Water Calcs for Blichmann BrewEasy (2V RIMS w/ Full Volume... Seperated)

[micraftbeer]

I am working with a BrewEasy Classic. It has a standard mash tun and a boil kettle. Mash tun is stacked on top of the boil kettle and uses gravity to bleed off wort from the mash tun via a tube with a fixed orifice. The water gets heated in the boil kettle and then pumped up to the mash tun. The flow into the mash tun is regulated by a Blichmann AutoSparge arm that uses a float to close off the inlet when the volume is high enough, and open up the inlet with the water level drops. It's all pretty slick.

My question comes to water adjustments. I assume in my brewing software (Brewfather) I set this rig up as a full volume mash. And then calculate the brewing salts and acid additions accordingly. The only thing that throws me off is acid additions. In my old 3V system, I had dedicated sparge water in a separate vessel. That just got minimal acid addition, whereas the mash water got more to hit the target pH with water, brewing salts, grains, etc. So even though I can start off with the "mash water" in the mash tun, and the "strike water" in the boil kettle, since this water continually circulates during mashing, it should just be considered one large full volume mash. Am I thinking of that right?

Even though, in my mash tun, I'll maintain a mash thickness of 1.25 qt/lb, since I'm continually circulating the full amount of water through, I should treat it as such.

 

[Bobby_M]

You treat every drop of water as if it were in one vessel. There's no concept of strike and sparge water in this type of system. In other words, other than the grain absorption rate being a little higher in a 2V, it's the same as a BIAB rig.

There's no real benefit to try to keep the mash thickness at 1.25qt/lb. Basically just make sure the wort in the boil kettle is about 1-2 above the heating element and let the rest be in the mash to make it as fluid as possible. To test it to make sure you have the autosparge set properly. Close the valve on the mash tun output temporarily with the pump running. Make sure the autosparge fully shuts off flow and make sure your element is well covered with liquid. That way you know you won't dry fire.