Small Scale Brewing - Oven Mashing

[mr_spin]

I'm interested in making some smaller batches say 10/12L for 'experimentation'. I've converted a 20L stockpot to use as the boiler for this. Now for the mash tun...

Question is: can I use a smaller stockpot (we have an 11L one) for a mash tun and try and keep this at a constant 65-68C in the preheated oven? Would this work? Anyone tried this? I was thinking of putting the grain in a voile sparge bag and then the bag into the pot.

 

[jamesb]

Have a look at Daab's instructions - http://18000feet.mesb.co.uk/minimash/page1.htm

 

[mr_spin]

Have a look at Daab's instructions - http://18000feet.mesb.co.uk/minimash/page1.htm

good old Chris he's everwhere isn't he?? Thanks for the link - looks like it might work then. I'm just gonna do a trial by heating 6L of water to 68C, putting it in the oven and seeing if it holds temp..

 

[mr_spin]

well after an hour on the first temp setting on my fan assisted oven the temp has remained at... 68C !

 

[jonboymentalhealth]

thats awesome im gonna look into this as a cheap way of going all grain... :clap: :clap: :clap:

 

[mr_spin]

gonna brew an 11 litre batch of TTL tomorrow morning using my 20L stockpot boiler, 11L stockpot tun and the Mrs' Rangemaster wok burner and fan assisted oven!

I'll aim to take pics of the process.

Recipe:

Amount Item Type % or IBU
2.00 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (5.9 EBC) Grain 97.44 %
0.05 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (118.2 EBC) Grain 2.56 %
14.76 gm Goldings, East Kent [5.20 %] (90 min) Hops 17.3 IBU
12.91 gm Styrian Goldings [4.10 %] (90 min) Hops 12.0 IBU
11.07 gm Styrian Goldings [4.10 %] (10 min) Hops 3.5 IBU
1.32 gm Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Thames Valley Three (Brewlabs) [Starter 1000 ml] Yeast-Ale

 

[Good Ed]

Good luck with the brew, sounds interesting, looking forward to the pics :thumb: :

 

[mr_spin]

the mash is on... :)

 

[evanvine]

This sounds a brilliant idea, which I think could lend it's self very well to "trialing" recipes.
What are your thoughts on sparging?

 

[mr_spin]

I have a voile sparge bag from ebay that the grain sits in and I will be pulling the bag out after each sparge - due to the size of the stockpot 'tun', I have to do 3 sparges. Just doing the first - 2.5 L of 80C water added.

Then it will be two more sparges of 5.7L each

 

[evanvine]

Excellent MS, I thought of a normal grain bag. :thumb:

 

[Good Ed]

How did it go Mr S

 

[mr_spin]

reasonably well - I'll put up some pics in a bit and a more thorough explanation..

 

[Dieseljockey]

This is brill.. :clap:

I started of with two 5lt tub just like daabs with one fitting inside the other...used that one as a strainer...but I never mashed in the oven..and I've often looked at a recipe and thought I'd like to give it a go but do a one/two gall brew..just to see how they turn out....can see me having a go soon.. :thumb:

 

[mr_spin]

here we go - pics of the process. This is basically a BIAB type approach with sparge steps. It was so easy a process, I actually brewed another batch on the same day to finish off some grain/styrians I had. So I ended up making a 10 L styrian stunner batch later on in the day!

The process using the oven went really well but the proof will be in the final product in 4-5 weeks time! :pray: Mash temp was maintained throughout in my little 11 L stockpot tun in the oven!

This smaller batch process highlighted an issue that I'd been having - BB suggested in another thread that maybe my astringency smell/taste was due to oversparging - basically this has proved I've been doing just that as the 3rd batch sparge step was too much and there was a really strong astringent smell. When I checked the gravity, the brix reading was 2.5 which is too low! Root cause: My software settings were set to 80% mash efficiency for some reason which is too high whereas I originally started out last year with a 70% setting! maybe I'd been playing somewhere! The efficiency setting was wound back to 70% for the 2nd batch and this was much better... Duh! :hmm:

Pics:

empty 21L boiler stock pot with fashioned #40 mesh filter!

Grain bill

Mash in oven! on a low setting the oven maintained a constant 67C mash temp.

Mash on..

Heating up the sparge water on the wok burner

Batch Sparge 1

Result from 1st batch sparge

Pulling the voile bag after sparging..

coming up to the boil

first hops weighed

first hops in

Cooler in - cooled in 10 mins!

Running off into FV

Runoff Volume.

Post boil gunk.

 

[evanvine]

Well done MS, never seen that method before, very interesting. :thumb:
Great pics as well.

 

[Dieseljockey]

Well done that man.. :clap: ...this gives us food for thought....bring on the mini brews... :party:

 

[MikeB]

How long did this brew length take you, start to finish? Looks like a great way of making small batches!

 

[mr_spin]

How long did this brew length take you, start to finish? Looks like a great way of making small batches!

it still took 5 hours but some advantages are much less clearing up afterwards, quicker heat up of sparge water and boiler wort and more control..

 

[Oakers73]

Out of interest how long did you mash for in the oven?