new pan

[yeastinfection]

Just ordered a 19ltr pan from amazon. £39.00
Was going for the wilkos 12ltr but I think it's a little small.at least I can do 15ltr brews :-)

 

[baggybill]

Would that be the Buckingham Deep Induction Stock Pot? Have the 16L version, cracking pot. So wish I'd gone for a much bigger one though :-/

For a 12L brew I need 18L total liquor and even then it's a close call (boil off, with two pots, takes me down to ~ 11.5L). And that's with 60 min boils!

 

[yeastinfection]

Would that be the Buckingham Deep Induction Stock Pot? Have the 16L version, cracking pot. So wish I'd gone for a much bigger one though :-/

For a 12L brew I need 18L total liquor and even then it's a close call (boil off, with two pots, takes me down to ~ 11.5L). And that's with 60 min boils!

Yes that's the one. I figure it's better to have one to big for what I need now as I'm sure I'll brew bigger. I was doing 5ltr brews but is a lot of work not a lot of beer.

 

[Marcarm]

You can get bigger for cheaper from thehomebrewcompany.

I got a 21l pan from there for £35 ish which I maxi BIAB in and got 23l brews.

Plus I believe there is a discount for forum members as well?

Edit to add link

https://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.u...26a5f46b3176f2fb1eb94f5204e&keyword=Stock+pot

 

[MyQul]

You can get bigger for cheaper from thehomebrewcompany.

I got a 21l pan from there for £35 ish which I maxi BIAB in and got 23l brews.

Plus I believe there is a discount for forum members as well?

Edit to add link

https://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.u...26a5f46b3176f2fb1eb94f5204e&keyword=Stock+pot

Ahhh! So I'm not the only one on the forum. I have a 20L pot which I get 23L-25Lout of depending on the OG of the beer I'm making

 

[Marcarm]

You might be now, I sold my pot when I got my buffalo!

I did use the pan to get a variable brew length, sometimes getting 25l depending on the og. I used the 'to the brim' method and it worked really well. Made many a tasty brew in mine.

 

[MyQul]

You might be now, I sold my pot when I got my buffalo!

I did use the pan to get a variable brew length, sometimes getting 25l depending on the og. I used the 'to the brim' method and it worked really well. Made many a tasty brew in mine.

Yeah, I use 'to the brim' too. Was quite scary the first time I did it.

I also notice from you flogging you wort chiller that you no-chill too, which is what I do to. Do you chuck all your trub in te FV? I used to (but seived the hops out) but am going to start seperating the wort from the trub 24hours after chucking everything in the FV, so I can make yeast harvesting easier.

I'm also planning to overnight mash the brew after next so I'm going to be eventually doing a three day, brew day

 

[dad_of_jon]

Just ordered a 19ltr pan from amazon. £39.00
Was going for the wilkos 12ltr but I think it's a little small.at least I can do 15ltr brews :-)

Just ordered a wilco 12l for my first AG on Saturday. Normally I use a pot that boils 4 liters of wort then I top up with remainder of bottled water, So this is very much an upgrade for me.

 

[LarryF]

You might be now, I sold my pot when I got my buffalo!

I did use the pan to get a variable brew length, sometimes getting 25l depending on the og. I used the 'to the brim' method and it worked really well. Made many a tasty brew in mine.

Mark, if you were brewing to the brim in your 21L pot and cooling overnight to make a 23L brew, what would be your grain bill, i.e. total amount and breakdown if you recorded it. Same Question to you MyQul.

 

[MyQul]

Mark, if you were brewing to the brim in your 21L pot and cooling overnight to make a 23L brew, what would be your grain bill, i.e. total amount and breakdown if you recorded it. Same Question to you MyQul.

0

Same as any other 23L brew you find a reciepe for. You just use less liquor (water) to mash in and create a concentrated wort which you dilute in the FV. Doing this makes for a very thick mash (to liquor ratio) of course therefore I need to do two dunk sparges to wash as much sugars off the grain as poss and get good efficiency. Also there a maximum OG you can mange of about 1.053 (with my pot anyway) as you can't fit enough water in with all the grain to mash properly

 

[MyQul]

Just ordered a 19ltr pan from amazon. £39.00

Anyway, aren't you supposed to call it a 'brew kettle' in the lexicon of brewing? I just call mine a pot, cuz that's what it is. Was gonna call it Brian but it doesn't really look like a Brian

 

[LarryF]

0

Same as any other 23L brew you find a reciepe for. You just use less liquor (water) to mash in and create a concentrated wort which you dilute in the FV. Doing this makes for a very thick mash (to liquor ratio) of course therefore I need to do two dunk sparges to wash as much sugars off the grain as poss and get good efficiency. Also there a maximum OG you can mange of about 1.053 (with my pot anyway) as you can't fit enough water in with all the grain to mash properly

Nice one MyQul, but just to check, I have a 21L pot, if I'm going to do two dunk sparges (I've leaned towards dunk sparge since I first heard about it, it just seems more efficient and the idea of doing it twice is right up my street) how much water am I starting with? And how much on each dunk sparge. Would it be something like 10L of water to mash with and 2 x 5L sparge? My initial thoughts were 14L mash, a 6L dunk sparge and then chuck 100g of honey into 3L, boil it and add to the FV when cool to bring it up to 23L and somewhere about 1060 which is my preferred SG.

By the way, your advice on re-pitching the yeast worked a treat and I'm now a born again fundamentalist re-pitcher. Every second brew is getting re-pitched from now on, you cut my yeast bill in half in one fell swoop.

 

[yeastinfection]

You can get bigger for cheaper from thehomebrewcompany.

I got a 21l pan from there for £35 ish which I maxi BIAB in and got 23l brews.

Plus I believe there is a discount for forum members as well?



https://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.u...26a5f46b3176f2fb1eb94f5204e&keyword=Stock+pot

No stock.cant buy it if they haven't got it .

 

[Marcarm]

Nice one MyQul, but just to check, I have a 21L pot, if I'm going to do two dunk sparges (I've leaned towards dunk sparge since I first heard about it, it just seems more efficient and the idea of doing it twice is right up my street) how much water am I starting with? And how much on each dunk sparge. Would it be something like 10L of water to mash with and 2 x 5L sparge? My initial thoughts were 14L mash, a 6L dunk sparge and then chuck 100g of honey into 3L, boil it and add to the FV when cool to bring it up to 23L and somewhere about 1060 which is my preferred SG.

By the way, your advice on re-pitching the yeast worked a treat and I'm now a born again fundamentalist re-pitcher. Every second brew is getting re-pitched from now on, you cut my yeast bill in half in one fell swoop.

This is the method I used.

http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?t=352
No need to mess around with calculators or anything, just used a full grain bill and liquored back to get my og, so could end up with anywhere between 20-25l in the FV depending on what efficiency I got.

Little tip is to keep a squirty bottle of cold water in case it looks like it'll boil over, few squirts will calm it down. And if you're boiling on your gas cooker, take the bits off and lay some foil down, makes cleaning a lot easier.

 

[MyQul]

This is the method I used.

http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?t=352
No need to mess around with calculators or anything, just used a full grain bill and liquored back to get my og, so could end up with anywhere between 20-25l in the FV depending on what efficiency I got.

Little tip is to keep a squirts bottle of cold water in case it looks like it'll boil over, few squirts will calm it down. And if you're boiling on your gas cooker, take the bits off and lay some foil down, makes cleaning a lot easier.

That link is where I copied the method from too. If ever I think it might boil over I just turn the gas off. I do this when I do my hop additions too.

That covering the hob in foil is a life saver. Before I knew about it, talk about the mess and the scrubbing that went on. Sometimes a bit of wort creeps under the foil but just covering it in hobrite and leaving it for a couple of hours gets it off.

 

[MyQul]

Nice one MyQul, but just to check, I have a 21L pot, if I'm going to do two dunk sparges (I've leaned towards dunk sparge since I first heard about it, it just seems more efficient and the idea of doing it twice is right up my street) how much water am I starting with? And how much on each dunk sparge. Would it be something like 10L of water to mash with and 2 x 5L sparge? My initial thoughts were 14L mash, a 6L dunk sparge and then chuck 100g of honey into 3L, boil it and add to the FV when cool to bring it up to 23L and somewhere about 1060 which is my preferred SG.

By the way, your advice on re-pitching the yeast worked a treat and I'm now a born again fundamentalist re-pitcher. Every second brew is getting re-pitched from now on, you cut my yeast bill in half in one fell swoop.

Thats the thing I like about maxi biab everything is controlled by the size of the kit you have, so no messing about doing lots of water calculations - the only one you have to do is at the end to see how much you need to dilute the concentrated wort by. I use this calculator:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/dilution-and-boiloff-gravity-calculator/

It's the first one and pretty spot on.

As far as water volumes go:

Mash volume:- I fill my pot right up to the top then heat to strike temp. I then take approx 5L out. The reason it 5L is because that what my smaller pot holds that I use for heating up the sparge water.

Dunk sparge 1: My 5L pot plus one kettle full. My kettle is 1.7L to the fill line so 6.7L
Dunk Sparge 2: 2 Kettle fulls so 2x1.7L = 3.4L

I am going try just doing 1 dunk sparge next brew with all the water in one bucket (well my second FV) to see if there's any difference. Will save some time if there isn't

Some tips that I have found work for me:

- When you dough in it's pretty thick which may lead to dough balls. Use a balloon whisk to give the mash a good stir and this quickly and easily breaks them up if there are any

- Because of the concentrated nature of the mash you need to do all you can to get a decent efficiency: 1) Stir the mash about half way through. You can do it more if you want about ever 20-30 mins 2) Either squeeze the bag like it owes you money (I don't like doing this as it is so messy) or do an extended lauter. Put a colender in the bottom of a bucket or whatever. After you yank the grain bag put it in the bucket and leave it there for about half an hour. You'll be surprised at how much runnings come out. Bring these to the boil seperately from the main boil, then add to the main boil.If you dont chucking em in the main boil brings it off the boil throwing out you hop addition times because you need to bring the wort back up to the boil - which of course takes additional time
If you get to the end of your boil and you still haven't added all the extra runnings to the main boil, don't worry. As long as they've been boiled for 15 minutes you can just add them into the fermenter. However this has never happened to me. The boil off usually makes just enough room (and were talking boiling to the brim here - so the roll of the boil is about 1cm or 2cm from the top of the pot) to add all the addtional runnings in the boil time. Failing that you could do a 90 min boil

- Doing a concentrated boil leads to a lower hop utilisation. I always add 5 IBU extra to the bittering addition to compensate. I've tried using calculators for this but couldn't make them work for me - beer always came out too bitter. So I came to the 5 IBU is from trial and error. This might be my personal taste and maybe you might need to add more. Having said all that, I am aware there are plentty of other maxi-BIABers that don't bother adding any extra hops

Re yeast. You can re-pitch more than one generation. So you don't have to use another packet ever other brew. Wyeast/Whitelabs sites say a max of 10 generations but there's anecdotal evidence from the other forums to say you can go far beyond that. If you ever get into top cropping, you can do that infinately

 

[MyQul]

Nice one MyQul, but just to check, I have a 21L pot, if I'm going to do two dunk sparges (I've leaned towards dunk sparge since I first heard about it, it just seems more efficient and the idea of doing it twice is right up my street) how much water am I starting with? And how much on each dunk sparge. Would it be something like 10L of water to mash with and 2 x 5L sparge? My initial thoughts were 14L mash, a 6L dunk sparge and then chuck 100g of honey into 3L, boil it and add to the FV when cool to bring it up to 23L and somewhere about 1060 which is my preferred SG.

Re-reading your post. I think you might struggle with 1.060. Max I seem to be able to fit in my 20L pot is 1.053 but that extra 1L might do it for you. You can of course make 1.060 beer but I'll have to be a shorter brew length.

I usually end up with 17L of concentrated wort from my pot. I've never beer able to work out where the other 3L goes. I squeeze everthing out of my hops and surely I can't be losing 3L between flame out and chucking the boiling wort into the FV (maybe ten mins?) from evaporation?. So I usually need 6L dilution water. More if I get a really good effeciency, which usually happend with my lower OG beers (say 1.034-1.040)

 

[Tony1951]

I'm also planning to overnight mash the brew after next so I'm going to be eventually doing a three day, brew day

There's nowt like spreading out the joy, is there. :)

I was panicking about the 23 hours it took my wort to cool down last weekend. Thought I might be brewing a monster in that insulated boiler I bought. No need to worry. Wort and forming beer smells as sweet as a summer meadow.

 

[MyQul]

There's nowt like spreading out the joy, is there. :)

I was panicking about the 23 hours it took my wort to cool down last weekend. Thought I might be brewing a monster in that insulated boiler I bought. No need to worry. Wort and forming beer smells as sweet as a summer meadow.

I'm hoping day 2, the boil, sparge and clean up take no longer than 2 hrs, definately no more than 3

The boiling wort sanitises everything and kills anything in the wort and boiler/FV. So as long as there's no re-introdution of microbes before pitching time your all good no matter how long the wort is left

 

[Tony1951]

The boiling wort sanitises everything and kills anything in the wort and boiler/FV. So as long as there's no re-introdution of microbes before pitching time your all good no matter how long the wort is left

Yes - properly done, it is pretty much like canning food. Heat it right up - keep it there - then seal it, and it's good for a long time. My problem was about meddling and lifting the lid on the insulated boiler now and again to see what was going on.....

Moral: Boil it - seal the vent with clingfilm - leave 24 hours to cool AND DO NOT TOUCH IT.

Then I can run it straight into the FV and pitch the yeast. That's the plan anyway. I had thought of buying a water carrier to store the hot wort, but why? The boiler can store the wort and then I'm not messing about with large volumes of boiling stuff in plastic carriers.