Speidel Braumeister

[wobdee]

Little update: mod is working great, this thing produces the cleanest wort and best beer I've ever brewed. Also purchased a 15" glass lid from Lodge, fits like it was made for it, keeps the heat in and somewhat let's me see what's going on.

IMG_20160219_122351745.jpg (3.4 MiB) Viewed 7933 times

[Owenbräu]

Excellent

[wobdee]

Since the O2 secret is out I'll give a little update. Drilling the holes in the malt pipe wasn't only to modify the BM for 3 gal batches but also to reduce O2 ingress. Before the mod I used to see lots of splashing and foam on the surface next to the malt pipe after the mod the wort flows gently through the holes and down the side of the pipe, no foam.

Another problem I can see with O2 pickup is lifting the malt pipe to drain. If you lift it too fast the wort will rain down, not good. I pull it up in small increments and let it drain slowly (good time to add FWH). You can watch the level equalize around the malt pipe and you don't hear any splashing.

I'm sure this system still has some flaws as far as O2 ingress goes, still working on and learning how to do better. I think the sulfites are probably saving my ass by scravanging up the excess O2. I really need to go ahead and purchase an O2 meter to verify but it's going to have to wait a little longer. Overall I'm pretty pleased with the BM, easy peasy brew days and it makes great lagers.

[uberg33k]

After reading the PDF on O2, I was wondering what people with Braumeisters were doing in regards to this ... I guess this gives me my answer. Instead of drilling holes in the malt pipe, why not just make more wort? Even if you don't want that large a batch size, you could just drain off the excess and save it for making starters, feeding a saurgut system, etc. I would think with the lid you could flush the airspace with CO2 or better yet argon and then not have to worry about how much splashing occurs.

[wobdee]

I'm already making more wort than I need. I end up with 3.5 gal in the kettle, 3 gal in the fermenter and 2.5 in the keg. I like small batches but i wish i would of went with 3 gal kegs instead of the 2.5.

Good idea flushing the mash with co2 but so far the sulfites seem to be doing the job on the hot side for me.

[uberg33k]

I suppose you could have filled the bottom of the malt pipe with marbles, somewhat similar to what some wine guys do to top up barrels that have experienced some evaporation, but that's also a bit late

[bjanat]

I'll try my second helles attempt next month, with a 50L speidel I get to borrow at work, so no modification possible. Thinking of doing 55L no sparge, 10kg of malt. (12 is max) and lifting the pipe to the first step, let the liquid fall, scoop out the grain, and then lift the pipe out completely, to minimize splashing.

It seems like the lifting of the pipe causes a lot more splashing than the circulation.




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[wobdee]

[homoeccentricus]

Hi, I'm Homoeccentricus, new on this forum. I'm Belgian and as such not so much interested in brewing the best German lager, but the best beers tout court. A month ago I organized a tasting of German beers that I had purchased during the Easter holidays. The bad news was that we dumped 90% of the beers because of oxidation. It seems that these German beers only last for a couple of months. The good news is that now I've become very sensitive to oxidized flavors, and I'm very motivated to reduce them in my beers.

I have a new Speidel Braumeister and getting ready to go the lodo way. I do have a short malt pipe, so no need to drill holes I'm also fermenting in 5 gallon kegs, so transferring with CO2 is possible.

One thing I learned is to make sure that the amount of water used covers the complete malt pipe, so that when the pump is switched on during the mash the pumped wort stays under the water level. Any other suggestions to brew lodo with the BM?

[wobdee]