Keggles vs Coolers question

[butterpants]

Ok so I got with Jaybird and all my goodies are on order! Excited. Hook up with my welder buddy next week and the NorCal hardware should be here by then. Borrowed a chugger pump and bought a second burner as well (this hobby is still cheaper than competitive shooting and dirt bike racing so the wife has yet to destroy me!..... but I HAVE had to start sneaking stuff into the garage)

Question on workflow once it's all assembled...... So, I have a single pump and lots of high temp tubing with camlocks/easy off attachments. I also have 2 burners and at least 2 height tiers (3 would require a significant amount of work) to brew with. I would prefer to batch sparge. What would be the most elegant way to arrange and transfer wort between all 3? Is there a certain permutation to avoid?

 

[RoundKid]

Ok so I got with Jaybird and all my goodies are on order! Excited. Hook up with my welder buddy next week and the NorCal hardware should be here by then. Borrowed a chugger pump and bought a second burner as well (this hobby is still cheaper than competitive shooting and dirt bike racing so the wife has yet to destroy me!..... but I HAVE had to start sneaking stuff into the garage) Question on workflow once it's all assembled...... So, I have a single pump and lots of high temp tubing with camlocks/easy off attachments. I also have 2 burners and at least 2 height tiers (3 would require a significant amount of work) to brew with. I would prefer to batch sparge. What would be the most elegant way to arrange and transfer wort between all 3? Is there a certain permutation to avoid?

Put your mash tun on a table or chair and both burners on the ground. You can pump from the HLT up to the mash. You can pump from mash to kettle as well, but could also gravity drain.

With batch sparging you could also just have a single tier. You can pump from each vessel to the next without any issues.

 

[Natdavis777]

I use two keggle a with one burner and no pumps without much difficulty. I cut up a 4x8 sheet of plywood for stands at the moment to utilize gravity, but want to go the pump route in the future. Best up my mash water in the HLT (about 170ish) and drain down to the mash tun. The extra temp is used to heat the mash tun walls and drop the thermal mass. Dough in and mash for given time, all while I put my sparge water into HLT and heat up while the mash finishes. Drain my first runnings into buckets and sparge. Then I dump the buckets into the HLT and use it as the boil kettle.

 

[rgauthier20420]

This is my soon to be set up. Now, mind you it's a picture from what will be the backside of the stand, but you'll get the picture:

From right to left, I will have the HLT on the right side, the MLT in the middle, and the BK on the bottom tier on the left side. All of my water from the BK as of now because I only have 1 burner. I heat my strike water and pump to the MLT for mashing. While mashing, I heat up the rest of the water a little which doesn't take long cause we're already at like 165 and then I transfer to the HLT for when I'm ready to sparge. When I'm done mashing, I drain into the BK which is done with gravity because it's simple. I then pump the sparge water into the MLT for batch sparging. I this is the easiest way to do batch sparge for me. You don't need your pump to run the wort from the MLT with this set up. It only takes a couple minutes to drain your runnings with gravity each time anyway. No need to pump it 30 seconds faster.

 

[rgauthier20420]

Duplicate Post....

 

[butterpants]

Awesome guys, thanks for coming through for me! I need to do a dry run once all my **** is here and see which idea works better with my space

 

[butterpants]

Ok, the NorCal goodies came in and I've welded/assembled it all......then I totally splurged bought a second burner and then a Chugger pump. Snuck it all in the garage and I have 0 buyers remorse (until I'm discovered of course!)

So....now I'm pondering the most efficient way to assemble all of this and if life would be easier if I welded in a few extra ball valves. I want to batch sparge and have no issues using the pump on the hot/cold side. Thinking single tier across, but I don't have a stand or anything elaborate yet.

Questions!:

1) If I added a welded coupler, ball valve and camlock attachment to both the mash tun and boil kettle up high, in line with the lower valve would it make life easier and be a good idea? I could just hook up and pump in sparge water then move the pump, rehookup and pump wort to the kettle from above instead of below.

2) What would be the best way to vorlauf/recirculate/clear? Pump from bottom of kettle to top with the ball valve mostly closed to restrain flow or would I have to let gravity and drain then pan it back at top of the grain bed by hand.

3) I wanted to batch sparge (for time reasons alone... I'll buy 5-10% more grain if efficiency suffers but saving an hour on brew day is priceless) and wasn't planning on buying a sparge arm. Just pumping the water on top, mixing and waiting. This feasible and correct for my equipment?

4) About how long are you guys with a movable system cutting your high temp silicone hose? Best place to buy online? LHBS is like 3.50/foot. Insane.


I included a rough diagram with no hose routing:


Hopefully Santa brings a plate chiller. Might take a while for my immersion chiller to get 10 gal down to pitch temp.

 

[rgauthier20420]

1) If I added a welded coupler, ball valve and camlock attachment to both the mash tun and boil kettle up high, in line with the lower valve would it make life easier and be a good idea? I could just hook up and pump in sparge water then move the pump, rehookup and pump wort to the kettle from above instead of below. You'd be fine doing this. You'll want to make sure begin very slowly before you kick your pump on full blast or you'll get a stuck sparge.

2) What would be the best way to vorlauf/recirculate/clear? Pump from bottom of kettle to top with the ball valve mostly closed to restrain flow or would I have to let gravity and drain then pan it back at top of the grain bed by hand. How about unhooking you hose, pulling off a couple liters through the valve and then putting your hose back on and then pumping? You'll need to pump slow at the beginning regardless though for the reason above.

3) I wanted to batch sparge (for time reasons alone... I'll buy 5-10% more grain if efficiency suffers but saving an hour on brew day is priceless) and wasn't planning on buying a sparge arm. Just pumping the water on top, mixing and waiting. This feasible and correct for my equipment? That's how I do it. I've got a valve at the top of my MLT that I pump the hot sparge water into then mix and drain. I don't vorlauf and end up with clear beer regardless. This way cuts another 20 minutes or so off my brew time.

4) About how long are you guys with a movable system cutting your high temp silicone hose? Best place to buy online? LHBS is like 3.50/foot. Insane. Search around. I'm sure you can beat that price.

 

[cjgenever]

I'm building a system with three kegs. it'll be awhile before I have all the parts together, due to cost. in the meantime I am using my primary fermenter as a mash tun. I'm kind of in the same situation as you. my plan is to get a 10 gallon cooler for smaller batches, while continuing to build my three keggle system. SS looks way cooler than a cooler.

 

[butterpants]

It certainly has been an interesting evolution of what I thought I would buy to what is now sitting in my garage. That's the beauty of this forum and having a malleable mind. Ask for advice, if the advice is logical, reevaluate. I've done that many time in the last few weeks! The project as you can imagine has gone friken way over budget but after heeding some advice, not wanting to do stuff half-assed and have to rebuy later plus slyly convincing myself it's almost Christmas and I'm worth it....well here we are.

1) You'd be fine doing this. You'll want to make sure begin very slowly before you kick your pump on full blast or you'll get a stuck sparge.

2) How about unhooking you hose, pulling off a couple liters through the valve and then putting your hose back on and then pumping? You'll need to pump slow at the beginning regardless though for the reason above.

3) That's how I do it. I've got a valve at the top of my MLT that I pump the hot sparge water into then mix and drain. I don't vorlauf and end up with clear beer regardless. This way cuts another 20 minutes or so off my brew time.

4) Search around. I'm sure you can beat that price.

Thank you again.

Skip recirculating....I'll give it a try. When you say "slowly" for draining the mash, can you be more specific? And for how long must it be governed? Can I go faster if I use more rice hulls?

 

[poptarts]

<= 1 qt per min

 

[butterpants]

<= 1 qt per min

copy... yea that's slow!

 

[kbowman]

Here's my version of a two-tiered, single pump brewery. I pump up from HLT and let gravity drain from MLT to boil kettle. Easy and cheap. (Well cheap is really relative around here)

 

[rgauthier20420]

copy... yea that's slow!

Remember it's only at the beginning though. It also can be faster depending on if how good your false bottom is. Typically, when I gravity drain for batch sparging, I'll open up the valve and run it slowly about 30 seconds. Then I'll go full open without issues. But, I've yet to do it with a pump so I can't comment to that.

 

[worthogg]

When batch sparging, you can calculate all water volumes(strike, sparge, etc.) with a sight glass on your HLT, except for post-boil finish volume in the BK. You'll need another sight glass or the graduated dipstick for that. And you can pump from a keggle or a cooler if that makes a difference. The 72 qt coleman Xtreme cooler is hard to beat for versatility. They can also be had sometimes for pretty cheap. If you sold one of those keggles for $150 or so, your pump would be about paid for. But once you weld them all up nice you may just want to keep all that shiny for yourself...

 

[butterpants]

Oh yea I could never sell my babies!

Have a long piece of pipe that I'll be calibrating shortly for volumes.... no sight glass on the bk.

 

[butterpants]

(Well cheap is really relative around here)

Sooooo true. You should have to sign a waiver before reading these forums that lets you know from this point forward all your disposable income will be spent on ingenious brewing ideas.

 

[rgauthier20420]

Oh yea I could never sell my babies!

Have a long piece of pipe that I'll be calibrating shortly for volumes.... no sight glass on the bk.

I highly recommend a site glass on your BK. You can get them for a good price from Brew Hardware. It's the best way I've used to monitor and confirm pre-boil volumes. This makes it the easiest way to measure mash efficiency and make sure you end up with the correct amount of boiled wort for chilling....and drinking

 

[kiblerjd]

I started batch sparging a few month ago and will never look back. And I do it with a cooler setup with a pump. I throttle back the flow a bit and recirc until the wort is clear. I slowly jack up the flow and when it is clear I pump it to the kettle.

I then pump water into the mash tun, stir it up good, then repeat the recirc process then pump to the kettle. I get the same efficiency as fly sparging and I save an hour. And I have ZERO concern for a stuck sparge because even if it did happen you just get some liquid in there then stir and recirc and you are back in business. In my opinion the pump is the key to batch sparging but there are a thousand ways to do it. Either way after fly sparging for 10 years I can tell you I wasted a ton of time and got no benefit from it.

I also am still in the camp that for what sight glasses cost they are a waste of money. Out some tick marks on your paddle or whatever you use to stir and call it good. It works great and costs nothing.

 

[butterpants]

Having my buddy weld in two couplers to act as fluid returns up high inline with the current ball valves on the mash tun and boil kettle.