False Bottom Dead Space Issue

[christl90]

Hey,

I am an experienced partial mash brewer that is in the process of dialing in my skills as an all-grain brewer. This past Saturday I fired up my all-grain brew system for the first time. My set up consists of three 15 gallon kettles two pumps and all the other necessary brewing tools. My first recipe was a 5 gallon IPA with a target ABV of 7.7. The question I have is, with a false bottom that creates 2 gallons of dead space is this an issue for 5 gallon brews? The mash seamed particularly thick as it only had 3 gallons of water to rest in. Was a 5 gallons brew with a target ABV of 7.7 to much grain for to little water contact?
Some ideas I have brained stormed to solve this issue are

periodically recirculate the mash
Shorten the false bottom
Only brew 10 gallon batches

If any one has run into the same problem or has any ideas I would love to here them. Thanks.

Cheers

 

[acidrain]

Why is the false bottom so high off the bottom?
Lower it and use a dip tube if necessary.

 

[jstofer]

I have a similar scenario in my setup. I have a 15 gallon mash tun. I have roughly 2.5 gallons of dead space. In my setup, I do have a pump to recirculate the mash water. It's a direct fire setup, so I'm able to keep a pretty good temperature between the mash and the water that is recirculating. What I've done to dial in my water is figure out the total amount of water that I'm going to need and then reduce my sparge water by my dead space volume. I target about 1.5 qts/lb and this gives me that grain/water contact that I'm looking for. I do have to remember to stir a little more in order to get the warmer water evenly distributed to get an accurate mash temp.

 

[Transamguy77]

I second a dip tube, I have one in my keggle mash tun and I think I have about a half gallon of dead space.

 

[soupfist]

Hey,

I am an experienced partial mash brewer that is in the process of dialing in my skills as an all-grain brewer. This past Saturday I fired up my all-grain brew system for the first time. My set up consists of three 15 gallon kettles two pumps and all the other necessary brewing tools. My first recipe was a 5 gallon IPA with a target ABV of 7.7. The question I have is, with a false bottom that creates 2 gallons of dead space is this an issue for 5 gallon brews? The mash seamed particularly thick as it only had 3 gallons of water to rest in. Was a 5 gallons brew with a target ABV of 7.7 to much grain for to little water contact?
Some ideas I have brained stormed to solve this issue are

periodically recirculate the mash
Shorten the false bottom
Only brew 10 gallon batches

If any one has run into the same problem or has any ideas I would love to here them. Thanks.

Cheers

I mash in a 10-gallon SS tun with 2 gallons deadspace. No problems at all as long as you make sure when you're calculating 1.25qts/lb of strike water, you're adding 2 gallons to that.

I recirculate quite a bit...in fact I make a point to recirc at least 2 gallons to make sure the full contents of the deadspace go back through the grain bed.

Having that much water in the mash tun during mash does in fact mean you'll be using less water in the sparge. Intuitively you might think that means lower efficiency, but I have not found it to be so. My last 2 brews were 83% and 79% respectively...maybe I'm cheating myself somehow but not so much so that I'm interested in changing anything.

The only problem I'll complain about with having so much deadspace: when you're directly firing it, you're primarily heating the wort in the deadspace, and with the false bottom in the picture it's impossible to stir during heating in a way that gives you an accurate picture of your mash temp. When I do this I'm usually flying blind - if I need to bump the temp up a few degrees I fire it for a few minutes, stir, let sit for about 5 minutes, stir again and hope I see the change I was expecting to see. I am sure recirc would help with this if I had a pump but I'm doing it manual for now so it's a PITA.

For the record, I don't disagree with the dip tube insistence, but I don't use one. My false bottom doesn't do a great job of keeping particulates from jamming up the valve so I use a bazooka screen AND a false bottom (which you can do when you have 2 gallons of deadspace!) And I heat up more sparge water than I need, so I basically draw the volume of water I want and leave the rest. If your false bottom does a good job of keeping grain out of your deadspace, by all means go with the dip tube.