First AG Complete, with issues

[mtkfuego]

So my brew buddy and I have been doing lots of reading on here and of course John Palmer's How to Brew. It was our first AG batch, but we have done about 8 extract with steeped grain batches. We moved out of the kitchen to the backyard to accommodate our new equipment. Some things just didn't turn out how we expected based on research. So we had just a few questions we were hoping you guys could help us out with.

The brew day seemed a little longer than expected. We started at 10:30 and didn't finish until about 6:30. I think we lautered too slowly which may have added to the long day, but we only ended up with 75% efficiency. All of our temps seemed to be correct, so I didn't know if 75% is pretty good for the first time or if maybe we should have drained faster. We attempted BierMuncher's "sauce pot fly sparge" and it seemed to work pretty well. Since we did the fly sparge, our burner had to run the whole time to keep the temp of the water at 170 degrees. We hit our OG of 1.051 after the boil was complete, so I guess that was a small victory.

The main question I suppose we have is, is it normal to use almost a whole 17lb tank of propane? To me it seemed a little excessive. Granted it was 40 degrees outside, we were doing a 10 gallon batch, and our burner is a 54,000 BTU burner, but it still seems like we used a lot of propane. When we had our 12.5 gallons of wort collected, we were only gaining about 1 degree every minute so it took a really long time to get the wort up to a boil. It makes sense that we used a lot of propane because the burner was on for almost 8 hours straight trying to get our water up to temp, but is there something we could do differently? Was it just the weather being so cold outside that really killed our chances of heating the water, is our burner too small, are we just not heating and using our water effectively?

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this really long, kind of rambling post. If I have confused you in any way, please let me know. I look forward to your feedback.

 

[MachineShopBrewing]

First of all 75% is good, or maybe even a little high. I shoot for 60-65, I think it gives a better quality wort. I certainly would not go any higher with it.

My brewdays are usually 5-6 hours from strike to cleanup so that is normal. You could get yourself a 10 gallon water cooler to keep your sparge water at temp during the lautering. Then you could start heating your runnings as you are lautering. That would save you time and propane.

I usually get three brews out of a 20lb tank. I have a 55,000 btu burner. I am only doing 5-6 gallons at a time though for what its worth.

 

[EricCSU]

So my brew buddy and I have been doing lots of reading on here and of course John Palmer's How to Brew. It was our first AG batch, but we have done about 8 extract with steeped grain batches. We moved out of the kitchen to the backyard to accommodate our new equipment. Some things just didn't turn out how we expected based on research. So we had just a few questions we were hoping you guys could help us out with.

The brew day seemed a little longer than expected. We started at 10:30 and didn't finish until about 6:30. I think we lautered too slowly which may have added to the long day, but we only ended up with 75% efficiency. All of our temps seemed to be correct, so I didn't know if 75% is pretty good for the first time or if maybe we should have drained faster. We attempted BierMuncher's "sauce pot fly sparge" and it seemed to work pretty well. Since we did the fly sparge, our burner had to run the whole time to keep the temp of the water at 170 degrees. We hit our OG of 1.051 after the boil was complete, so I guess that was a small victory.

The main question I suppose we have is, is it normal to use almost a whole 17lb tank of propane? To me it seemed a little excessive. Granted it was 40 degrees outside, we were doing a 10 gallon batch, and our burner is a 54,000 BTU burner, but it still seems like we used a lot of propane. When we had our 12.5 gallons of wort collected, we were only gaining about 1 degree every minute so it took a really long time to get the wort up to a boil. It makes sense that we used a lot of propane because the burner was on for almost 8 hours straight trying to get our water up to temp, but is there something we could do differently? Was it just the weather being so cold outside that really killed our chances of heating the water, is our burner too small, are we just not heating and using our water effectively?

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this really long, kind of rambling post. If I have confused you in any way, please let me know. I look forward to your feedback.

I get about 4-5 5 gallon batches out of my 120,000BTU burner, just so you can compare.

Eric

 

[BurpMasterson]

I get about 3.5 batches out of a standard BBQ tank with a 185k btu burner. But thats 6 gallons, outside temps in the high 50's and flame at about 40% so Im not wasting gas coming up the sides of the pot.

8 hours on a tank sounds about right..... so I would work on heating the beer faster and retaining heat better. Raising the burner closer to the pot helped me heat much quicker. I also brew in a ventilated room and by the end of a brew its much warmer in the room than outside.... even with a door and window wide open. If you cannot get into a garage or something maybe try a heat shield around the sides of the burner up to the bottom of your pot.

You could also just batch sparge. You'll probably get close to 75% doing that and save some propane and time. Hope some of this helps.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

It was your first brew (AG). You will tweak your method here and there to get more out of your propane tank. As was said earlier, if you find a way to insulate your HLT and keep your sparge water at temp a little better, your gas will last longer.


As for your efficiency:

Contrary to popular opinion, it's not high efficiency numbers that you are looking for, but rather consistent efficiency numbers. You want to be able to know what your system will do for a particular recipe, so you can hit your expected gravity spot-on and brew your beer to style. If you can accurately predict your efficiency, then you can adjust your recipe to hit the numbers you want, and your beer will be all the better. But knowing what your system will do requires nothing but sheer repetition. Brew more, and you know your system better. It's that simple.

 

[Bobby_M]

I agree that if you're planning to continue fly sparging, you want to put that sparge water into an insulated holding tank. As you collect your runnings into the kettle, you can flame on immediately. What you were doing was wasting gas holding an uninsulated HLT at temp and meanwhile losing heat out of the runnings while you waited.

You can batch sparge with what you have now to reduce all that heat loss.

75% efficiency seems about average for batch sparging. 80% is completely reasonable and doable. In fact, 80% is on the low end for fly sparging. No, it's not a contest and 5% plus or minus is a few dollars worth of grain. If you're happy with 75%, just batch sparge and save an hour.

Also, if you're out in the wind, you'd be surprised how much less gas you'd use if you built a jury rigged three sided wind guard out of some plywood.

 

[mtkfuego]

Thanks for all the replies. Using a cooler or other insulated vessel for the HLT makes complete sense. That would definitely save a lot of fuel. The wind guard is awesome as well. We will be brewing again this weekend so I hope we can implement some of these into our brewday. I have some questions about the differences between batch and fly sparging.

When you fly sparge, do you essentially leave the equivalent of your strike water in the tun when you are done? Since you are keeping the water level the same, then on a 10 gallon batch for instance with the 8 gallons I had in my tun for strike water and mash out water will be drained, but replaced with the same amount a little at time. So when batch sparging do you use less water since you completely drain the tun each time you sparge? Maybe I am confused about the techniques.

Thanks!

 

[Bobby_M]

There are two different strategies to fly sparging. One method is just as you described. You basically sparge with the full preboil volume but stop when you've collected your desired preboil. You are leaving a lot of water/wort in the tun but the benefit is that you maintain a loose and fluid grain bed the whole time you're sparging.

The other way is to sparge with the same amount you would in a batch sparge whereby you let the MLT fully drain dry at the end. It works ok but you can start compacting the grainbed towards the end. I'm sure many people here do it both ways with success.