Help with Dialing in a kettle

[Redpappy]

hello everyone. I am actually wanting to get a little serious, just a little, with my brewing. So I bought me a 10 gal Spike Brewery EBIAB Kettle. For now I will be brewing over propane. Along with purchasing the kettle I am looking/trying out beer Smith. With tinkering with it I noticed the equipment portion of it, and I’m stumped. Before I get into the questions, this is what I have been using and what I have done. I’ve been doing extract since November. So I basically have just followed direction.. add 3 gals to kettle, boil for 60 min, dump in fermenter, add water to get 5 gal... etc etc.. I have done a few 1 gal BIAB batches, so I have done the boil off test on my old kettle, so I got that part figured out. I do know that it will take a few batches to tweak my numbers to get it right, but I need a starting point. Off to the questions.

1. Do you take the Trub and measure it in a measuring cup to figure out how much you leave behind, ie 8 cups is a half gallon.

2 is this the same way you do the fermenter?

3. Is there anything else I would need to account for.

Thanks to all that helps out. I’m sure these are silly questions, but I would prefer to do it right the first time if possible.

With my new kettle, i wanted to grow with it, buy once. Future plan is to brew indoors in my future basement BIAB style.

 

[mongoose33]

I'm not really sure what you're asking...but I will take a shot at some answers.

1. How much trub you leave behind depends in part on how much hop residue there is. Are you using 1 ounce? 9 ounces? Frankly, if you're just starting to do all-grain, if I were you, I'd just dump it all in the fermenter. Later you can get fancy with how much you leave behind, but again, it's dependent in part on how much other stuff you put in there. Are you using Whirlfloc to help coagulate proteins?

2. That said, I typically have a couple cups or so of trub, give or take.

3. Just do it. I typically like to have 5.5 to 5.75 gallons in the boil kettle when I'm done, so I can have enough beer in the fermenter to draw off 5 gallons to my kegs. I'm ok with leaving trub behind in the fermenter. Between what's left in the kettle, and what's left in the fermenter, I'm losing a half gallon or a bit more.

4. Having some trub in the fermenter can be helpful to the yeast. Where trub fails our efforts is when we're looking at long-term storage of the beer. If you're drinking it fairly rapidly--and I'd say 2-3 months is fairly rapidly--then it doesn't really matter.

5. I have tried both with and without trub into the fermenter. I can't honestly say there's a difference.

6. RDWHAHB. Beer is resilient. I think you should brew one up, and take careful notes of everything. Then see how things turn out. How much trub is about the least likely thing I can think of that would affect what you end up with.

My 2 cents. Good luck!

 

[Redpappy]

Thanks for the feed back. I may be just paranoid, chit I also know at the end of the day it is always what I decided. If that makes since.

 

[FunkedOut]

1. yep.
2. yep.
3. yep. I have found that to meet the BIAB grain absorption rates that are the default in BS, I have to squeeze the bag a little. Make note of your expected pre-boil volume and squeeze until you hit that mark on your kettle.
That reminds me, make sure you use a BIAB mash profile in BS. If you don't, the calculations will use the default grain absorption rates for no BIAB. You can tweak those numbers if you want to.
I'd just start out by squeezing to hit the pre-boil volume until you have a few batches under your belt and then see if you want to go up or down.

Also, make sure you uncheck the box that says, adjust temp for equipment.
If you heat your water in the kettle, then add grains, your equipment (kettle) will be at the same temperature as your water.