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Lautering very large beers ( > 1.095 ) in a 7 BBL system

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  • Lautering very large beers ( > 1.095 ) in a 7 BBL system

    Hello All,

    Any suggestions for lautering very large beers (larger than 1.095) in a 7 BBL system without a steam jacketed mash tun? I can lauter beers up to 1.075ish in an hour or less with 181F sparge water but anything in the 1.095+ range takes about 3 hours. I have considered rice hulls (I use them in my wheat beers) but I don't think this would help with the compaction on the mash grates. Once the bottom gets compacted, even at a low flow rate, it's impossible to get it to move quickly enough to raise the mash temp into the 170s...

    Any suggestions? Should I use much hotter sparge water and maybe flush some in the bottom at first? It's such a pain I'm considering malt extract ;-)

    Thanks,

    John
    John Bleichert
    Water Street Brewing Co.
    Binghamton, NY

  • #2
    Less grain and maybe some LME/additional sugar in the boil? Depends if you consider that "cheating."

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    • #3
      I dont consider it cheating at all - I consider it expensive ... [emoji6]


      Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
      John Bleichert
      Water Street Brewing Co.
      Binghamton, NY

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      • #4
        One technique that I have used in the past on a 15 bbl system is to split the batch into two half batch brews. Will take some experimentation to tweak the procedure to your system.

        1. Brew a mash around your 1.075 comfort range and lauter out to brew a half batch, ending up with 3.5 bbls+ worth of wort and ship to fermenter with yeast for the full batch.
        2. After cooling, continue to lauter remaining mash wort into kettle and heat this up for mashing in second batch with hot wort. Retrieve an appropriate amount to mash in 2nd half batch.
        3. Mash in second half of the grain bill. Reheat hot liquor water as needed.
        4. Lauter and brew 2nd half of the batch.
        5. Make a small beer out of the remaining wort if you can.

        Mashing in with wort will salvage the remaining sugars and bump up the gravity.
        Todd G Hicks
        BeerDenizen Brewing Services

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        • #5
          If DME or LME can work great. I also regularly use either dextrose or brown sugar for some high gravity beers. It depends on the beer I'm brewing as the sugars will dry out the finished beer a bit more.
          Manuel

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