German Brewing

When you remove the spent grain, is there a different amount of sludge than you're used to, on top?

After a few brews with this system I decided to modify the malt pipe so I could cut down the amount of mash water and boil less than 2 hours.

I drilled 8 ea 1/2" holes 3 1/2" down from the top. It works but the waterfall effect makes it very noisy, too much splashing. Fixed that with a piece of tubing wrapped around just under the holes. Nice and quiet now.

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Drilled 8 more holes for better flow and less splashing. Then I was thinking of incorporating a paint strainer bag to catch any loose grains that sneak by the screens and get sucked into the pump. Did a little test with some old mystery malt I had and at first I tried the bag without the fine mesh screens. I cut a small slit in the bottom of the bag, placed it over the center rod followed by the lower false bottom plate. Then I added the grain followed by the top plate. At first it looked like it would work but after about 10 min too much grains were getting by that top plate without the fine screen and the bag started to clog around the malt pipe holes impeeding the flow. I shut her down, pulled the malt pipe, removed the bag and started over with the fine mesh screens. No problems encountered running it this way so I'll stick to this method for future brews.

All in all I'm pretty pleased as this will allow me to brew 3 gal batches without having to boil 2 hours to reduce the wort to the volume I need. I'll also mash with less water and not have to worry about exposing the heating elements.

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IMG_20151228_131534.jpg (431.72 KiB) Viewed 7370 times

I could of just bought the short malt pipe for the 20l BM but what's the fun in that when I can drill holes and modify what I got. Besides I think the short malt pipe may be a bit too small from what I've researched and I'll be able to mash a little more grains in mine.

Nice work Todd!