Tony

Welcome to How I Brew

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I've been brewing all-grain now for a couple of years. I decided to make a two tier system because I needed something that was on wheels and was self contained (for the most part). I have no garage so I have to wheel the cart across the back yard and into my storage building. Carrying all the different components without a cart was a PIA. Furthermore, I wanted to make a brewing system that had a little more flexibility than the Gott cooler set-up I had.
I'd like to first talk a little about my brewing methods as of late. Previously, I would produce my wort typically like everyone else I knew. I would use a slooooow sparge and slooooow run-off to match. In the last couple of months I've gotten to know George Fix. He has been nice enough to let me come over and brew and bottle with him. The first thing I noticed that really surprised me was the fact that he uses plain old filtered city water that is pH adjusted with calcium chloride. I asked him about it, and he said that he didn?t feel it was necessary to make a lot of changes to your water unless it is WAY out of wack. The most important thing to him is to maintain the correct pH range.
The second thing I noticed is the small amount of sparge water he uses. He was sparging 21 Lb of grain with about 8 gallons. When asked about this he said "I like to use the same amount of sparge water as I do water in the mash". He said that "a lot of people oversparge (in his opinion) and decreasing the amount of sparge water decreases the amount of tannins". I thought this was interesting and made note of it.
Then the third thing I noticed that he does differently than me: When he opened the valve to run his sparge, it was practically wide open along with the run-off. He collected 14 gallons of wort in less than 30 minutes. I couldn't believe he ran it that fast. He said "I like to get the water in and out as fast as possible". I asked him all kinds of questions, "if I did that how much would my efficiency drop" etc. etc. Then armed with this new info I went back to my own brewery and really contemplated how I've been brewing. Looking back on a lot of my beers I realized that I made a lot of beers that had a harshness. I finally realized what the problem was. I was over sparging?.big time.
So, this is what I've incorporated what I've learned from George to what I've always done.
I've been making mash screens for converted kegs for awhile now. The one I use in my tun is 12" with stainless fittings configured with a nut on the down tube to hold the screen down and in place while being used. The is a stem for a thermometer directly above the plumbing on the tun but it's hard to see in this pic.
After I'm finished with mash-out is when I start up my pump to recirculate.
I do this for two purposes, one is to clear the wort and the second is to set the grain bed.
The sparge ring and sparging is one of the things I've changed. I used to have a listerman type sparge arm. It can only allow a small amount of water to pass through it (not fast enough if I wanted to sparge as fast as Fix). So, I made a sparge ring out of a length of copper. It was very easy to make. I just drilled holes on the bottom side with a 1/16" drill bit. Notice how far open the valve is on the HLT. I really do sparge this fast and have only noticed about a two percentage point drop in my efficiency.
This is a picture of my run-off from the mash tun. I use a lot of first wort hops. I think it gives the beer nice aroma. The nylon bag you see is tied over the inlet tube from the pump. I put it there as a precautionary measure, just in case there is some grain passing through from the mash.
I use a stainless steel screen tube in my boil tun. It works great as long as you use some measure of whole hops (pellets alone can clog the screen up). I like to use whole hops anyway, and when everything is cooled down the hops make a great filter bed for trub (maybe I should recirculate that with my pump too)?
I use an immersion chiller as you can see. One of the things that I learned from Fix was: Beers made with CF chillers will have higher bacteria counts in them. That doesn?t mean that you can?t make good beer with a CF chiller?it just isn't the choice for me. Another choice for me is plastic fermenters. I have a two year old girl running around the house now. It scares the bejeezus out of me to think about carrying a full carboy across a tile floor with her anywhere in the vicinity?..but, I would use plastic anyway. I like being able to get down in there and scrub.
I use a stainless aerating stone and pure O2 to aerate with. I don't know if it's better than the shaking method, but my beers seem to take off earlier now.
I've really noticed a change in my beers since I decreased the amount of sparge water used. They tend to be a lot more malty. By implementing this simple change I feel like I've reached a milestone in my brewing. My beers weren't getting any better, but now I think they are. I hope that some of this info will help someone else as much as it has helped me.
Tony