GuingesRock wrote:Aw! That’s a shame Mad Scientist.

I was left wondering by your post in this thread about the pressure fermenting in a keg that you do? How do you do it? Why so long to crash chill? Why does it speed things up?

Thanks

I hate to post links from other forums, but I give credit to WortMonger on HBT. This is a long running post; http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/closed-" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... que-44344/

The spunding valve uses an adjustable pressure relief valve. I do it because it's fun, the small foot print in my upright freezer and the 14 day grain to glass. Crash chilling stops the fermentation, drops the yeast out of suspension and clarifies the beer doesn't it? It also gets me at or near my serving temperature. I plan on making a 10 gallon batch someday and I can get another keg in my 'temp control chamber'. Making 10 gallons at a time would be a time saver!

Thanks very much Mad Scisntist. I’ll have a look at that.

I noticed a couple of people suggested using hot water from the hot water tap as a shortcut. That sounds like a big shortcut to me. Are there any concerns with that? People shy away from it in the kitchen when cooking veg, filling the kettle (would make my morning tea much quicker as well as my brewing). The only time I do it is when boiling eggs. I wonder if that’s a hangover from the old lead pipe plumbing days, now we have plastic plumbing in houses which might concern some people. Might need help from Joshua here.

i guess it depends on your water setup GR.
i always fill my URN with hot tap water, but i have a gas combi-boiler, so (practically) everything is copper. I also have the added benefit of being able to dial in a temperature between 40-65C (useful if you want lower temps for protein rests etc.).

Thanks Mally,

You know about yeast. I was wondering if it might be possible to simply swish a few litres wart around in a keg that's just run out, and then pour/dispense that into the fermenting vessel of choice with the rest of the wort. There seems to be quite a bit of yeast at the bottom of my kegs at cleaning time. The yeast in the keg would be clean??? and sterile from the alcohol.

Thanks

i have never done that GR, but i can't think of a reason why it wouldn't.
If you are racking to your keg after a good clear/drop out though, bear in mind the yeast you have in your keg will be less flocculant than the primary was.

Thanks Mally, I don’t like the sound of the yeast being less flocculent. Why would that be? (wouldn’t it be the same strain more or less, the first few times it was re-used?) Do you think it would be significantly less flocculent?

Mad_Scientist, I looked at that pressure fermenting in a keg, thanks. Interesting, food for thought.

My understanding is that the flocculant yeast has settled already, and the less flocculant will be still in suspension (what gets transferred).
When you dump fresh wort on the less flocculant yeast, they are more likely to reproduce with similar charactersitics to themselves (less flocculant).

In reality though, you may not see much difference, i just thought it prudent to let you know it is a possibility, and is all based on you not having flocculant yeast transferred (which is also unlikely).

Just what I needed to know! Thanks Mally.

Ps. I worked in Stoke on Trent where you live, 28 years ago, for a few months, before I moved to Canada. That’s where all the famous potteries are, including Royal Dalton and Beswick. The people were so friendly. Strangers would say “Ya all right duck” just to say hi. Beer at the pubs was great. I worked at the hospital and everyone piled into the pub across the road with their pagers for a lunchtime pint, you almost were obliged to…. “aren’t you coming?” Probably frowned on these days…maybe not. I loved it there. Especially the people.

Just what I needed to know! Thanks Mally.

Glad it helped

I only live in Stoke, i am formative years "scouse" (Liverpool), but mainly "Mancunian" (Manchester). So being called "duck" & "shug" is still difficult to get used to!

I missed the biggest shortcut of all! And it was right in front of my nose. If it takes 4 hours to brew a 20L (5Gal) batch…Get a bigger pot and brew a 10 gallon batch, then it only takes 2 hours per keg of beer.

I’m keeping my eye on Sokinsilihok and his scheme to make a 300L BIAB pot. http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=2030 I’ve thought of that many times. 300L probably wouldn’t take much more time to make than 20L, so each Corny keg of beer would take a 15th of the time to brew (about 15 minutes).

Take the argument the other way and brew one bottle only of AG BIAB beer and it would still take four hours or maybe three hours. Time is very valuable. If my accountant, who charges $270 per hour, took the time off work to make that 1 bottle of AG beer and it took him 3 hours, that bottle of beer would cost him $810 in lost income + say $2 for ingredients = $812. Bad argument I know, he could have gone fishing instead for three hours and caught one fish that cost him the same, but at least he would have been outside sitting by a beautiful lake daydreaming or something, instead of slaving over a kitchen sink/stove.

I can’t do a double AG batch with my 16gal pot, so I’m trying topping up with extract and water after pulling the bag to make it up to a double batch.

I’m seriously thinking of getting a second pot though and making two batches of all grain at the same time as a way of doubling with little extra time. We have a large ceramic hob in the kitchen and I brew on that (I leave the kitchen door open a bit during the boil which seems to stop the place steaming up). Doing two 5 Gal batches rather than one 10 gal would enable me to use the heat from two of the hob elements, thus speeding things up a bit. The other advantage, which could be a big one, is that I would always be doing side by side brews, and that would enable constant experimentation towards improvement in brewing techniques and beer quality.

…One more shortcut. I’ve moved from IPA to double IPA with more hops and alcohol so people drink less. It’s delicious. The last one was 8% ABV and I’m heading for 9% next time. That’s approaching the strength of a keg full of wine.

Thanks Mally! I had some time and you inspired me to write another post…controversial as always.

I believe I told you about making 10G, and you can do it in a 16G pot.

MS, I was thinking about that also, but I don’t remember you telling me how to do that, and I haven’t investigated how to do that and the pros and cons.

I do have another 9 gallon pot and I was wondering if it would work for me to do a 10 gal batch by mashing with all the grain and as much of the water as possible in the 16 gal pot and heating the rest of the water in the 9 gal pot to mashout temperature. Then lift the bag out of the 16 gal pot after 90 mins and put it in the “mashout pot” for 10 mins keeping at mashout temp. Then pull the bag again from the second pot and add that wort to the 16 gal pot for the FWH and boil?

Would I lose much efficiency doing it that way vs. a full volume mash in a larger pot or a side by side double batch?

Could it even be possibly more efficient, since the almost spent grains are getting a final dunk in pure water at mashout temp?

Blichman Engineering make a 55 Gal (208L) pot. Not a bad price considering quality. http://ecom.bosagrape.com/product.php?p ... 079&page=2

Heat the kettle with one of these: http://ecom.bosagrape.com/product.php?p ... 035&page=1

A coarsely woven stainless steel wire basket* with a voile bag inside it, hung from an engine crane, should do the trick.

Brewing would be done outside. I’d make a large chiller and hook it up to a garden hose.

I’d tap off into large plastic fermenting buckets which would be cheap and be portable for carrying into a fermenting room, heated or air conditioned to appropriate fermenting temperature. No-chill people could tap into cubes and ferment when they felt like it.

Total cost of all equipment would be around $1,000 USD/CAN for a 208L BIAB setup. That would make 112L (6 Corny kegs) of AG BIAB beer per batch. If a person wanted to add extract and water after pulling the bag, up to 10 Cornys would be possible.

*I think I would have to weave the basket myself over a form, using stainless steel wire with each vertical strand of wire joining others to form eyes around the top of the basket for attachment to the hoist. Horizontal wires could be thin and looped around each vertical strand to act as spacers for the vertical strands. Stainless steel chain mail would be the ideal thing to use if I could find a source. A sheet of that wouldn’t need any fabrication.

http://www.blichmannengineering.com/boi ... maker.html

*I think I would have to weave the basket myself over a form, using stainless steel wire with each vertical strand of wire joining others to form eyes around the top of the basket for attachment to the hoist. Horizontal wires could be thin and looped around each vertical strand to act as spacers for the vertical strands. Stainless steel chain mail would be the ideal thing to use if I could find a source. A sheet of that wouldn’t need any fabrication.

http://www.wovenwire.com/stainless-steel-wire-mesh.htm

http://www.wovenwire.com/contact.htm

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/artic ... -Termites/

Search the internet for (termite screening) or something similar! Good luck!

Thanks Bob.

Applying BIAB principals of full volume mashing to larger scale brewing????

I’ve been thinking about larger scale brewing since I visited the microbrewery. I think I remember the brewer saying he did full volume mashing. I told him that’s what BIAB was, and I don’t think he knew much about BIAB.

Up scaling BIAB gets a little tricky even for the home brewer wanting to upscale in order to brew for friends and family. A ten gallon batch I think (but don’t know) seems to be about the limit, as after that, bags need reinforcing and lifting gear becomes more costly and complicated.

For medium to large scale brewing, I’m thinking that a large full volume mash tun with a perforated false bottom could be used. The wort could be drained from that into a second smaller boiling vessel. The boiling vessel could even be a boiler/fermenter combo vessel. Thus instead of a three vessel system plus a fermenter (4 vessels), it’s down to two vessels with less equipment outlay, less cleaning, and no sanitising, since the boiling/fermenting vessel would be sanitized by the boil and the mash tun wouldn’t need sanitizing.

If I move up to batches larger than 10 GAL at home. I think that’s the way I might go, rather than trying to engineer huge bags and complicated lifting gear.

I could use a 55 Gal Blichman pot and burner with a false bottom, and have a smaller 40 Gal boiling pot to make 6 Corny kegs of AG beer per batch.

But then!…one pot, a large bag (something like an unloading bag) on an engine crane = 1 vessel, and you have to get the grain out of the pot sooner or later.

Mad_Scientist wrote:I believe I told you about making 10G, and you can do it in a 16G pot.

MS, I was wondering what you were on about there, and I’ve been fiddling with BIABacus for half an hour trying to make that work. Of course it’s possible. I didn’t think it was because I was trying to make a high gravity double IPA. Reducing the OG it becomes easily possible. It looks like the highest OG I can do with MO is 1.065 with a full volume mash. Maybe I am wrong, but if that’s correct, that’s not bad!

I could always throw in a KG of DME or sugar if I wanted to bump it up a bit.

Thanks for pointing that out!

GR, I think an OG of 1.065 is probably at or near my limit for my 15.5 G converted keg. I calibrated my keg at 14.62 G to the top welded seam. I have a little bit more of wiggle room above that. You can see that I am short of 10 G on one file, but okay on the other.
http://www.biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php ... 950#p28179
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... 076#p29076

Mad_Scientist wrote:GR, I think an OG of 1.065 is probably at or near my limit for my 15.5 G converted keg. I calibrated my keg at 14.62 G to the top welded seam. I have a little bit more of wiggle room above that. You can see that I am short of 10 G on one file, but okay on the other.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=286&start=950#p28179
http://biabrewer.info/viewtopic.php?f=5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... 076#p29076

MS, I’ve been meaning to say thanks for that, but I was waiting to see if there were any other comments, and then I forgot.

It’s amazing how as a beginner you can get worked up about something, then someone with experience comes along, and with a simple comment makes everything ok with the world again, and you can relax with a smile.

I think an ounce of experience might be worth a pound of theory. It’s worth a pint of beer anyway. So I guess I owe you a pint. Thanks.

Epimetheus wrote:

2trout wrote: There are LOTS of reasons why the process I described is probably a bad idea.
trout

I am new to brewing; maybe that's why I do not see anything wrong with fermenting in the kettle. Could you post a reason or two?

Trout, I've been slammed for BIAB, 2.5 gallon mash kettle with all grain (delicious batch), using an aluminum tamale pot (double-tap there), only 30 liters (triple-tap), using an electric range, using town water which is supposed to be terrible (analysis shows it to be great) and others I have forgotten about.

In the mean time, the next batch is gonna be town water from the hot water heater, into the Al tamale pot, on the 1500W hob, BIAB, slow-chill, and pitch DRY yeast right in the kettle. Bottled from the ball valve. And anyone with their 200K BTU propane-fueled computer-controlled brewing sculpture can stick it in their ear. Pthffft!

Hello Promethius, Did you watch this video that BrewBagMan posted here. Watch some of their brewing techniques, and then watch them win first place at the Great British Beer Festival. There is a lot of scope in brewing I think. I didn't see a single airlock in those videos.

You can start off doing everything everyone says you should and then start simplifying. You can start by ignoring everyone and then gradually make things more complex when you see advantages. You can start in the middle and take it in either direction.

You can do anything you want to! and hopefully no-body will put you down for trying things out and brewing the way you want to.

Someone scoffed at my amazing computer-controlled brewing sculpture recently. Not only did it hurt my feelings, but I now can't get the darn thing out of my ear.

Epimetheus,

The reasons that the process I described above is probably a bad idea is that it allows lots for opportunities for infection to occur. Also, if you have a bad batch, many would say that there are so many things wrong with the process, that there is no hope of figuring out just exactly what caused the problem. Im not that great of a brewer to know exactly what my process may do to my beer.

However. Having said all that, It is your beer, and the process I sometimes resort to does make beer that I like, and THAT is what matters.

Trout

Yes, that human doesn't look very appetizing. Probably already has a highish alcohol content.