BCS 2 Vessel No Sparge Garage Brewery Build

[poptarts]

Tightened down the mill, going to give brewing up some starter wort a go this weekend and see if I can get higher efficiency.

 

[BrunDog]

Since ur last brews had the same efficiency, you should try a simple sparge and see if it makes a difference. I know your goal was no sparge but it might be worth the exercise for academic purposes.

 

[poptarts]

yea im going to do a baltic porter soon so I will probably mash with like 2 gallons less and see what sparging with 2 gallons gives me.

 

[poptarts]

doing a 10 gallon batch this weekend, so going to rock 10 gallon mash 6 gallon sparge, so this should be a good indication of what cold water sparging can do for me.

 

[poptarts]

75% efficiency with the sparge and the grain milled tighter haha, so not much gain at all. The grain kept getting stuck too. I will try again next brew with mill set to the same and just start off recirculating slower for a little bit and see if that helps. 70s might be as good as i can get with this mill on no sparge.

 

[BrunDog]

That looks kinda fine to me. Husks are shredded. What gap is it (measured with feeler blades)?

Starting with a slower recirc is a good idea. Also, if you haven't tried conditioning your grain, it makes a good bit of difference, IMO.

 

[poptarts]

its a corona mill, so it just rips crap up, no traditional gap to measure. But yea it is fine, before I tightened it down my friend that fly sparges gets high 80s efficiency with its crush, and its even finer now.

 

[BrunDog]

Oh, that's right. I remember imploring you to get a legit mill a few posts back.

Justified for certain, now!

 

[iijakii]

Eh hard to tell from that pic but it doesnt look like a mill issue, seems quite crushed. Are you sure there's no wort loss anywhere in your system? Spilling on hose swaps, leaving a few quarts behind in deadspace under your false bottom? I think I've already asked that but can't recall.

 

[poptarts]

yea no dead space, I don't sparge or squeeze so im assuming these are my main points of losses. Post boil i loose some to trub and chiller like everyone else but no more than a quart, but either way i'm talking mash efficiency.

 

[BrunDog]

Did you give it a few stirs along the way? I think short stirs at ~15,30,45 mins not a bad idea to help bump efficiency.

That said, who really cares about efficiency. Grain is cheap. Personally, I think it would be a PITA to have to adjust established recipes down to prevent from overshooting OG every time.

 

[poptarts]

nah didn't stir. And yea, I would never build a no sparge system if I cared about efficiency haha. I'm happy with 70s.

 

[poptarts]

next brew day my plan is to heat strike water in the boil kettle then transfer into the mlt that already will be filled with grain, then run processes as normal. My hope is that I wont take a big efficiency loss and I will be able to prep the grain and water before brewing allowing me to do everything hands off until hop additions. If this works I could easily run a timer and have the system just start brewing for me a couple hours before I wake up, then I can join the brew day just as the boil begins.

 

[BeardedBrews]

next brew day my plan is to heat strike water in the boil kettle then transfer into the mlt that already will be filled with grain, then run processes as normal. My hope is that I wont take a big efficiency loss and I will be able to prep the grain and water before brewing allowing me to do everything hands off until hop additions. If this works I could easily run a timer and have the system just start brewing for me a couple hours before I wake up, then I can join the brew day just as the boil begins.

Adding water to grain seems like a recipe for dough-balls to me.

Mount the mill over the MLT and add a relay for the motor?

 

[orangehero]

Try underletting the strike water into the mash tun filled with dry milled grain.

 

[poptarts]

Try underletting the strike water into the mash tun filled with dry milled grain.

that is the plan

 

[BrunDog]

Sounds good pop! That kind of automation gets me a little tingly!

Let us know how it works out!

 

[poptarts]

Sounds good pop! That kind of automation gets me a little tingly!

Let us know how it works out!

For sure, i'm just thinking how awesome it would be to heat the water up around 330 or so, have it mash in at 4, when I get home from work at like 5:15 the boil is just getting ready to start, would be slick. or do do the previous steps and have it ready to boil at 6am right when I get up, epic one hour brew day haha. Could even push it further with some IPA recipes that have no bittering hops and only hops at the 15 minute or lower, show up in enough time to clean the mlt and sanitize the carboy haha.

 

[iijakii]

Sounds nice but when are you supposed to drink and smoke stogies if you do that?

 

[poptarts]

after brew day, with breakfast at 7am

 

[poptarts]

Lol just got 72.6% by adding water to the mash and not mixing. Time to move some hoses around and edit processes! 90% Automation here I come haha

 

[BeardedBrews]

I don't remember from this thread, are you recirculating your mash?

72.6% seems like a perfectly great number.

 

[poptarts]

yea I am recirculating the mash. 72% is my very consistent mash efficiency. It appears stirring / not stirring has no effect on efficiency numbers with my system as suspected. At least with the 10lb grain bill. Dough balls might become a bigger concern at bigger gravity beers with like 15-20lbs of grain but I have no data on that at the moment.

 

[poptarts]

Got the plumbing all reworked this past weekend and updated the process flow so now I can either heat in BK and then pump to MLT or stick with standard heat water then mash in grain. Going to be making a german lite lager this weekend, maybe ill film some parts of the process. The only hands on parts during brew day are now cleaning and hop additions. And cleaning is pretty silly with the bottom drains.

 

[poptarts]

Part 1, brew is mashing so part 2 will show up in a couple hours.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5gOUPx35UY[/ame]

 

[BrunDog]

Nice!! I am jealous of your underletting ability! Wish I could do that!

 

[poptarts]

Yea, the bottom drains are really nice and I was able to get the plumbing to work decent enough with them. Still some kinks but its going great. Still making part 2 video, boil is going now but I hit 72% efficiency exactly again.

 

[poptarts]

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnk91Ai2DCA[/ame]
Production quality went down if that was even possible.

 

[Carlscan26]

Great videos!

 

[BrunDog]

Agreed. How do I get one of those "snow bucket" chillers in South Florida?!?