Been lurking for about a month since I started brewing. I've done a 2 extract+specialty and wanted to try all grain and the SWMBO slayer was too tempting of a recipe to not try. This is mostly so I have somewhere to remember what I screwed up so I don't do it again.
I built a stainless braid 75 quart mash tun before I realized that it might be a little big, too shallow grain bed depth, for a 5 gallon batch so grabbed a 5 gallon water cooler and swapped the hardware into it.
I filled it up half way with water and no leaks so thought I was good. Then I filled up 4 gallons with hot water to pre-heat it and it started leaking. I guess it would have been a good idea to do a hot water test. I had some alternate hardware and was able to switch it out and get it to stop leaking but that was annoying and wasted some time.
I got the grain for SWMBO slayer from the LHBS which looked well milled, hulls still together but empty and some good flour in the bottom. I doughed in at 172 at 1.25qt/lb which dropped to 155 (shooting for 154-156) after mixing it up really well. After about 20 minutes I tested and saw that the temp was dropping below 154 so added in a quart of boiling water. Let it mash for 60 minutes and it was at 154 when I added a gallon boiling water to get it up to 167+. I overshot to 175 and then threw in ice to bring it back down to 167 but overshot again and went down to 160... I had no more room in the cooler so started draining. Dumped the first 2 quarts back in the top after it cleared and then started draining to my boil kettle.
After it slowed I added in 2.5 G of 180 deg water, mixed it up and let it drain again. Once it got about 2 inches over the grainbed I put a steamer basket on top and started adding sparge water slowly until I hit ~6 gallons.
Pre-boil ~6G @ 1.047
Post-Boil - Ended up with 5G @1.055 with somewhere around 70% efficiency
I'm pretty happy with it for the first time and wouldn't have been able to do it without all the great stickies.
- Steve
I built a stainless braid 75 quart mash tun before I realized that it might be a little big, too shallow grain bed depth, for a 5 gallon batch so grabbed a 5 gallon water cooler and swapped the hardware into it.
I filled it up half way with water and no leaks so thought I was good. Then I filled up 4 gallons with hot water to pre-heat it and it started leaking. I guess it would have been a good idea to do a hot water test. I had some alternate hardware and was able to switch it out and get it to stop leaking but that was annoying and wasted some time.
I got the grain for SWMBO slayer from the LHBS which looked well milled, hulls still together but empty and some good flour in the bottom. I doughed in at 172 at 1.25qt/lb which dropped to 155 (shooting for 154-156) after mixing it up really well. After about 20 minutes I tested and saw that the temp was dropping below 154 so added in a quart of boiling water. Let it mash for 60 minutes and it was at 154 when I added a gallon boiling water to get it up to 167+. I overshot to 175 and then threw in ice to bring it back down to 167 but overshot again and went down to 160... I had no more room in the cooler so started draining. Dumped the first 2 quarts back in the top after it cleared and then started draining to my boil kettle.
After it slowed I added in 2.5 G of 180 deg water, mixed it up and let it drain again. Once it got about 2 inches over the grainbed I put a steamer basket on top and started adding sparge water slowly until I hit ~6 gallons.
Pre-boil ~6G @ 1.047
Post-Boil - Ended up with 5G @1.055 with somewhere around 70% efficiency
I'm pretty happy with it for the first time and wouldn't have been able to do it without all the great stickies.
- Steve
