Valve on bottom of HLT?

[mherrbrew]

Just brewed my first all grain and...I botched it. ABV should be 12...I'm at 4.7 BUT I know why and will fix it next time I brew. This leads me to my question...has anyone placed the valve on the bottom of their HLT? I haven't seen this done and I'm wondering why. This would only be a 10 gallon cooler (Home Depot) HLT and nothing else . My thought is that it would be easier to get all the water out for sparging.

Any thoughts on this? Of course your tower would need a hole to receive the valve...

 

[McKnuckle]

What kind of beer did you brew that was supposed to be 12% ABV? If I go by the beers listed in your signature, then 4.7% sounds much better (Dunkel and American light).

Most if not all vessels of any kind - kettle, HLT, or MLT - have the liquid outlet valve on the bottom of the SIDE. Do you mean the actual bottom surface that sits on a table or stand? If so, the question kinda answers itself. How would you deal with that unless you built a special stand for it or drilled a hole in the table surface? I mean anything is possible of course. Go for it!

 

[johngaltsmotor]

It's a matter of convenience. Having a cooler that sits on the table is preferred over needing a frame to hold it. But putting the valve on the bottom would eliminate dead space. With my false bottom and side valve I only have about 16oz of dead space in my 10gal Igloo so I don't worry about it.

 

[mherrbrew]

What kind of beer did you brew that was supposed to be 12% ABV? If I go by the beers listed in your signature, then 4.7% sounds much better (Dunkel and American light).



Most if not all vessels of any kind - kettle, HLT, or MLT - have the liquid outlet valve on the bottom of the SIDE. Do you mean the actual bottom surface that sits on a table or stand? If so, the question kinda answers itself. How would you deal with that unless you built a special stand for it or drilled a hole in the table surface? I mean anything is possible of course. Go for it!

Need to update the signature... Brewed a BeerSmith sweet coffee porter. I think the sparge was terribly executed as I didn't have a HLT or a properly marked boil/brew kettle. This is why I'm trying to do a little more research on the HLT as I don't know exactly how to build one in order to limit the dead space in the bottom.

 

[brdb]

Need to update the signature... Brewed a BeerSmith sweet coffee porter. I think the sparge was terribly executed as I didn't have a HLT or a properly marked boil/brew kettle. This is why I'm trying to do a little more research on the HLT as I don't know exactly how to build one in order to limit the dead space in the bottom.

Are you estimating your ABV based on your original gravity or is the beer done fermenting and you have taken your final gravity as well? What went wrong with your sparge? I don't have a HLT nor is my brew kettle marked (you really don't need either one to properly batch sparge), but I do use my fermenter (it has volume markings) to measure out sparge water volumes before heating the water in my brew kettle.

 

[bragona71]

Are you estimating your ABV based on your original gravity or is the beer done fermenting and you have taken your final gravity as well? What went wrong with your sparge? I don't have a HLT nor is my brew kettle marked (you really don't need either one to properly batch sparge), but I do use my fermenter (it has volume markings) to measure out sparge water volumes before heating the water in my brew kettle.

+1 and I am usually right on the OG missed a couple times by a point or so

 

[mherrbrew]

Are you estimating your ABV based on your original gravity or is the beer done fermenting and you have taken your final gravity as well? What went wrong with your sparge? I don't have a HLT nor is my brew kettle marked (you really don't need either one to properly batch sparge), but I do use my fermenter (it has volume markings) to measure out sparge water volumes before heating the water in my brew kettle.

Going off the 5.00 gal recipe...OG should have been 1.122 and FG should be 1.033...my OG was 1.060 and I checked it last night (1.5 weeks in) and it's at 1.024 (so I gently mixed and returned the fermenter to my bar). Going off my numbers. ABV is 4.7%.

I did a batch sparge but I had so much wort/water left over that it seemed to be completely wrong to me. After my 6.5 gallon wort for brewing was colleced, I had 3 EXTRA gallons of wort when it was all said and done.

 

[brdb]

Going off the 5.00 gal recipe...OG should have been 1.122 and FG should be 1.033...my OG was 1.060 and I checked it last night (1.5 weeks in) and it's at 1.024 (so I gently mixed and returned the fermenter to my bar). Going off my numbers. ABV is 4.7%.

I did a batch sparge but I had so much wort/water left over that it seemed to be completely wrong to me. After my 6.5 gallon wort for brewing was colleced, I had 3 EXTRA gallons of wort when it was all said and done.

Did you happen to use the volumes Beersmith told you to use? Sparge water volumes are typically going to be dependent upon your equipment (how much loss in mash tun, what pre boil volume you're shooting for, etc), so if you haven't configured your equipment properly in Beersmith, that could be why you wound up with so much extra wort.

 

[mherrbrew]

Did you happen to use the volumes Beersmith told you to use? Sparge water volumes are typically going to be dependent upon your equipment (how much loss in mash tun, what pre boil volume you're shooting for, etc), so if you haven't configured your equipment properly in Beersmith, that could be why you wound up with so much extra wort.

That's the thing. I'm completely knew to brewing and this is my very first batch with BeerSmith. I did the tutiorals and so on, set up (to the best of my ability) the equiptment profiles and scaled for a 5 gallon batch. However, I really had nothing to go on because this was my first go with all grain. As I do more I'll contiune to hone the equiptement profile and so forth.

 

[KartRacer54]

Oh I see, way deluted, could have had 8 or 9 gallons of 5%. Somehow you got numbers wrong and over sparged.
There are good free brewing calculators available or Beersmith is very reasonable.
Also there are forum sponsors here that have good software. Been testing one of them this week. They all work a little differently but the results are the same. Use one of them and you won't have that problem again.