HLT and Boiler

Dronfieldbrewer · Apr 27, 2011

My set up is currently 3, 50 litre pots, 1 for HLT 1 for the boiler and 1 for the mashtun. I currently only do brew lengths of 25 litres, I lose about 10-13 litres due to dead space, grain soak and the boil (usually 90 mins). I do suffer a bit of temp loss in the mashtun as 5-6 kg of grain seems a bit lost in the bottom of the tun. I am thinking of ways to minimise this with some form of HERMS system in conjunction with the HLT.

My question is that I maybe able to upgrade the HLT and Boiler, what is the biggest pots I could use for these without changing the mashtun size ( it has taken ages to get the false bottom) and do not want to start again trying to get another. If I have bigger grain bills then the temp losses in the tun will reduce

Mark1964 · Apr 27, 2011

cant understand why your losses are so high , we have the same set up as you except our mash tun is a 32 litre thermobox. With dead space and boiler evaporation we only lose 8 litres

Do you use a program like beersmith etc to calc your water etc

prolix · Apr 27, 2011

Rob 5-6kg will soak up the same in litres, hops soak up a lot and 10-15% for the boil, dead space of 2 litres, one each I would expect.

So 25 + 2.5 +1 + 1 + 6 + 1 = 36.5 litres

Dronfieldbrewer · Apr 27, 2011

prolix said:
Rob 5-6kg will soak up the same in litres, hops soak up a lot and 10-15% for the boil, dead space of 2 litres, one each I would expect.

So 25 + 2.5 +1 + 1 + 6 + 1 = 36.5 litres

Cheers for that, before I had the false bottom, I had a makeshift manifold thingy with a load of holes drilled in it, like an idiot the holes went up a bit far on the manifold so would get air into it and drop the syphon effect thus i did used to lose a bit.

However i now have this lovely shiney false bottom, and have found with my last brew that I lost nowt in the mashtun but still dropped a bit in the boiler. I am going to fit a sight tube to the HLT, I have been using a dip stick arrangement but this is a bit of guess work really.

Do you think that it is possible to use 100l pots with a 50l mashtun? Then I could do 10gallons without breaking sweat