Brendan wrote:So back to grain mill, mash tun with sparge arm, and wort chiller then? 8-}
Haha, thanks maheel.
I do like the idea of the cubes, but you would have to boil the wort to use them as in beer, where I have read this isn't ideal for whisky...so would need the chiller to get from mid 60 degrees down to pitching temp...
I just single batch sparge for beer. It works fine.
My system is pretty simple really. I have an esky with a copper mainfold (120l), a grain mill (crankenstein ), a 50l keg (my still boiler) and a 160l gas pot (custom stainless boiler black betty). I do 84l batches (4 kegs)
I use brewmate software and buckets.
Design recipe in brewmate, printout brewday stuff. heat mashtun with a little hot tap water from the solar water heater tap in shed and put 50l on to boil in keg.
Mill grain as per print, add water with temp probe of digital thermo on float till it gets to the temp printout says (15l at atime and adding cold water from hose as bucket fills).
This sounds like a rough shod way to do it, but it is suprisingly accurate once you have a couple of goes at it.
Add grain and stir in till no lumps, temp will be very fucking close to predicted temp from software. Close esky lid and wait one hour.
In the last 15 mins start a new 50l of hot water on to boil (you probably want 70l or more but it will be at 84c or so and can be made up with cold from the 50l boiling water) at the one hour mark, start the drain from the esky into buckets, iadd this to the boil pot, but you'd be adding to the fermenter.
By the time the mash tun has drained the water will be boiling so turn the mash tun off, and add the hot water tempered with cold 15l at a time till you have the correct volume at the correct temp (usually 74c)
Stir it all up again and then wait ten minutes, drain as before and add to fermenter.
That's it.
you can choose to cool or brew stronger and dilute or whatever. I don't see the benefit in biab for this style as mostly it's because people can use just one pot seems to be the positive.
You obviously already have a 50l boiler, it probably doesn't have a great big opening so better off using an existing esky or buying an esky that will double for camping or whatever.
I can definately advise getting in on the bulk buys here if you live in a major city...
http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/i ... owforum=33base grain round the $60 for 25 kg is hard to beat.
I'd advise on purchasing a mill too, they are only a couple hundred $ and will last a life time.
Otherwise maybe join a brewclub in your area and see if someone local has one you can use.
I wish i had started allgrain (for beer anyway) twenty years ago