BIAB: the journey begins. Now for recipes and guidance

[Hairy]

To whirlpool or to recirculate?

You can whirlpool with a mash paddle or spoon.

[Marty_G]

38 minutes ago, Hairy said:

To whirlpool

I have stainless pipe for the whirlpool All I need it to attach some hose to the end of it and to the pump outlet. The Kettle has a female cam lock on the ball lock valve so the pump will go stright onto that.   Well that is the way I see it.   Or are my ideas not sound?   My new set up has a immersion chiller so i was going to chill then whirlpool.  

[Marty_G]

Been having a bit of fun playing around with recipies in the brewing software and wondering about Balance Value.   I suppose the simple question is do AG brewers use it to try and get the bitterness ratio for thde beer style you are making. For example was just playing around with a Dark Pils recipe with about 15% roast dark barley bittered with Hallertau.  I noticed that the BV for a Pils is 1.5 so I adjusted the boil time for the hops to match that BV.  Am I on the right track there or is there more to it? 

[Otto Von Blotto]

I think you're meant to whirlpool it before it's chilled, however I've never quite understood how that's meant to be done with a big coil of tube in it

[Mark D Pirate]

Half the idea of a whirlpooling port is to decrease chilling time.   So if using an IC  definitely run your pump to recic while chilling . 

Once properly chilled , i suggest leaving the IC in place until kettle is drained to avoid stirring up all the gunk 

The huge IC i made up for a friend uses spacers between each coil in both coils ( bit like the Hydra ) to hold it central in kettle and get maximum surface area exposed to wort and minimal restriction to flow .

Really itching to try out a hydrid chilling method on a friends system , use mains water through his IC to bring temps to 60 ish then use my CFC on glycol to run single pass to conical .

Think it'll save about 30 mins and at least 100 litres of potable water .

 

 

[Mark D Pirate]

19 hours ago, MartyG1525230263 said:

I just bought this. It will work as a pump for a whirlpool, will it not?  It is a 25 watt high temp magnetic pump. 

I have the exact same pump , they work just fine.

Only downside is they are pretty fragile pump housings , would suggest buying the SS head for $11 .

Good move adding a ball valve on outlet side , sometimes restricting the flow is very handy .

[Marty_G]

@Mark D Pirate, Thanks for that info. That clears up alot up.  I have/will make an reticulated ice bath for coil the water that comes out of the chiller. The 1st flush will I will use to sterilies the fermenter but after that the rest will go back into an esky with a submersible pump and ice blocks. I ahve seen a couple of YouTube clips of guys chilling their worts to 10^O in 40 minutes and ale temps in 20 minutes with a whirlpool it will be quicker. 

[Marty_G]

Well getting there. Made this up today after picking up the pump.  I have the pulleys for the bag lift. All I need now is a couple of metres of food grade hose for the whirlpool and hose for reticulated ice bath which will be the water for the chiller.  The submersible pump for the ice bath arrives monday.  So far the set up has cost $185.00

[Marty_G]

Had a bit of a test run today. Filled the beast up with 35 litres and ran the whirlpool and it worked a treat.   Also gases up the burner and heated  35 litres to strike temp.   Learnt a few lessons particulary start with smaller amounts of strike and heat the smaller volumes to near boiling then add more increasing the volume so it does not take forever to get to the 71⁰ mark.  Another thing, I figured I can use the whirlpool arm as a reticulation arm as well slowly pumping water from below the false bottom to the top of the grain, trying to avoid the vaccumms i have head of.   I believe this will help with brew efficiency.  Is there any reason why I should not do this. Is it wise or just complicating things. The reticulation was going to just run onto the top of the grain not a spear into it like I have seen some setups on YouTube.   

[Shamus O'Sean]

Hey @MartyG1525230263

Running onto the top of the grain is what my Grainfather does.  It has a perforated screen that sits on top of the grain to help disperse the recirculating wort across the grain bed.

I think that some of the other popular models (Robobrew/Guten) do the same.

Therefore your approach seems pretty sound.

[Marty_G]

5 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

Therefore your approach seems pretty sound.

Thanks for that.  I will figure some way to spread it. Won't be too hard to do.   

[iBooz2]

Hey Marty, been reading this thread and dozens of others in order to get my head around what I need to make the move into AG.

Purchased one of these to keep my BIAB off the bottom of my 20 litre pot and though maybe you could use something like this (maybe modified a bit) on top of your grains to help disperse the recirculated wort.

Seeing you give your beers names, what about calling one of them an “Obi Obi Beer”.  You are not too far from there.

Cheers – AL

[Marty_G]

17 hours ago, iBooz2 said:

Purchased one of these to keep my BIAB off the bottom of my 20 litre pot and though maybe you could use something like this (maybe modified a bit) on top of your grains to help disperse the recirculated wort.

Seeing you give your beers names, what about calling one of them an “Obi Obi Beer”.  You are not too far from there.

Thanks for the  suggestion. I solved that problem by using and old lawn sprinkler arm.  Will post a video of the system at work on Friday when I am brewing my next batch.  It works a treat. 

Yep very close to the Obi Obi. I am on the east of the Range and it flows on the west of it.