Using a grant

[alphastanley]

I’ve had a few mashes blow out my coolers (meaning, more than I have capacity fore).

I’m debating using one of my three 20G kettles as a dedicated mash tun, and converting an older 3G stainless pot into a direct-fire grant. This way, I can futz with the gas a little less, as long as I balance my pump rate and my inflow rate.

Has anyone ever done this, in a setup like this? For whatever reason, this seems pretty simple, just lots of time and practice learning to balance the load in the grant, the pump flow, the mash outflow, and the heat on the grant.

I’ve half considered an Electric Brewery HERMS setup or similar, or even doing some sort of HERMS setup, but this seems a bit easier to try first.

Cheers.

[tom_sawyer]

I’ve been considering setting up a small electrically heated HERMS and was wondering about using a grant to avoid compacting the grain bed in my cooler MLT. Now you have me wondering if I shouldn’t just heat the wort in the grant directly with the electric element. Seems simple enough. I’d let the wort run out of the MLT passively into the grant, then match the flow back using a small pump. The element I have has a temp control built in and I figure I’ll run it manually by monitoring the MLT temp with a thermometer.

As for using a grant to expand the volume of your MLT, I suppose this would also work as long as the grain bed were always covered with liquid.

[alphastanley]

[quote=“tom sawyer”]I’ve been considering setting up a small electrically heated HERMS and was wondering about using a grant to avoid compacting the grain bed in my cooler MLT. Now you have me wondering if I shouldn’t just heat the wort in the grant directly with the electric element. Seems simple enough. I’d let the wort run out of the MLT passively into the grant, then match the flow back using a small pump. The element I have has a temp control built in and I figure I’ll run it manually by monitoring the MLT temp with a thermometer.

As for using a grant to expand the volume of your MLT, I suppose this would also work as long as the grain bed were always covered with liquid.[/quote]

You and I are thinking the same way, I think. The grant is just a lazy way to heat the mash liquor with parts I already have, and I do get a slight bump in capacity although sparge timing becomes important here (although, I guess I could sparge into the MLT, flow through the grant and into the kettle). This would make FWH pretty easy, as I could just drain the grant at the end of the sparge and dump it versus fishing around in my kettle.

I thought of building a PID setup and whatnot, but for now I think I can just manually do it and see if it works.

Cheers.

[tom_sawyer]

Right and you won’t scorch your mash with direct firing which I understand is possible.

I just wonder how much variation we might see in the rate of runoff from the MLT to the grant. Plus gravity filling the grant means there has to be two tiers, which is no big deal I guess.

[old_dawg]

Sorry to display my ignorance, but I don’t know what a “grant” is. Please explain.

Thanks!

[tom_sawyer]

I’m no expert but my understanding is, its a vessel that you run your wort into from the MLT, and then you can pump it from there. I think its primary purpose is to eliminate the need to pump directly from the MLT and in doing so, pull a vacuum that causes the fluffy grain bed to compress and clog. Its sometimes used in HERMS systems where you are intermittently/constantly recirculating your wort out of the MLT, heating it, and pumping it back into the MLT.

Edited to add: Normally I’d think GIMF, but when I googled it myself to check whether there was more than I mentioned above, I got a lot of stuff other than a definition of what a grant is. “grant” is a little too common of a name/term. There was a brief mention on the defs of another forum that confirmed what I said above.

[alphastanley]

[quote=“tom sawyer”]Right and you won’t scorch your mash with direct firing which I understand is possible.

I just wonder how much variation we might see in the rate of runoff from the MLT to the grant. Plus gravity filling the grant means there has to be two tiers, which is no big deal I guess.[/quote]

Not by much, though, assuming there is enough fluid in the mash.

My gut feeling is that variation will be a function of how much vorlauf I do – if the grain bed settles down all nice and tight, things should flow pretty evenly. I’ll probably mash high the first mash (1.5-1.8 qt/lb) just so I have extra juice flowing around.

It does look like a lot of people use the button louvre false bottom, though, versus traditional drilled/hole punched false bottoms.

Cheers.

[alphastanley]

[quote=“tom sawyer”]I’m no expert but my understanding is, its a vessel that you run your wort into from the MLT, and then you can pump it from there. I think its primary purpose is to eliminate the need to pump directly from the MLT and in doing so, pull a vacuum that causes the fluffy grain bed to compress and clog. Its sometimes used in HERMS systems where you are intermittently/constantly recirculating your wort out of the MLT, heating it, and pumping it back into the MLT.

Edited to add: Normally I’d think GIMF, but when I googled it myself to check whether there was more than I mentioned above, I got a lot of stuff other than a definition of what a grant is. “grant” is a little too common of a name/term. There was a brief mention on the defs of another forum that confirmed what I said above.[/quote]

What Lennie said. It’s just a buffer between the pump draw and the mash tun drain. In our (Lennie and mine) case, we’re looking for a way to recirculate mash liquor while heating it; this is typically done with an in-line electric element tube or a plumbing circuit submerged in a fixed temperature water bath. In this case, a small pot and some extra plumbing are all you need (assuming you have a spare burner) without having to build the plumbing circuit or electric tube.

It’s just an easier way to experiment with recirculated mashing.

Cheers.