Brew devil set up & test

[foxy]

I had my efficiency set a 70% and added extra grain, I have now set it to 60% in Brewers Friend and have been re writing my recipes yesterday was the first run at 60% and pre boil and post boil gravity came out spot on. For a no sparge this is a pretty good figure.

 

[dan125]

How are you all dealing with hops in your SVB? Can't see any hop bags in your photos @foxy

 

[foxy]

Straight into the boil, I always try to prevent any break material or hop matter going into the fermenter, failed on my last brew using the bazooka. In future I will just use the 8 mm reducer, whirlpool and let the trub settle out.

 

[foxy]

I see Foshun Shunde Guten Kitchen Equipment are now going to release a 70 litre unit, with sight glass.

 

[Litmus]

Straight into the boil, I always try to prevent any break material or hop matter going into the fermenter, failed on my last brew using the bazooka. In future, I will just use the 8 mm reducer, whirlpool and let the trub settle out.

Hi Foxy, you should give this a read http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/ I'm not saying it will change your mind, but I think we worry unnecessarily sometimes about the protein and hops left over from the boil.

 

[foxy]

If you take in the Brulosophy experiments,he even admits himself it is just a bit of fun, instead of whats been written by Briggs, Bamforth, Quain and Boulton. Also at a home brewer level which has been written by Strong, Miller, Palmer, Colby and others I really can't see where you are coming from.

 

[Litmus]

I really can't see where you are coming from.

I think I was pretty clear "I think we worry unnecessarily sometimes about the protein and hops left over from the boil."

 

[Keruso]

I have the 30ltr version of this with the ACE brand and yes it is as Hoddy says just the rainbow colours coming out of the heated metal. Generally you may get some light burnt on grist in this area but it will wipe off with a sponge very easily. I have done 50 plus brews with my machine and only once had a darker burnt patch which I had to clean off more vigorously. I would not swap my machine as it has and still does serve me well it may not be fully programmable as it is the first version of these machines so you can tell contrary to some what grainfather owners says it has been and still is reliable but I can still put in my mash, mashout and boil all in one and then just let it run. Good luck I think you will not be disappointed with it as there are not many bad one brew machines nowadays as they have gone through the first few years of prototypes and been improved

I have a grainfather and with every brew I used to get a horshoe shaped patch of burnt grist, like you mostly it's fairly light and comes off easily with a kitchen sponge/scourer pad, but with grain that contains more flour I have had to use mild steel wool ( yes I know bad idea) to remove it. The more flour the stickier the mash and the worse the burning is. I sieve out excess flour now, and add more grain to compensate. Makes a massive difference to recirculation performance, no overflow spill and clear wort.

 

[dan125]

I brewed in the brewdevil for the 2nd time at the weekend and missed my predicted OG by 13 points, for a brewhouse efficiency of only around 56%. I've been racking my brains but can't think why it happened - it was a biggish 9kg grain bill. I take it no-one else has this sort of efficiency with bigger grain bills?

 

[foxy]

Nine kilo of grain is pushing it, your loss would be attributed to the amount of liquor absorbed by the grain. There is a calculator which someone had posted up on line but can't find it at the moment, its somewhere in my book marks.
When looking for answers to something I mostly go to this site.
https://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?40007-Efficiency-Decreases-as-Grain-Bill-Increases

 

[Litmus]

I brewed in the brewdevil for the 2nd time at the weekend and missed my predicted OG by 13 points, for a brewhouse efficiency of only around 56%. I've been racking my brains but can't think why it happened - it was a biggish 9kg grain bill. I take it no-one else has this sort of efficiency with bigger grain bills?

What's was your mash efficiency?

 

[dan125]

I hit my target volume of 30L more or less (can't be entirely sure on this as I had bit of a spillage)
Which gives a mash efficiency of 61% - I was expecting this to be a bit lower with the larger grain bill, but that's 17% down on the first brew

 

[dan125]

I'm back to thinking about this little bazooka filter for the pump.
This weekend's brew will be using my home grown wet hops and I don't think I'll be able to bag them due to the sheer bulk of them going in.
Does anyone successfully pump out wort using loose whole cones and one of these?

 

[Oneflewover]

Whilst my bulldog brewer's bazooka is bigger than that (that one really is small) I have good results using whole cones directly into the boiler. In fact I've stopped using bags and spiders, and pellet (except to dry hop). I find that a reduced rate of flow upon starting pumping helps the cones to form a bit of a filter without caking all the other gunk around the bazooka

 

[Litmus]

I use bags quiet a lot at the moment, I also like to pump the wort through them during the colling process and that help take a lot of the larger lumps out of the wort. Becuase of this I don't use either pump filer or hop spider anymore.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi @dan125

I've only tried pumping my wort out the once ... and suffered problems with that little pump filter getting blocked, even after trying to whirlpool the hops out of the way ... since then I've whirlpooled during (immersion) chilling and used the (larger) bazooka on the back of the tap as the main hop-blocker, and that seems to have worked fine

Cheers, PhilB

 

[dan125]

Thanks all. I'll try to bag them if I've got enough bags - will see how it looks when I harvest & weigh the hops later today, but I'm anticipating using about 500-600g wet hops over 3 additions at 15mins, 5mins & whirlpool

 

[dan125]

I did bag them in the end but had to take out the 15 & 5 min additions to fit the whirlpool addition in

 

[foxy]

The problem with the small pump filter is it doesn't allow the small bits of grain which may be in the wort to be dumped on top of the grain bed during circulation. I throw hops straight into the kettle without a safety net, even with a lot of hops I can still filter them out.

No trub or hop debris in the fermenter.

 

[dan125]

No trub or hop debris in the fermenter.

Looks like its working well Is that just with using the larger bazooka filter attached to the copper elbow in the pump inlet?? I couldn't quite work out how you are doing it from your previous posts