First AG Brew Nerves

[lukehgriffiths]

Okay with my first extract effort successfully in the barrel and conditioning nicely I feel a fetive AG is just the thing to give a merry holiday season :drink:

I am familiar with all the parts of the process that are involved and have read the how-to guide it seems dead complicated but a lot of folk seem to think it isn't.

In terms of mash and sparge water... Can I just mash using 2.5l per kilo then sparge until I have enough water to boil (including boiler dead space, absoarbtion due to hops etc) so long as the gravity doesn't read too low. I guess you could always keep some extra for yeast harvesting

My other worry is boiler dead space I have about a gallon of it thanks to the imbecile that built my boiler (some bloke off ebay sold it as working but couldn't demonstrate it as it had no tap; it wasn't thankfully it only cost £40 and came with two 5 gal pressure barrels with S30 fittings , two 3 gal barrels and a length of microbore for an immersion cooler). Having fitted flexi-pipe mesh type hop-filters that fit directly onto my tap can I just tip some of this out at the end of the boil (or is there some reason not to; surely I would just get the same stuff if I had a lower tap?)

Thanks for your time.

Luke

 

[BigYin]

sparge until the hot runnings hit 0.990 and then get that all into your boiler

regarding the dead space, you can tip it out, but you'll not be getting it filtered then...

You could always redo the tap - just blank off the duff one and put the new on in a lower position :thumb:

 

[Dave1970]

In terms of mash and sparge water... Can I just mash using 2.5l per kilo then sparge until I have enough water to boil (including boiler dead space, absoarbtion due to hops etc) so long as the gravity doesn't read too low.

Yes you can, that's what I do. I fly sparge until I've got 30 litres, keeping an eye on the gravity

I have to agree with BigYin about blanking off the old tap and putting a lower one in - a gallon of dead space is going to drive you crazy every time you use it

 

[PD]

I got 3 litres and its a right pigs ear....

 

[jaymondo]

its difficult to know exactly what your taps like but it might be possible to add some pipework so the wort will be syphoned out from the boiler leaving you with less dead space. :thumb:

 

[lukehgriffiths]

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=25277 boiler a lot like this one but elements too high and opposite each other. The filter is attached to the back of a drum tap by a bolt so the whole thing is a fairly fine filter.
I tipped the boiler a bit to admit more out of the tap. Maybe screwing in another would be easiest way to resolve things but her indoors is getting pissed off with me spending time and money on things.