Brewing a Bavarian Helles

[Roachbrau]

Racking the water in below the grain should do fine.

I'm not sure about the vinyl tubing, I use silicone.

There's a tradeoff between stirring and sitting still. Oxygen diffuses in from the atmosphere at a rate over time, so you want it exposed for the least time possible to minimize the o2 pickup, but stirring effectively increases the surface area. I say stir gently every few minutes and call it close enough. It takes hardly any time todrop from boiling to dough in temperature.

Spunding valves are incredibly easy to make. You need a female flare to male pipe adapter, a tee with all female ends, a male pressure guage, and a male relief valve, preferably all ss fittings.

I would adjust your batch size to get an extra gallon of wort and leave all the kettle break behind. Cold break is what turns the wort from brilliantly clear at the end of the boil to hazy when it's cool. Very little settles out in the kettle, it takes hours to fall out. I'd consider any break and/or trub in the kettle to be what you don't want getting into the fermenter.

[Owenbräu]

[bjanat]

Wonder if this is any good http://m.ebay.com/itm/261488434879?_mwBanner=1


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[Bryan R]

I tested both the Milwaukee unit, and the Extech. I ultimately went with extech for whatever its worth.

[KenLenard]

Roachbrau & AA: Thank you for the replies. One other thing: What to do about recircing and running off the mash and sparge runnings? Right now I recirc using a standard glass measuring cup through the valve of my MT. I recirc maybe 4 or 5 times and then run off through tubing into the kettle. Should I recirc using the tubing as well to keep wort from splashing? Make another piece of tubing that would connect to my tun that's only 6" long or something and use that to recirc and the longer one to run off? I didn't include this step in my outline earlier. Cheers. I mean Prost.

[Owenbräu]

I think you answered your own question

If you can use tubing to pull liquid and return it without it ever coming into contact with air, then that is most preferable, yes. If you can use tubing to minimize the drop and splashing compared to simply pouring out of a valve, then yes, do it. Quiescent transfers are your friend.

[KenLenard]

Okay, thank you for that AA. One more Q: Do we know how well the SMB protects us as we move through the process? Maybe I'm not asking that properly but if we make it through the mash with our O2 in check but we start to pick up O2 as the process moves forward, is the SMB still protecting us by driving off O2 or is the lifespan of the SMB shorter than that? I'm at a point where I don't really know what to ask but I'm envisioning that as a partially-reasonable question. I think.

[Kit_B]

It only protects, to the degree of uptake.
So...If you take on more oxygen than the dose you have used can displace, you will need more protection.

Essentially, this is something that each person will have to test, on their own brewing system.

[Owenbräu]

Give this a read, Ken:

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=198&p=1635&hilit=sulfite#p1635

[mpietropaoli]