Brew house efficiency

Don’t expect overnight success… Be patient… you’ll find what does work… In fact… brewing the “lighter” brews takes so much more of less to make them good… IFN you want to hone yer skills…
Sneezles61

Makes a lot of sense @dannyboy58 . I got shorted by accident on a NB grain order a while back. They made it right immediately. :sunglasses:

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I’ve got the hull wrecker I really like it. I hook it up to my hammer drill with the hammer mode turned off. You can use any corded drill. Wear a mask or your nostrils will be filled with malt haha

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Gravity works if you have the right setup. A pump is probably faster and safer. We all bite the bullet at some point. Just think about what your best possible brew system would look like and buy a pump that would work in it.

Short cuts and settling for tend to cost more in the long run. Just sayin…

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Pumps… when I have to replace mine… I’ll get the riptide… I like the idea you can take the pump apart without a screw driver… I’ve had a few occasions to tear mine apart… some sort of mushroom growing in the impeller… “I’m sure I cleaned it well”… :weary:
Sneezles61

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Do you run the hot wort through the plate chiller more than once? Or just through and into the fermenter immediately?

Yea I know not to expect immediate perfection. My initial goal is to brew with better efficiency than this last beer, that’s all. From there, I will work on getting better each time. I’m just not the type of person to say 55% is acceptable (even if the beer tastes good).

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You’ll get it back. I hit expected efficiencies, and sometimes better, doing BIAB so I imagine you can do it with your system. One thing I’m confused about is when you are talking abut your plate chiller in the process. I heat up my sparge water to around 170F not cool it down.

I don’t know Dannyboys whole method… But I believe he is running the very hot water through AFTER he’s chilled his wort… You need to keep the trub and such from drying in the capillaries…
Sneezles61

Right, I imagine the hot water he sends through the chiller is for CIP or COP purposes. So, once he’s done with chilling his wort down, he flushes/washes it out with warm water.

Mine will be during cool down from boil to pitch. I have a home made glycol system that can pump sub freezing liquid through the “water in” port, then return that liquid back to the cooling tub. I’m just curious if residence time of the wort happens to make a difference inside the chiller. Gravity feeding the wort through would be slower, thus increased residence time. I have a pump I could use to speed it up, but I have no idea if that means I need multiple passes through the chiller. Either way I expect it to GREATLY reduce my cooling time (this last one took an hour), just curious how to play with my new toys

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Well… there becomes another point that can be thought about… Re-circ while whirl pooling hops… For the hoppy-er brews…
I find if I throttle down the wort our put… Im very close to dumping directly into the fermenter… Which in my humble opinion, is the best…
Sneezles61

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I currently put an immersion chiller in the pot with 5 minutes left in the boil, turn on the glycol chiller with 30 minutes left in the boil but don’t activate the pump. When the boil is done, I turn off the heat and activate the pump, which moves the chilled glycol through the IC and back to the pool. Once the temp drops below 175 (the temperature my automated ball valve seats are rated for), I start a whirlpool/recirc. Once it drops to 90 or so, I move to the fermenter (just to have a cooler vessel than my hot kettle), drop the IC into that and finish the cooling.

I also use a hop spider, and I use whirlfloc so I don’t really have much in terms of solids to clog anything up.

I guess if one pass through the chiller doesn’t cool fully enough, I can always pour that wort back into the kettle and send it through another time (or as many times as needed). Just trying to prevent multiple trips of picking up 5.5 gallons

I use an immersion chiller but the guys I know that use a plate chiller generally do one pass directly to the fermenter. They throttle the flow through the chiller to regulate the temperature. It’s all about energy transfer so you want maximum contact between the wort and the plates and regulate the contact time by regulating flow. Conventional wisdom says to put your throttling valve on the chiller output to keep it ”full”. In my way of thinking, if I couldn’t cool it in one pass in a reasonable amount of time then my chiller is too small.

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I really like this idea. I was imagining slowing down the flow by just avoiding the pump, but if I throttle the output of the chiller rather than the output of the pump, you are right that increases residence time inside the chiller. Thanks for the tip!

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I only run the wort through once unless I’m chilling to a specific temp for whirlpooling hops, for say an IPA, in which case I’m feeding the cooled wort back into the kettle. For chilling wort to pitching temps I have a valve after my pump and prior to the chiller for the wort side, to control the speed of flow. You could also put it after the plate chiller I suppose, just works better on my brew cart to mount it after the pump. Never put it before the pump because restricting flow there could cause the pump to cavitate and get hot. There’s also a valve on the hose that feeds the chill water in so that I can essentially match the flow for max contact. I have an inline thermometer after the plate chiller and I usually confirm the temp with my thermopen when I fill a tube for a gravity reading. I can get 10 gals down to ale pitching temps in 15-20 minutes max. Lager wort takes a little longer but not a lot.

My well water is 54-56 degrees year round. With glycol you could chill it pretty darn fast if you match the flow rate between wort and glycol.

Not sure what the confusion is about, I don’t believe I mentioned sparging at all but to clarify, when I’m done chilling my wort I run hot water from my HLT through the wort side of the plate chiller in both directions to make sure nothing is hiding in there.

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I have a sump pump that pushes the glycol around, so I can’t really throttle that part down without hurting the pump.

I have a chugger that moves my wort around. I use it to either recirc/whirlpool during cool down (outlet port at bottom, inlet port at top of kettle… Dip tubes facing proper directions to create a whirlpool)… Or I use it to empty the kettle into the fermenter. So I can throttle the chugger down, either before the chiller (at the wort in port), or after (at the wort out port). Either way would slow the flow of wort through the chiller while the glycol is going through the other direction.

I think you could put a valve after the sump pump to slow it down without damaging the pump but maybe I’m wrong.

Restricting the flow AFTER a pump is safe… BEFORE the pump causes problems… As far as the chillin’ process… maybe you’d practice with boiling water and see which works better… Huh… pretend brewing… :no_mouth:
Sneezles61

Haha yes I actually did think of that, to test with hot water. It would also help me check for any leaks.

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt the sump. I’ve never seen anyone do that, but maybe that’s because most sump applications are meant to evacuate as much liquid as possible as quickly as possible, so there’s rarely a need for throttling down. It’s probably an impeller inside, so that would be fine to throttle down (after the pump). Obviously chuggers have the same idea… Before pump bad. After pump good.

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Fun update… Sarcasm aplenty.

I got the hull wrecker grain mill for my next brew, a belgian tripel. Got the unmilled grain, milled a tiny amount at what looked like a little over 0.030 (the guage on the sides has a mark for 0.025 and another at 0.050, and I was a little below halfway), and thought it looked a little small, so I upped the setting to as close to halfway as possible (should represent 0.0375. Milled the entire grain supply and went about my brewing.

Must have still been too small, because I had my first ever completely stuck mash. It was paste-like, a giant mess. I tried to save it in any way I could, but even when I had gathered a bunch of “wort”, it started scorching immediately upon the boil step. Had to toss the batch, will have to try again. I ended up with a little unused grain left over, so I will try to mill that up as a test for grain size, then see if it’s big enough to use with my false bottom. It was a comedy of errors, funny now that a few days have passed. But man… I was pissed. Never thought 0.0375 would STILL be too small.

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