First brew day on my High Gravity 10 gallon EBIAB...today questions

[Raider0914]

First post, but agree with the Gfci statement. I feed a 50 amp spa disconnect from a 30 amp breaker in my panel. The spa panel feeds a 30 amp/4 wire receptacle. Anytime water and electricity can come in contact, especially where you are touching, needs to be ground fault protected. Here’s a pic of my new setup, haven’t brewed on it yet, but did a dry run to see how the mash temps maintained.

 

[BoilerInSoCal]

Hey guys i am looking at getting the HG EBIAB system as well. I was looking to get the 20gal SS brew pot with ripetide pump and the 240v system. Anybody have any experience with this sized kettle and how well the basket/bag fits? I am from Canada for i want to make sure its a solid system before I pull the trigger and take it hard on the USD to CAD conversion rates..

Hi Guntash,
I went with the 20 gal SS Brewtech, 5000 W boil coil, riptide pump and 14" spincycle. Overall, I love the system. The pot is BIG (it actually holds 22 gal), and there is more than enough room for 11 gal batches (and with the dip tube, I only have a couple of pints of dead space). My main complaint with the system is that that basket that came with it is too small (i think it may be for the 15 gal). Dave added bolts to the bottom so that it sits above the coil (an unadvertised bonus!). But the diameter is too small and combined with the bolts, you easily run into issues with liquid levels. Not a big deal. I'm just going to ditch the basket and go with the bag (also note that the bag provided only fits the basket, so I'm going to need a new bag that fits the diameter and height of the pot). Dave swears up an down that the boilcoil is like super-ULWD so the bag touching will not be an issue. I'm going to try it out on my next batch. If so, I should be able to do the occasional 5 gal batch as well.

 

[cubsfan16]

I was thinking about trying my first 10.5-11 gallon batch in my 15g High Gravity system. I use Brew’n water and BeerSmith. I am planning on doing a beer with a 19-20lbs grain bill. According to BeerSmith that will but me slightly over 15g vessel capacity (it may fit). However, I was thinking it may be better to just save a couple gallons of water back and sparge by lifting the bag and pouring the extra 2 gallons or so over the grains. (I think It was a Clawhammer BIAB video I saw this done). To do this, can I just add my full volume of water to my kettle the recipe is asking for, mix my salts, then drain off the 2gal for sparging? I haven’t done anything other than full volume BIAB mashes so I’m familiar with the proper steps. I’m hitting 69-70% efficiency with my full volume batches. What should I expect for efficiency with a sparge step? A couple other details I was considering was not using my new brewhardware BIAB false bottom and use my fryer basket to make it easier to sparge. Also, I was thinking about creating a new Mash profile in BeerSmith with a sparge step vs taking the calculated full water volume, mixing and drawing off a couple gallons, though this seems easier than doing water adjustments on two volumes of water.

 

[visitor]

First post, but agree with the Gfci statement. I feed a 50 amp spa disconnect from a 30 amp breaker in my panel. The spa panel feeds a 30 amp/4 wire receptacle. Anytime water and electricity can come in contact, especially where you are touching, needs to be ground fault protected. Here’s a pic of my new setup, haven’t brewed on it yet, but did a dry run to see how the mash temps maintained.View attachment 589868

This looks very similar to what I am thinking about doing. Re-use as much of my current setup as possible with possible upgrade to a larger pot if necessary. I plan on using my SS Brewtech 15G Kettle, riptide pump and other parts as a eBIAB setup. I keep going back and forth on a basket or false bottom and bag and I still need to get an electrician to wire a circuit for me to my brew area. Also still need to decide on trying to build a controller or just go with an off the shelf one.

 

[Raider0914]

This looks very similar to what I am thinking about doing. Re-use as much of my current setup as possible with possible upgrade to a larger pot if necessary. I plan on using my SS Brewtech 15G Kettle, riptide pump and other parts as a eBIAB setup. I keep going back and forth on a basket or false bottom and bag and I still need to get an electrician to wire a circuit for me to my brew area. Also still need to decide on trying to build a controller or just go with an off the shelf one.

Mine is the 15 gallon kettle as well. I went with the false bottom, but I haven’t brewed on it yet to offer my opinion. I also built my panel, and installed the outlet and gfci spa panel. Although, I probably could have bought the DIY eBIAB panel from ebrewsupply.com for what it cost to build it. Not sure of the total I spent, because I built/bought over time.View attachment 590312View attachment 590313