Time Saving - Two Brews in a single day with a big Gas Boiler

To save an entire 9 hour brew day, a double batch is required. We have fermentation capacity for 2 x 5 gallon batches with temperature control. Presently we alternate brew days between these in two week intervals, with 2 weeks in primary for each batch.

Water preparation for each batch involves boiling the full batch of water and filtering out the precipitated chalk. As we only have ccapacity to boil 28 litres at a time, it presnently takes two full batches of water to be boiled and cooled for each 5 gallon batch. Each batch boils down to about 23 litres which we then filter and store in a PET carboy. So that has to start a couple of days before brew day. To do this in one step we would need a boiler capable of at least 2 x 28 litres for a 5 gallon batch. If we want to do 10 gallon batches (imperial gallons) we would need double that so we need capacity of at least 4 x 28L. Actually when sizing 10 gallon batches. In fact when I do the sums for a 10 gallon batch the water requires is more like 80 litres. Anyhow by now your probably getting the point that this is a lot of faff and a bigger boiler would take out at least preparing water twice and four times for a 10 gallon batch.  Boiling water for prep is a lot of wasted energy if the pot is allowed to cool on its own or if chilled using a plate chiller, the hot water goes down the drain. Its a good opportunity to grab the retrieved heat and get some stuff washed. And PBW and other percarbonate cleaners like to have hot water if you dont want misty bottles. Washing all fermenters, bottles and kegs in one day saves water and detergent. 

Water heated by Gas gives an energy saving compared to electricity. Home supplied natural gas is cheapest but I can't figure out how to get a gas feed in our garage so we are going down the propane bottle route. In the UK, natural gas is a quater of the price of electricity per KWh. However propane bottles are twice as expensive as natural gas, and this still depends on getting a good price for a bottle refill. I have chosen the 13Kg bottles. If you go up to the larger bottles it gets cheaper but 13Kg bottles are intimidating enough to store and move.
  Once chilled, water is pumped through an inline carbon filter directly into Burco boiler to prepare strike water. Water has to come down to about 30C for filtration. The Burco boiler brings water back up to 75C before being moved to the mash tun. After draining add another volume of water, stir and leave for 15 mins before draining. Extra step will increase the mash time by about 20 mins.

If the mash tun level is higher than the boiler it wont be necessary for a separate lautering vessel and pump. Wort transferred to the boiler will only need to be raised around 40C as it will be 64-68C for mashing.

If using single infusion lautering, which we are, for a double batch we would need a larger mash tun. But we dont have funds for a new mash tun so we will continue with the 43 litre cooler and batch sparge with multiple steps like most of the homebrew world. I cannot understand why people sparge at all on homebrew size batches.. just add a bit more base malt and save time, hassle, stress. Anyhow maybe next year we will get a stainless steel tun.

Most efficient boiler element seems to be a Paella burner fed with propane gas bottle with low pressure valve. But I can't figure out how to set it up. I have spent a lot of time reading up and no one seems to be able to tell me the maximum weight a Paella burner can take. So i'm going for an 8.7k burner that a home brew supplier where it stand is rated to hold 100 litres.

Had looked at putting together a pot ourselves but eventually settled on an SS Tech 30 Gallon Brew Kettle supplied by the malt miller. 
 =£310 with delivery

Tried doing a brew on a 2Kw burner.. my advice is never to do that for a 45 litre batch. Ended up using a pump to recirculate wort between the burco boiler and the gas brew pot just to get it to boil. Will need to see how it turns out. Hopefully it will be palatable.

Gas 8.7Kw gas burner for arriving today.  
= £44
 
Already purchased 2 x 13KG Propane tanks
=£23

Total
=£377

First Yeast Starter

Brew Day #5 - We are running out of the first 25kg of crushed Maris Otter Extra Pale (EBC2.5). We don't quite have enough for a whole 19 Litre batch. We do have 1kg of crushed Caramunich II (EBC120). The Caramunich was acquired in order to try a Hophead style beer, and it seems that this is a good time to try it. For this I bought a couple of packets of Amarillo as I couldn't find Cascade.

Also we don't have Danster and the Wyeast London 1318 that I purchased in August is getting a bit long in the tooth and I wanted to try to do a yeast starter. I have not yet got all the parts to make a stir-plate so I have gone ahead and used two smack-packs instead of one and will shake the conical flask periodically. 

Starting with the Brewers Friend Yeast Pitch Rate Calculator I came up with the following:







Ideally you don't over-pitch by more than 20%.
If the calculations above turn out to be correct, we would have over-pitched by 25billion cells which would be over-pitched by 28%, unless we upped the batch size to 23 litres.

We have the 25 Litre bin available for the next batch, so space for the krausen in the top of the fermenter. At least 4 litres of head space. So the maximum is 21 litres. If I scale the recipe to 21 litres, this brings the number of cells in the starter within 16%. We have a plan.

Preparation

1 x Erlenmeyer 2 Litre Conical Flask
153g Dry Malt Extract
Scissors
Spoon for stiring
Starsan
Water
2 x Wyeast London 1318 smack packs - removed from the fridge, smacked and set aside to inflate


The boil : First Try
 I read up on how to go about this and there seem to be two methods. 

1. Boil in a pan
2. Boil in the flask

Everyone seemed to be saying that boil in the flask is too difficult, but that didn't stop me.

After cleaning and sanitizing the flask, I put water into the flask and placed it on the electric hob. All good.

I then tried to weigh out the DME. And that is when the fun started.

DME is kind of like Ovaltine or Horlicks, i.e if it is mixed with a small amount of water it turns to cement. Even the slightest amount of water that is barely detectable makes it turn into something that you have to scrape off. So after carefully weighing it out onto the scales I tried to pour it into the flask, directly from dish that sits on the scales, which has a groove to direct that which is being poured from it. The rising steam stopped the falling DME in its tracks and turned it to concrete. I then tried to spoon in the DME and found it then stuck to the spoon. By this time it was now stuck to the bottom of the measuring dish. My measurements by this time were all messed up as I could not account for how much DME was still stuck to the spoon and the dish. So I discarded the DME and opted for the boil in the pan option. 

The boil : Second Try

This time I put a measuring cup onto the scales and weighed the DME into the cup. I did not want to use a spoon. 

I measured out the water into a pan, dumped in the DME and brought to the boil.

Once in the boil, I kept it boiling for about 10 mins, before putting the pan into the sink with cold water to chill a little. I then used a funnel to get it into the flask. I covered the flask with a piece of aluminum foil sprayed with some starsan and put this back into the sink.

This was by far the easiest.

Pitching the Yeast

I did not measure the temperature of the yeast or the flask. The air temperature in the house was 20C and after leaving them all on the side for a couple of hours and feeling that they all were slightly colder than my hand, I decided that they must be under 30C and the yeast and wort would be within 10C of each other.

I sanitized the smack packs and the scissors. Cut each of the packs open and pitched them in. Then gently swirled them to thoroughly mix with the wort. Job done.

Lessons Learned

On reviewing I did not sanitize the lid to the boiler at all. It would have had steam hit it so hopefully it was sanitized enough.

To simplify this a pan with a lip could be used to avoid having to use a funnel.