvil at teh end of the mash and probing with my mash spoon, I feel no resistance from the top all the way to the bottom of the mash basket which is a good sign the grains are pretty loose and floating.

4) Using a mash bag: The mash bag does three things. First, it allowed me to crush a bit finer which gives me better efficiency. Second, it allows me to remove additional free water from the spent grains by hanging the bag and then squeezing to get as much volume out as is reasonable. My water retention in the grains is 0.434 liters/kg (0.415 fl oz/oz of grain). This gives me approximately an additional liter of wort recovered from my typical grain bill of 2.4 kgs of grain over just allowing gravity to pull the wort out. Thirdly, it makes clean up so much faster. It took me a good 15 to 20 minutes to clean out the mash basket without using the bag. It takes me about 6 minutes total to dump and clean the bag and wash the mash basket. No brainer for me.

5) blocking the side perforations: I had thought of this after looking at the Anvil and trying to decide which size to purchase. I do about 24 to 28 10-liter (2.6 gal) batches every year and usually only 1 20-liter batch. After talking to the Anvil reps at HomeBrewCon last year, I was pretty much convinced that I would be running the majority of my batches at the lower end of the system capabilities on the 10.5 gal model. I contemplated blocking off the side holes using SS shim stock, but decided that it was too much of a risk versus just centering on the model which fit the majority of my brewing habits. While I don't know for certain if blocking the side perforations might make the 10.5 gal model a bit more prone to stuck mashes, I would believe that someone could experiment their way to better efficiency with or without the side blocker for standard 5 gal batches.

6) Rice hulls: I added rice hulls twice, both times for wheat beers with 53% and 62% wheat malt in the grist. I had a bunch on hand I got from another brewer and figured that a small handful might help. The second time, I ended up at 300 grams of rice hulls for a grist of 2.2 kilograms of grain. Never had an issue with either one and will probably challenge that down a bit more on my next high wheat content brew.

I think that covers what you wanted to capture. If I think of anything else, I will edit and mark it as new learning/additions.

 

[mbg]

@Oginme Thank you - exactly what I was looking for.

I brew 5-gallon batches but don't brew that often, maybe 3-4 times a year. This makes experimentation difficult. This thread has opened my eyes to maybe think about smaller batches. My paradigm has been since I dragged all of this equipment out make as much as I can. But, smaller batches would allow experimentation, more brews to make, and better variety in my Keezer.

Mike

 

[cmac62]

This is a great thread. I'm looking at the foundry. I recently bought a large system with pumps and hoses, and it works great, but to drag everything out to brew 5 gals seems like overkill, also the false bottom is up so high I have to use almost 10 gals to get the grain wet. Now I wished I had looked into the all in ones a bit more before going for the big shiny system. I'm sorry the OP isn't happy with his purchase, but there are a lot of people who are more than happy with the AF 10.5. I have a friend in our brewclub who brews on one. I think I'll hit him up to see if I could brew with him and pick his brain. Thanks for all the great insight.

 

[Oginme]

@Oginme Thank you - exactly what I was looking for.

I brew 5-gallon batches but don't brew that often, maybe 3-4 times a year. This makes experimentation difficult. This thread has opened my eyes to maybe think about smaller batches. My paradigm has been since I dragged all of this equipment out make as much as I can. But, smaller batches would allow experimentation, more brews to make, and better variety in my Keezer.

Mike

I am pretty much the only one of four adults in my house that drinks beer. SWMBO will have some every now and then, but is usually content with a few sips of what I am having. I also like the process of brewing, so I like to brew often. Combine that with the desire to have a fairly expansive variety on hand, and I ended up at 10 liter batches. I also do 3 liter batches (not in the Anvil) for experimental batches like SMaSH recipes and recipe development. Thus the 6.5 really fit my brewing style more than any other of the all-in-one systems.

 

[Chucker17]

I brewed my 3rd batch in the foundry a few weeks ago. I implemented the following changes:
1. lifted mash pipe several times during the dough in process (I think I read that correctly in a prior comment)
2. used a BIAB grain bag - really cleared up the wort
3. slowed down the recirculation pump
4. stirred the wort every 15 minutes
5. extended the mash to 90 minutes
6. no sparge (seemed to be the way to go based on discussion)

I was still at approximately 65% brewhouse effiency - up from around 60% on the batch before.

OG was targeted at 1.065 and I ended at 1.059. So I am not too far off where I need to be.

Moving forward, I bought the ring for the mash pipe. I will be doing a 5 gallon batch with 13 lbs of grain (Northern Brewer pre-crushed), so damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Or in this case, damn the stuck sparge, full speed ahead!

Will let you know the results.

Sparge or no sparge? kind of the fence on that with the Foundry. Thoughts?
I was going to use rice hulls, any thoughts on how much?

I appreciate the input. thanks in advance.

 

[Noob_Brewer]

I brewed my 3rd batch in the foundry a few weeks ago. I implemented the following changes:
1. lifted mash pipe several times during the dough in process (I think I read that correctly in a prior comment)
2. used a BIAB grain bag - really cleared up the wort
3. slowed down the recirculation pump
4. stirred the wort every 15 minutes
5. extended the mash to 90 minutes
6. no sparge (seemed to be the way to go based on discussion)

I was still at approximately 65% brewhouse effiency - up from around 60% on the batch before.

OG was targeted at 1.065 and I ended at 1.059. So I am not too far off where I need to be.

Moving forward, I bought the ring for the mash pipe. I will be doing a 5 gallon batch with 13 lbs of grain (Northern Brewer pre-crushed), so damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Or in this case, damn the stuck sparge, full speed ahead!

Will let you know the results.

Sparge or no sparge? kind of the fence on that with the Foundry. Thoughts?
I was going to use rice hulls, any thoughts on how much?

I appreciate the input. thanks in advance.

I think your processes so far seem to be fine although I have never lifted the malt pipe during the mash similar to your step #1 and I have always sparged. I have done 16 brews on the 10.5g system now, not sure if you are using the 10.5 vs 6.5g system. I would say though that brewhouse efficiency isn't as critical as your mash/lauter efficiency because, depending on your losses after the boil, this could drastically affect the brewhouse efficiency since this metric takes into account all losses on brewday. With all this in mind a couple of things come to mind which should help you out.

1) So since you are having Northern Brewer doing your crush, what does this crush actually look like? I would imagine that the venders crush is "fairly course" and since you have a bag, if you can get this milled finer, your mash efficiency should improve. I did invest in a grain mill (cereal killer for $100) which gives me much more control and I love it.

2) Are you hitting your pre boil volumes according to your recipe/software? If you are hitting your pre-boil, post-boil, and into fermenter volumes this would help in diagnosing areas of improvement. For example, if you have pre boil volumes that exceed your target, your specific gravity is likely lower than expected.

If you can provide any more details regarding #1 and #2 above, I think peeps here can give better advice as to where you can improve.

Keep in mind - in the end, you've made beer! So enjoy it too!

 

[Chucker17]

Thanks for response.

mash pipe lifting was used by another in this thread.

water volumes across the board have been good, but there has been a learning curve with this system.

I would say the milling is medium but by no means fine. My old system it was good enough as my efficiency was high and I hit my OG targets.

I think a grain mill might be the next step but I am running out of space which has been the main reason for not buying one. Should sell my old system, that would free some space up. I will do sparge on next attempt.

The beer so far has tasted good, just a bit low on ABV.