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Our grist case is unfortunately a little too small to hold a full batch's worth of grist at the angle of repose, and I'm wondering if anyone's had to deal with this issue and knows of a good solution.
We previously had the grist case sitting just above floor level and augered up to above the mash tun to mash in. While it was by no means convenient, it wasn't too terrible a hassle to a prop a ladder up against the grist case and spread the grain around with a shovel before it started to back up.
We recently suspended the grist case above the mash tun though, and installed a chain disc system, which has made it pretty impractical and unsafe to climb up there and do it by hand.
Our solution so far has been to time mash-in to start as soon as we're down to 10 to 12 bags from the end of milling (batches range from 39 - 45 bags, so i guess it's more than "a little too small"). This works for the time being, but has its drawbacks. It requires milling during mash-in, which makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the need for 2 people to do the job, and the fact that it doesn't account for equipment failure during the process. There's a lot of room for error and bad timing has caused a couple of back-ups into the chain disc system, which is a mess.
So far we've tossed around a couple of different ideas for dispersing the grain more evenly (it will all fit if it's spread flat, just not in a heap):
-some sort of spinning blade contraption hanging from the outlet
-some sort of cone-shaped contraption hanging from the outlet
-a dome- or cone-shaped lid for the whole case so it will hold more volume (not a lot of vertical space to work with here, though)
-something that vibrates the whole case
-???
Reducing batch size is really not an option, certainly not by 1/4..
Thanks in advice for any ideas you have to share!
Nate
We previously had the grist case sitting just above floor level and augered up to above the mash tun to mash in. While it was by no means convenient, it wasn't too terrible a hassle to a prop a ladder up against the grist case and spread the grain around with a shovel before it started to back up.
We recently suspended the grist case above the mash tun though, and installed a chain disc system, which has made it pretty impractical and unsafe to climb up there and do it by hand.
Our solution so far has been to time mash-in to start as soon as we're down to 10 to 12 bags from the end of milling (batches range from 39 - 45 bags, so i guess it's more than "a little too small"). This works for the time being, but has its drawbacks. It requires milling during mash-in, which makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the need for 2 people to do the job, and the fact that it doesn't account for equipment failure during the process. There's a lot of room for error and bad timing has caused a couple of back-ups into the chain disc system, which is a mess.
So far we've tossed around a couple of different ideas for dispersing the grain more evenly (it will all fit if it's spread flat, just not in a heap):
-some sort of spinning blade contraption hanging from the outlet
-some sort of cone-shaped contraption hanging from the outlet
-a dome- or cone-shaped lid for the whole case so it will hold more volume (not a lot of vertical space to work with here, though)
-something that vibrates the whole case
-???
Reducing batch size is really not an option, certainly not by 1/4..
Thanks in advice for any ideas you have to share!
Nate
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