First Brewzilla brewday

[ChrisD123]

More of a trial and tweak to see how things go...did a kind of user upper of grains...3.67 kg Pale...200g Carapils...200g Caragold...520g Vienna....Hops Bramling cross 39g @60 20@10 and 38@5 fermented with whc english ale.

Brewday went really well tbh...spent sometime tweaking Pid and mash temp held stable at target (rapt thermometer will be useful) as obviously temp is taken from bottom...all went smooth, mash out at 75 for 10 mins and then sparge and boil all went well. Pumped into fermenter and pitched at 20 degrees.

Much less debris than in Klarstein...effiency according to brewfather was 69% so room to improve...but overall happy. gravity was 1.045 instead of 1.047...added DWB to mash and had a PH of 5.45.

As i said it was a brew to get to grips with it...so far so good. Cleaning was doddle and made for a relatively quick brewday.

 

[peterpiper]

Glad it went well.

It seems that the ideal PID settings, required largely depend on brew volume and recirculation rate. For me, these factors will change between brews, and so wouldn't be reliable.
I went for RAPT BT temp probe control, from day one. With a differential override setting of 6°C (which limits how much the base temp can exceed set rapt temp). When using RAPT probe, PID control is set off.

Using RAPT, the time taken for (top/upper maltpipe) temperature to reach target depends on flow rate, and the diff limit setting.
At lower diff limit settings, it could take forever to reach the target temperature. Wiith too a high diff limit setting, the high base tempurature could denature the enzymes too quickly.

With RAPT control, the mash takes longer overall, and has a higher average malt temperature. Slower recirculation rates give the more extreme differences, up to 20min more per temperature step, and up to +10°C.

Using RAPT, BZ4 been reaching or exceeding the target OG. But giving a noticeably different flavour profile, I guess due to higher % of unfermentable sugars. This doesn't seem to suit lighter beer styles, but I want to use rapt probe control, so now looking how to tweek my brew profiles.

It seems amazing how much difference there can be, between base temperature, and upper malt pipe temperature. Which should be right? I've tried posting this question, in different places, with no good answer yet.
Historical 'correct' mash temperatures, come from a time when bluetooth probe thermometers were pretty uncommon.

 

[foxy]

It seems amazing how much difference there can be, between base temperature, and upper malt pipe temperature. Which should be right? I've tried posting this question, in different places, with no good answer yet.
Historical 'correct' mash temperatures, come from a time when bluetooth probe thermometers were pretty uncommon.

The logical way is to keep the mash temperature even throughout the mash, measurements from the top of the mash should be near the value of the set mash temperature using calibrated thermometer's.
As you have mentioned with a small-diameter malt pipe it would be difficult to maintain an even temperature throughout the mash.

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Much less debris than in Klarstein...effiency according to brewfather was 69% so room to improve...but overall happy. gravity was 1.045 instead of 1.047...added DWB to mash and had a PH of 5.45.

As i said it was a brew to get to grips with it...so far so good. Cleaning was doddle and made for a relatively quick brewday.

I use a Guten 40 litre (same as the Klarstein) and don't have a problem with any carryover of trub, I would love to see the clarity of the wort into the fermenter as I can't visualise 300 ml of trub left in the kettle and none into the fermenter.