National Homebrew Club Ireland

Two turns in my 3 roller mill to get a finer crush  to improve efficiency and I ended out making porridge, the fine particles blocked the bag and sucked it to the bottom of the floor.
F it just take the bag out and pour onto the mesh floor. Balls some of the particles are so fine they have gone through the mesh and blocking the outlet no herms.
So after an hour of switching on an off Chugger stirring and filtering through the bag into the boiler I got my pre boil wort.

To add insult to injury I was 7 points higher even with an 75% efficiency

Needless to mention the mill has been set back to the bigger crush.

Quote from: CH on May 05, 2016, 11:13:16 PM
Two turns in my 3 roller mill to get a finer crush  to improve efficiency and I ended out making porridge, the fine particles blocked the bag and sucked it to the bottom of the floor.
F it just take the bag out and pour onto the mesh floor. Balls some of the particles are so fine they have gone through the mesh and blocking the outlet no herms.
So after an hour of switching on an off Chugger stirring and filtering through the bag into the boiler I got my pre boil wort.

To add insult to injury I was 7 points higher even with an 75% efficiency

Needless to mention the mill has been set back to the bigger crush.

My sympathies, remember the rye brew night I did :) Sorry for your troubles. I wonder do you premoisten your grain before crushing? I found I got nice big kernels when the grain was crushed.

Shanna

Purely down to crush and me being an greedy c. re efficiency, I wanted to see if I could hit 95%.  :D

Quote from: CH on May 05, 2016, 11:26:05 PM
Purely down to crush and me being an greedy c. re efficiency, I wanted to see if I could hit 95%.  :D

Maybe one turn next time h settle for 85% instead.

Shanna

Quote from: Shanna on May 05, 2016, 11:42:34 PM

Maybe one turn next time h settle for 85% instead.

Shanna

I'm already getting that  :P
Cheap shit crankenstein ;D

Quote from: CH on May 05, 2016, 11:46:37 PM
Cheap shit crankenstein ;D

You're right John, I'll take the thing off your hands for ya. Piece of junk... I'll give you a nice beech rolling pin so you can just bash the shite out of the grains instead, the old fashioned way!  :P

Sorry to hear it though, must've just gone south after I left

First rule of thumb,if it ain't broke  don't fix it.

Yup my mash and spare is still all over the place with the new rig because I keep trying to change it. KISS is there for a reason :)

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If I say to you my normal brewday for
My last 15 is set herms up and after it hits mash temp I walk away for an hour. It's been changed back to its 1.1mm setting and won't be touched again!
Thanks for the offer Kevin, if you hurry you can still fish it out of the bin at the gate!

I think you're right on at 1.0-1.1mm. Seen people mention crushes down below 0.6mm but I don't know how that works at all.
Kal in the Electric Brewery gets 95% at 1mm crush, but he does a very long slow sparge (90min). I tend to mash very thin, about 5L/kg, followed by a very fast sparge (<10mins) of the remaining 33% liquor, run through the grain like a dose of salts and that gets me into the nineties.
Do you throttle your Chugger? I've a little Topsflo 12Vdc pump, 11 L/min, and I've a valve on the pressure side, to give a very slow steady circulation. Not too much suction on the bottom of the grain bed to avoid compacting the grain. I've a sight glass on the exit port of the mash tun, and even the little Topsflo can cause cavitation, if I don't throttle it back.
I've no idea if mashing so thin affects flavour profile. According to Kai, it doesn't matter, all the German breweries mash thin.

Quote from: SkiBeagle on May 06, 2016, 10:30:21 AM
I think you're right on at 1.0-1.1mm. Seen people mention crushes down below 0.6mm but I don't know how that works at all.
Kal in the Electric Brewery gets 95% at 1mm crush, but he does a very long slow sparge (90min). I tend to mash very thin, about 5L/kg, followed by a very fast sparge (<10mins) of the remaining 33% liquor, run through the grain like a dose of salts and that gets me into the nineties.
Do you throttle your Chugger? I've a little Topsflo 12Vdc pump, 11 L/min, and I've a valve on the pressure side, to give a very slow steady circulation. Not too much suction on the bottom of the grain bed to avoid compacting the grain. I've a sight glass on the exit port of the mash tun, and even the little Topsflo can cause cavitation, if I don't throttle it back.
I've no idea if mashing so thin affects flavour profile. According to Kai, it doesn't matter, all the German breweries mash thin.

Thanks for the info.
No sightglass on MT dont see the point tbh.
I throttle by having full open bore feed and narrow 3/8 out on a camlock. I was messing around with a clamp on the tubing yesterday on the out but it made feck all difference.
Trying to get me head around the fact that it still sucks like the bejaysus even if its throttled right?
I've been avoiding putting a valve on exit even through I have 2 spare! I think I am just going to have to do it :(
If you are Herms all you are doing in the sparge is rinsing the sugars on the ourside of the grain so you don't need a long sparge and I do exactly as you.

Quote from: SkiBeagle on May 06, 2016, 10:30:21 AM
I think you're right on at 1.0-1.1mm. Seen people mention crushes down below 0.6mm but I don't know how that works at all.
Kal in the Electric Brewery gets 95% at 1mm crush, but he does a very long slow sparge (90min). I tend to mash very thin, about 5L/kg, followed by a very fast sparge (<10mins) of the remaining 33% liquor, run through the grain like a dose of salts and that gets me into the nineties.
Do you throttle your Chugger? I've a little Topsflo 12Vdc pump, 11 L/min, and I've a valve on the pressure side, to give a very slow steady circulation. Not too much suction on the bottom of the grain bed to avoid compacting the grain. I've a sight glass on the exit port of the mash tun, and even the little Topsflo can cause cavitation, if I don't throttle it back.
I've no idea if mashing so thin affects flavour profile. According to Kai, it doesn't matter, all the German breweries mash thin.

I'm in the middle of trying to fix this on mine. My mash tun design isn't great with the bag, which means there is some space on the side that liquid can channel along, unless I sparge slowly. I've tried doing it quickly (chugger valve open ~50%) and I get 60% into the BK.

How long do you take to drain the initial liquid from the mash tun? Do you just sparge and drain all in 10 minutes?

I herms after all is done I let it gravity drain from my MT with the valve just bearly cracked. About half an hour or so. Sparge, recirculate then slowly pump to kettle. Can take an hour and a half but hitting 90+ efficiency.

Next is to replace my corona mill with something a bit heftier.

I'm doing a kind of redneck herms with a plate exchanger to dump some heat from the kettle into the mash to compensate for temp loss in the mash tun. So I've my sparge water (usually 33%) left in the kettle during the mash to cover the element. At the end of the mash, I usually increase to 76C for a mashout, which helps with flushing the grains. Then I pump the sparge water up to a bucket placed above the mash tun, to empty the kettle. Then gravity drain from mash tun to kettle. When the water level is about 20mm above the grain bed, I open the valve to let the sparge water slowly into the mash tun to keep the same level. I think the main reason for good efficiency is thin mashing, and then gravity-draining the mash so channelling isn't much of an issue. The mash tun draining is about 15 mins, followed by the sparge water for about 10 mins. I get most of this time back because I start the ramp to boil as soon as the kettle element is covered. Another advantage of thin mashing: you don't have to wait for sparge water to dilute the first runnings, so you can start the boil immediately.

CH: I think you'll definitely need a valve on the output side of the chugger. Those things are monsters. Words like "chrome" and "ballhitch" come to mind. The sightglass normally goes on the end of the fermenter to collect yeast. But I put it onto the mash tun exit so I can see the wort colour and clarity, and also how fast I can pump without cavitating. Even the small topsflo is capable of pulling more wort out than the grain bed can supply.

I heard yez
I measured full whack and it's 20l/min
Just measured there at half what and it's 10 so even on a 30 that's every three min
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160506/5b3701f25477476c3c290f9990129112.jpg)

Quote from: DEMPSEY on May 06, 2016, 01:40:19 AM
First rule of thumb,if it ain't broke  don't fix it.

Oh how could you say such a thing coming from the guy that makes this fiddler look like amateur hour
https://youtu.be/k_tQk25pR60

Isn't there a little anecdote at the start of the mash efficiency chapter in good ole "how to brew" about a multi award winning homebrewer getting into pretty much the same predicament?

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Ch you use beersmith right  how do you adjust water grist ratio in the software or do you bother. Your mesh bag might be adding to the problem as in effect you have two screens?
I brewed a saison on fri and the mash was thick as bejasus,  took a while to run clear but the trick was slow trickle then recirc as usual

Oh I know what I did wrong  :D

Too much crush and not enough water, more water wouldn't have made a difference for recirc as I had already made cement

Normal static Mash 2-3L, Herms 4-5, Teabaggers 6-7

I'm sure throttling the Chugger will make a huge difference as well

For my germs I've been using 3l/kg but def thinking of going to 4 or 5 and see how that works. The improved extraction should hopefully help with the lower level of sparging.

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I keep it to between 2.6 and 3L/kg and haven't had any problems so far. My mill doesn't make it too fine though. Think most likely suspect was the fine mill setting.

Happy to report back to 100% normal operation the pump throttling helped as did the proper grain crush and 4l/Kg but it stuck again and as soon as I removed that poxy bag all systems back to normal

https://vimeo.com/166710476 (https://vimeo.com/166710476)

Minch Malt flat white anybody?
(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160515/95adff3475a98863cd920c9f17ecc1fa.jpg)

Quote from: CH on May 15, 2016, 04:57:03 PM
Happy to report back to 100% normal operation the pump throttling helped as did the proper grain crush and 4l/Kg but it stuck again and as soon as I removed that poxy bag all systems back to normal

https://vimeo.com/166710476 (https://vimeo.com/166710476)

Did a 4L/kg mash today, with a bag, and it went very smoothly. Granted, was just a 1.045 stout, but felt like the way to do things in future. Full brewday took 5 hours as well, which includes an hour of cleanup. Was well happy.

Also, underletting, when your mash isn't stupidly thick, is a dream!

The minch malt is damn fresh. Was using some and it was lovely and crisp. Really looking forward to making some beers with it now.

Hit my numbers getting 50l at 80% efficiency using the Minch so well happy

Quote from: CH on May 15, 2016, 08:16:14 PM
Hit my numbers getting 50l at 80% efficiency using the Minch so well happy

Only aiming for 23L @ 75%, got 24L @ 80%.  happy++

I find the efficiency im getting back when using the minch malt much better then Weyermann or any of the others.

It's certainly up there and I haven't seen creamy preboil that clean in years, let's see how my hooker clone tastes in 4 weeks.
Just really glad I was able to jump back on the horse so quickly.

CH & molc, delighted to hear that the mashes went well. I'd be very interested in your opinions of the final beer, as to whether a thinner mash has any effect on flavour. I've always mashed thin and have no point of comparison. Fear of a stuck mash, I suppose.
I tried underletting this time too, and I'm very pleased with how it went. It's very calm compared to dumping in the grist and stirring like a madman.

Have a read of this.
https://byo.com/hops/item/1086-make-those-enzymes-dance