False Bottom Failure

[FredTheNuke]

Damn the bad luck.... After a long history of 1.050's brews with about 35 lbs of barley into 15 gallons of mash water this one bit it... 25 gallon brew pot. I completed a Grand Cru Cuvee Van De Keizer clone but took a bullet in the process. 1.104 OG with 75 lbs of barley and 14 gallons of mash in water.... THUNK. No wonder the pot suddenly had more head space....

 

[hnycrk]

What false bottom is that? What size is your mash tun? Looks like a bayou classic false bottom.

 

[stat]

It looks like I've got a similar false bottom as you do. I was doing a 5 gallon batch with only 12lbs of grain and opened the output on the pump a little too much during recirculation. The grain bed compacted and all of a sudden the input hose was full of grain. After the mash I dumped the grain and that's what my false bottom looked like more or less.

 

[FredTheNuke]

The grain stayed on the correct side of the false bottom luckily. No stuck sparge or anything on this failure.

 

[FredTheNuke]

What false bottom is that? What size is your mash tun? Looks like a bayou classic false bottom.

25 gallon. Not a Bayou Classic, though...

 

[FredTheNuke]

Wouldn't you Know... The new one has five lower supports instead of 3.... HMMMM.... I guess I'm not the only person who has had issues with their product....

These are the 100qt Heavy Duty pots on www.homebrewstuff.com. Great pots unless you attempt to use them at capacity. HomeBrewStuff provided the replacement at cost but it is still irritating that the equipment cannot truly withstand full capacity. A tid bit of Engineering (like Blichmann does but not overkill) could have prevented these issues. Rant and Rave complete.... Back to my corner....