Pseudo-BrewEasy/Brutus: No sparge test pilsner

[roddog]

Today I was trying out the no-sparge method that is what the Brutus and the BrewEasy. Specifically, I wanted to look at the efficiency my system with a temperature step mash. Here is what I found.

My system is usually the 10gal Igloo MLT and HLT and a 10gal BK on gas. Today, I left the HLT on the shelf and set up a ghetto BrewEasy (picture attached)

I did a german pilsner with the following setup for a 90min boil and a 5.0 gal batch (I had to use a BIAB profile in BeerSmith, I set my efficiency to 71%).

• 9.75gal H2O (7 distilled + 2.75 filtered house water)
• 10.3# Extra Pale Pilsner (1.5L)
• 1.12# Carapils
• 46g Tettnager (4% @ 80min)
• 76g Spalt (2% @ 30min)
• 19g Mt Hood (5.4% @ 15)
• Whirlflock & Yeast Nutrients
• 2L starter from (2 vials of WLP830)

My goal was to hit OG 1.055 (ok I know that is a bit high for 2A), 40 IBU, and 3.6 SRM.

The mash schedule I followed was:

• 122F for 30
• 144F for 20
• 162F for 20
• 172 Mashout

I had no idea what the ramp times may be (default is 4minutes in BeerSmith), but I averaged 12 minutes on my burner. I took a temperature and a gravity reading using a refractometer every 5 minutes during the mash and every 10 minutes during the boil. Here is a graph of those data (attached).

The temperature ramped pretty well. I use an immersion chiller in a bucket of ice to pre-chill water for a plate chiller. Works just fine to get the temperature down.

I found that the following things that may be of interest.

1. If you overshoot the temperature in the BK by 2F, it is about right for the MLT to catch up to the right temp
2. Efficiency is pretty much what I usually get in this setup using a dual batch sparge
3. The ramp time is kinda slowish, averaging 11 minutes to reach the next temp with full gas going (crappy turkey burner though)
4. Amazingly clear wort, it cycled the whole time.
5. Once the grain bed set, I stirred the top 1/3 of it to mix up and make sure there is no channeling

I drained into the carboy and it is in the chest cooler to bring it down to 46 where I'll pitch in the morning. I'll update as it goes (scheduled to drink in 10 weeks!). Hope the info is helpful.

 

[FarmerTed]

I've actually been using a similar setup, although I'm not sure what the brew-easy thing you're referring to is. It's worked well. I used to do 3 gallon no-sparge batches with an eight Gallon SS mash tun, but I couldn't do no sparge anymore when I moved up to 5 gallons. I ran across the Brutus 20 concept about a year ago, and that solved my problem I use one pump and one burner, which it looks like you're using.