Topping out your equipment

[Fore]

A bit of a blog. Maybe I pass on some motivation; maybe you can give me more ideas.

I have a 36 quart or 34 litre mash tun in which I batch sparge (normal batch sparge, so double water load passed through). I have a 40 litre to the brim boiler, but 38 litre to the handle screws (practical limit I guess). I have 2x 27.5 litre primaries.

To date I have followed the norm and brewed to 23 litre. But I'm short on time and the most I can get out of each brew day, the better. So I started thinking about my limits.

I have rarely come close to topping out my mash tun, the nearest was a 7.2 kg grain bill, and that much in one brew is not my norm anyway. At that time I was using a higher liquor to grain ratio and even then I still had a bit of space.

I'm never anywhere near the top of my boiler. For my boil off and loss to trub, I'm aiming for between 31 to 34 litres pre-boil depending on ambient temperature and the hop addition.

I guess in theory I could push my fermenter right up to about 26 litres, if I used a blow off tube (which I recently put together).

I use 19 litre cornies, but have mini kegs and bottles for the extra. Not a hard limit then, but will just be a more complicated kegging/bottling day. I have thought strong about buying the 9 litre cornies and pushing to 26, maybe even adding a 30 litre fermenter and pushing to 28, maxing the 2 cornies, but that would be an expensive move.

One extra complication in all this is that I want to push out an extra 3 litres of sweet wort in every applicable brew to take away for later starters. That only touches the mash tun & the boiler, but I think it blows my 28 litre idea, as I think I would then start to struggle in the mash.

I'm taking each step at a time. To date I have successfully increased to a 24 litre brewday without any issue. Next I will try to increase sweet wort production by 3 litre and see how my mash tun holds up. Then I'll start adding a litre a time, aiming to max my fermenter. Anything I'm missing?

It certainly pays off to have a little extra capacity from the outset.

 

[Clint]

I'm still learning myself....could you brew high og then water down to your required % in your fv?

 

[Dutto]

Hmmm! I like where this may be going!

I also have a 32 litre Mash Tun that could easily cope with 9kg of grain for 2 x 4.5kg brews. I also have two Brew Fridges and two FV's so fermenting a brew wouldn't be a problem,

So the question is:

"What effect would boiling 30 litres of wort down to 24 litres, splitting into 2 x 12 litres of wort and then adding sufficient cold water to take the volume to 2 x 23 litres for fermentation?"​

I set off typing for genuine interest in the possibility, but during the time it has taken me to do it I have come to the following conclusions:

1. I will be trying to make a diluted Malt Extract; not much different to those found in kits.
2. Modern kits are superb so why should I try to emulate one?
3. I moved from Kits to AG because (done properly) AG can produce a better and greater variety of brew.
4. I am geared up to produce a 23 litre brew and the kit works well so "Why fix something that isn't broke?"

Many thanks. It's clarified my thinking and I will stick to 23 litre brews! :thumb:

 

[BeerCat]

I used to use excess wort for starters as well. There are a few options. You can use the end runnings and boil it down until you get the right strength or take some from the first runnings and dilute it. You can also take it out of the boil either before the first hop addition or after. In the end i got fed up and went back to spray malt.
If you want to dilute by 50% you could just use a bittering addition then use half the water to make a hop tea. You can also get more out of the kettle if you use a co2 extract.

 

[Fore]

Reduction &/or higher SG creation and later watering down is an interesting concept. The amount of reduction we are talking about here is nothing like they do for kits, plus we'll have real hop profile. I doubt reducing from 30 to 24, then watering back, would hurt an AG. But I'm no expert, just going off the fact that it's nowhere near the reduction of kits. It did occur to me though, if I were to produce a stronger brew for later dilution, that to achieve that I'd need less sparge water, and thus my efficiency would suffer. Although I guess it's an option out there, I don't think it's a path I want to take, and extract neither.

In my OP, I mentioned liquor to grain ratio, but have now realised that is irrelevant to the mash tun size, as you would top up with the remaining water anyway. But I am finding my sparge comes higher up my tun that the initial mash and top up. I do all the calculations, so not quite sure why that is and how I can fix it, but there is scope to better balance my two rinses and eek out more total wort.

Using a 2nd final rince for the starter wort is an idea. Just a bit more faf getting to a useable gravity. My current idea has me extracting before boil and first hop, and freezing what is essentially concentrated starter wort, which is easy to store and easy to hit final SG with simple water addition. It seems pretty easy to me, so I wonder why you got fed up with it?

 

[BeerCat]

When i add my sparge water its always higher than the initial mash. I think it just fluffs it up a bit more and not much you can do about it.

I got fed up with using my own wort for starters as i had to reduce about 3l down to 1l then chill it. Its just much quicker for me to boil some spraymalt for 5mins then top up with cold water. I never used wort from the start as didn't want to add protofloc twice. I use' finings on my light beers so don't want to add anything that could potentially affect final clarity.

 

[Fore]

Ah I see, clarity. Yes I have noticed some protein carry over in my starters (to date I mashed specific to create starter wort). Hadn't worried about it, but I should keep an eye on clarity. I'm resistant to pay a super high price for spray malt when I'm cheaply creating oodles of wort in any case. Just trying to figure out best approach.

Looking closer at my homemade batch sparge calculator, I think I just had an idea as to how to better balance my 2 rinses. I actually programmed in grain absorption as a variable, primarily as part of the calculation to determine total water needed, and through experience have found it to be closer to 0.9 l/kg, not the oft used 1. I also use this lower value when determining my top-up addition, and this is where I think the imbalance begins. I now think, while the grain is sitting in the water, a figure of 1 is probably more realistic. The 0.9ish, that I have reached with trial and error, is after letting it drain for a long time. So if I adjust my top-up calculation to use the default 1 again, it means I add a bit more water in the first rinse, taken from the second. Applied to my last brew, I would have had 700ml more in my top-up, and of course, 700 ml less in my sparge. This could well remove the imbalance I see. To be tested.