Do you tilt your mash tun?

[msa8967]

I tilt, but 40-50#+ of wet grain don't tilt easy.
Shoes? Ppft!
2x8 and a brick.(150qt Coleman extreme)
Edit: had to go look

So what size of recipes do you do with a 150 quart mashtun? Sorry if this hijacks this part of the thread but I have never seen a picture of a mash tun this big and now I have mash tun envy.

 

[DurtyChemist]

The most important tilt you can do is after initial mash run off. To maximize efficiency, you want to minimize the undrained volume for the highest SG wort. The less sugar in the MLT prior to adding the sparge water, the higher the efficiency.

Brew on

If you know your mash tun holds 1 gallon of dead space and you added 1 gallon to your sparge water wouldn't you end up with 1 gallon of water because you washed those first runnings out with the extra gallon of wat you accounted for with your dead space calculation? Tip or not. Just add extra weed and you could avoid needing too tip and just sparge and brew and boil and drink.

 

[Jwin]

So what size of recipes do you do with a 150 quart mashtun? Sorry if this hijacks this part of the thread but I have never seen a picture of a mash tun this big and now I have mash tun envy.

Well, my 14g tun wasn't cutting it for 11g batches. So I browsed Craigslist and scored it for $30.
I have been doing 11g high gravity brews with a proper partygyle of sitting some first runnings to the side and blending...
Last brew day I had 44# in it with 3# steeping in first runnings (RIS on first runnings, pale ale second by steeping the roasted grains)

 

[Jwin]

Just add extra weed and you could avoid needing too tip and just sparge and brew and boil and drink.

Don't think that will help.

 

[doug293cz]

If you know your mash tun holds 1 gallon of dead space and you added 1 gallon to your sparge water wouldn't you end up with 1 gallon of water because you washed those first runnings out with the extra gallon of wat you accounted for with your dead space calculation? Tip or not. Just add extra weed and you could avoid needing too tip and just sparge and brew and boil and drink.

For a batch sparge process, it depends on how much mixing there is of the sparge water and retained wort. In a stirred braid or manifold system mixing should be (near) complete, so the first wort drained from the sparge will be very close to the average sparge wort concentration, and the undrained wort will have maximum impact on the efficiency. In a stirred false bottom system, there will be less mixing of the sparge water with the retained wort under the FB (unless the vorlauf volume exceeds the volume under the FB), and the first wort drained from the sparge will have a higher sugar concentration than the average sparge wort, so impact on efficiency will be less than for a braid/manifold system.

For a fly sparge system the question is moot.

Brew on

 

[Tactical-Brewer]

The fly sparging technique where you're basically pushing the good wort out of your dead space with water is where I got the idea that I didn't need to tilt since I had been fly sparging. Unfortunately, I didn't realize the importance a false bottom and pick up tube make when fly sparging vs a braided ss hose which is what I currently have. Long story short, My efficiency SUUUUCKED and I was disappointed because I presume I was having some major channeling going on but love the "idea" of fly sparging.

Anyways, I will be batch sparging, and tilting until I get my false bottom and pick up tube installed. Once I do get that set up, I'll start working on my tier system with a HLT, MLT, into my brew kettle... gonna be fun!

But, then again, if I'm getting comparable efficiency numbers from batch sparging vs fly sparging, I very well may revert back to batch sparging and save an hour-ish of my brew day.

 

[Spartan1979]

I don't tilt but I fly sparge and there's no reason to. Any wort left in the tun has almost no sugars left it in it.