Post First All-Grain Questions

[MNBugeater]

I brewed my first all grain this past week and it went well but I have a few questions for improvement.

I used whole hops and they tended to clog my ball valve opening when transfering to fermenter via CFC. Any tips for filtering or straining whole hops? I could just use pellets if this is the solution. Any advantages one way or the other using pellets or whole leaf?

My MLT is a 10G mega pot, any tips on insulating this during the mash to better hold a constant mash temp ?

Finally, i believe my equimpent is large enough to do 10G batches. Are there any unforeseen issues doing larger batches that i should be aware of? I think i might have better luck holding mash temps with a larger grain bed, but is it really as simple as just double the recipe?

Thanks All

MNBugeater

 

[Lou]

I used whole hops and they tended to clog my ball valve opening when transfering to fermenter via CFC. Any tips for filtering or straining whole hops? I could just use pellets if this is the solution. Any advantages one way or the other using pellets or whole leaf?

you could try a hopstopper. a lot of people like them, apparently...

My MLT is a 10G mega pot, any tips on insulating this during the mash to better hold a constant mash temp ?

try a sleeping bag.

 

[budbo]

I use a water heater insulating blanket $9.95 at Lowes

 

[D*Bo]

Larger wort volume will give you a higher hop utilization rate. If you simply double the ammout of hops going from a 5G to a 10G batch, you will get a very bitter beer.

 

[Mykel Obvious]

Larger wort volume will give you a higher hop utilization rate. If you simply double the ammout of hops going from a 5G to a 10G batch, you will get a very bitter beer.

According to ProMash this is not true... if you lock ingredients to batch size and raise the volume from 5 to 10 gallons everything doubles and you get the exact same OG and IBUs, i.e. your BU:GU ratio stays the same... a larger wort volume only gives higher hop utilization if you move from a partial wort boil to a full wort boil... it is related to the concentration of sugars in a specific volume of water...

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter5-5.html This helps explain the utilization at various concentrations of sugars in the wort, etc.

The biggest problem MNBugeater is likely to run across in doing a 10 gallon batch with a ten gallon Mash Tun is grain volume limiting the gravity of a beer... you can easily do ten gallons of average OG beer in this, but to do anything over around 1.070 you will either have to mash twice or use extract to boost the gravity... so that is the only limitation I can think of at this time...


HTH,
mikey