Hi all,
With a fair few years of brewing experience doing BIAB and overall happy with the quality of the beers I was making i decided to step it up to a 60L Brewzilla all in one electric system. Today I brewed by fourth batch on the system, with the previous comprising three double batches and one single batch. The last two batches I pushed the system to what I presume is its limits (10-12 kg of malt) and my efficiency fell through the floor (~50%).
For context the double batch today was a oat cream IPA as follows:
Mash volume = 48L
Grist:
6kg ale malt (49%)
2.25kg rolled oats (18.5%)
1.7 kg rolled wheat (14%)
0.4 kg honey malt (3.3%)
0.4 kg rice hulls (3.3%)
0.4 kg lactose (3.3%) @ flameout
1kg dextrose (8.2%) @ flameout
OG was 1.054 which is a whopping 49% efficiency.
I have had some trouble getting the wort to filter through the grain bed when the pump is on and typically only get it to just trickle through... any faster and overflows. Acknowledging the above grist is super oat/wheat heavy which no doubt caused a sticky mash but my main issue seems to be that there is some restriction in water movement between liquid in the basket at the remainder of the liquid in the vessel, no matter how much you stir the mash there is very little mixing. This seems to be the only explanation as to why my efficiency would be so low? When I used to BIAB with similar grain sizes I never had this issue (presumably as the entire grainbed was in contact with all of the water in the pot?).
Has anyone else encountered issues like this with the Brewzilla? I feel as though if the basket was perforated on the side walls it would really help water circulation (don't know if there is anything on the market available for this unit). I'm not sure if i should just scale back to make sure I can have the pump running (in which case I feel as though it defeats the purpose of having a system you should be able to push double batches out on).
Any thoughts/suggestions or experience in using this system would be much appreciated!
I feel like I may be better off using my old BIAB bag for big batches to increase the amount of water moving around the grain?
Cheers,
With a fair few years of brewing experience doing BIAB and overall happy with the quality of the beers I was making i decided to step it up to a 60L Brewzilla all in one electric system. Today I brewed by fourth batch on the system, with the previous comprising three double batches and one single batch. The last two batches I pushed the system to what I presume is its limits (10-12 kg of malt) and my efficiency fell through the floor (~50%).
For context the double batch today was a oat cream IPA as follows:
Mash volume = 48L
Grist:
6kg ale malt (49%)
2.25kg rolled oats (18.5%)
1.7 kg rolled wheat (14%)
0.4 kg honey malt (3.3%)
0.4 kg rice hulls (3.3%)
0.4 kg lactose (3.3%) @ flameout
1kg dextrose (8.2%) @ flameout
OG was 1.054 which is a whopping 49% efficiency.
I have had some trouble getting the wort to filter through the grain bed when the pump is on and typically only get it to just trickle through... any faster and overflows. Acknowledging the above grist is super oat/wheat heavy which no doubt caused a sticky mash but my main issue seems to be that there is some restriction in water movement between liquid in the basket at the remainder of the liquid in the vessel, no matter how much you stir the mash there is very little mixing. This seems to be the only explanation as to why my efficiency would be so low? When I used to BIAB with similar grain sizes I never had this issue (presumably as the entire grainbed was in contact with all of the water in the pot?).
Has anyone else encountered issues like this with the Brewzilla? I feel as though if the basket was perforated on the side walls it would really help water circulation (don't know if there is anything on the market available for this unit). I'm not sure if i should just scale back to make sure I can have the pump running (in which case I feel as though it defeats the purpose of having a system you should be able to push double batches out on).
Any thoughts/suggestions or experience in using this system would be much appreciated!
I feel like I may be better off using my old BIAB bag for big batches to increase the amount of water moving around the grain?
Cheers,