Just dove in and did my first AG batch earlier this week. All-in-all it went pretty well, but I guess I’m not sure what is “normal”. I have a big rectangular cooler with a braided mesh and I did a small 3-gallon (total) batch. How long does it typically take to drain with this type of set-up?
Generally, slow is better. Don’t get in a hurry. Did you do a mashout? Did you vorlauf until it’s clear? That prepares the grain bed. From that point you should be able to get clear wort as long as you don’t completely drain the bed. Some batch sparge, some fly sparge. But if you did a mashout, it shouldn’t matter much. Just try to avoid draining it dry, or you will get grains and crud again, just like you did with the vorlauf.
I am pretty new to AG as well but from what I have read on here with the cooler and braid batch sparge setup you can more or less let it go as fast as it will drain. You can vorlouf a couple of quarts till it clears up a bit and then let her rip. I just did a 5 gallon batch in a 70 qt rectangular cooler and it took about 15 minutes to run out my first runnings. Add mash water and stir and vorlouf again. That time I let it drain really thouroughly and it took maybe 30 minutes but the last 15 was a trickle.
I go really slow. I brew 11 gallon batches and sparge 8 gallons through the grain bed and just drain the last three. It takes me anywhere between 60 minutes to 90 minutes to fill my BK. I could open up the valve more and go a lot faster but it has always been an experiment I’ve been afraid to try. My efficiency is 80 to 85 and I don’t generally have clarity issues so I don’t think I need to go any slower. Perhaps I could go faster though with no ill affect.
Denny says go as fast as you like!
http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/
Denny says go as fast as your system will allow. On my system, and I believe on his as well, that’s full out as fast as it will go. But that could be a bit different from system to system.
It takes me about 30-40 minutes from the time I start the initial vorlauf until I start the boil.
Hey thanks guys,
I did vorlauf and batch sparge, I did not do a mash-out, as I heard most of the time it isn’t really necessary. I think my braid is a bit too long and it is really bunched up, so maybe I’ll try shortening it. After vorlauf, it look me almost an hour to get the first runnings, even with the spigot fully open, it was just trickling out. Then after I sparged, it was probably another hour. Maybe a mash-out will help, but I think shorten my braid and stretch it out more. Thanks again for the advice
That’s really slow. What kind of rectangular cooler do you have? How fine did you crush your grain? It may be the braid but it may be that you ground the grist too fine. You can also try tilting the cooler and propping it up before you start your vorlauf to help keep things moving.
Are you sure your braid is really stainless? People have been fooled by the lookalikes from the big box stores that are actually plastic. Folks that have fallen for that say that it takes forever and a day to drain.
Fly sparging, yes. Batch sparging, it doesn’t matter.
It takes me a total of 15 min. to vorlauf and runoff the mash, stir in the sparge water, vorlauf that and run off the sparge. That’s for about 8 gal. of runoff in the kettle.
Typically about 20 minutes for a 12 gallon boil volume. (Ice Cube cooler with a manifold)
I did try tilting it up and that did seem to help, but I thought I remembered something in John Palmer’s book about fluid mechanics so I wasn’t sure if this was the best idea. I’ll have to check on the type of braid I grabbed, to be honest, I didn’t even think about it. Just saw and grabbed. I’ll be pissed if it is plastic though, the one I had, had a thick rubber hose on the inside (all of the examples I’ve seen were plastic hoses) and I nearly busted a nut trying to get it out. I also don’t think the grist was too fine, just based on pictures I had seen, it seemed rather coarse, a lot of the husks were still intact. I guess the only answer is to make more beer!
You might be a redneck if… oh wait, wrong saying.
It might be plastic if…
When cutting/working/removing the braid, you were able to get your fingers within six inches of the cut ends without poking your fingers full of holes.
It might be plastic if…
After you folded and crimped the end of the braid, it kept trying to loosen/unroll
It might be plastic if…
You can hold a match to the frayed braid end and it “fuses” like nylon rope.
Keep in mind that if you’re batch sparging, all of John’s info on fluid dynamics has no bearing on what you’re doing.
Aaaahhhh I KNOW that feeling… Try “malt conditioning” the easy version is this: Put all the grains in a large tub, and whilst stirring the grains around with one hand, operate a plant sprayer with water with the other. Moisten the grains…don’t soak them. We’re talking…30-50 squirts for 20+ pounds of grain. (Der Kaiser can give you science based numbers) Let them sit for 15 minutes. What you are doing is moistening the husks. It makes them less brittle and then when you send them through the mill they come out whole, almost all of them. It make for a much better grain bed which will flow as well as you would like.
I will never ever mash another load without doing this.
I have no doubt that malt conditioning works. I also have no doubt that with my equipment it’s not necessary. Personally, I guess I’d rather fix the issue at the source than have to condition malt every time I crush. I know, I know…it’s easy. But so is assembling equipment, and I rather only do it once than every time.
Agreed. Then again, I think I have it all set up right, and it was still an issue. Having nice whole husks is a beautiful thing…and in the end it only takes five minutes and all you’re adding is some water. I’m sold.
But, then again that is one of the beautiful things about beer. Different regions, different eras… people figgered out what worked FOR THEM and that’s how we got some beautiful beers. If everyone would have done it the same it would have been a BMC world a long time ago…
A bit tangential here but with my new 8 qt mash-tun I’ve had an interest in this subject. The latest sack of Breiss 2-row’s kernels are a lot smaller and they flew through my rollers. I ended up with a pretty coarse crush. Inspecting it closely, there was some flour but a decent percentage of the grains were nearly whole with broken endosperm resting within their skins. Could have run it through again after tightening the gap but… Didn’t do it. 
Instead I ran it roughly between my palms to loosen it up.
I mashed for longer hoping to compensate plus there were some chores blah blah. I felt the lauter was very smooth, and my efficiency wasn’t impacted at all. All the while I was thinking of the Brewstrong episode about mash efficiency and how you could mash uncrushed grain if you gave it enough time. Don’t know if that was unproven extrapolation on their part.
Ultimately it has me thinking that if I back off my gap a bit more depending on the extant malt characteristics, then I can speed up the lauter.
Big plus one to denny. FWIW I fly sparged for years and years before I gave his method a shot. After I tried it I couldn’t understand why any homebrewer would ever mess around with fly sparging unless, possibly, because they had a fully automated system. Its just so easy, and I get close to 80 percent efficiency.
Also, I tried malt conditioning and it just added an extra step that made the crushed malt look prettier but didn’t really do anything to improve the finished beer. It did, however, make the malt more difficult for my grain mill to crush. YMMV.
Hmmm, interesting. I have not noticed that. From what I read it should not be so moist as to create any kind of buildup in the rollers. I sorta like playing with my malt for a few minutes before it goes in the tun… ;D