At the brew shop learning to AG mash.

[Prairiepiss]

The local brew shop is have customer appreciation day. And putting on a AG beer mash demonstration. Not a good one he's not vary informative. And he's been drinking the samples all morning. He's making an oatmeal stought. Here is a pic if his setup.

[rtalbigr]

That would never work for me. Somewhere along the way I'd forget what I just did, turn the wrong valve, and then "Oh S***!". I can handle one pot at a time pretty good though.
Big R

[tomgndallas]

our local brew shop does the same thing, more simplistic on the setup, and they do not get hammered while messing with open flames. very informative, this month they did not do one, but November is on. I am looking forward to heading down and checking it out. Always end up learning something new, and sometimes I can even apply it to stilling.

just sampled some wine i made out of welch's grape raspberry concentrate and EC1118. It is a little over a month old, been sitting in a 3 gallon carboy. Pretty damn good, the wife likes it too. hehe.

[Prairiepiss]

That would never work for me. Somewhere along the way I'd forget what I just did, turn the wrong valve, and then "Oh S***!". I can handle one pot at a time pretty good though.
Big R

That's exactly what he did every time he went to do something new. He didn't have a valve system. He had QDs in all the his connections. He would pull one off go to put it over here. Oh shite! Then hook it back to where it was and grab another one and move it. I would have never guessed he's been using this setup for 15 years.

I got more out of watching the process then him telling me about it. I liked how he did things. Other then the hose part. He used all malt except a little rolled oats. I think? Never really got a good answer about that.

[Prairiepiss]

Here is what he did.

First heated up 11 gallons of water in the top pot to 180ish.
Transferred 9 gallons to the mash pot on the right by hooking the 2 drains together with a hose. And added grains as the liquid level came up. A little at a time. Grains dropped it to 150 ish. Let it sit for 45 minutes.
Then hooked the drain of the mash pot with false bottom to the pump and pump to heat exchanger in top pot where he had another 6 ish gallons heated up. Then out of the heat exchanger to the lid of the mash pot. Where he had a manifold with 4 outlets at the top of the grain. He recirculated the sweet liquor as he called it through the heat exchanger and back through the grains for about 30 ish minutes. It kept the heat up on the mash and used the grain to create a filter to catch the smaller particles.
Then he disconnected the hose on the drain on the mash pot connected it to the top pot and flushed the hoses and heat exchanger with clean heated water. When it flowed clear he disconnected the heat exchanger.
Then connected the mash pot drain to the pump pump to the boil pot on the left. He then hooked the lid manifold to the drain of the top pot. Opened that drain valve and let it gravity feed over the grains as the sweet liquor gravity fed though the pump to the boil pot.
When the boil pot got about half the liquid in it he started dumping the hopps in it. Another false bottom. Then he turned the pump on pumping the rest of the sweet liquor over along with the rince water still flowing over the grain. You could see the sweet liquor getting thinner in the hose.
When he got all of it transferred. He shut the pump off disconnected the hose and brought it to a boil.
I didn't stick around for the rest. But he was going to connect a counter flow cooler to the drain on the boil pot and run that into his primary fermenter. Said it would come out of the counterflow cooler at 70 to 80 degs. That was about it.

Oh yeh the pump was a magnetic impeller type pump rated for the higher heat. He said look up mark pump? But he explained why he used a magnetic driven pump and it made perfect sense to me. And is something I had never read about before. Really liked it.
1 if grain were to get lodged it wouldn't tear up the impeller. The impeller would just stop while the motor kept running.
2 when you shut off or partially close a valve. It won't strain the motor. And cause premature motor failure.
3. It will allow a little gravity flow through it.

And for those that don't know what a counterflow cooler is. It's a length of looked like 3/8 soft copper line coiled about 10 wide. This copper line had a garden hose over it with Ts at both ends. One for coolant in and one out. So its just a coiled jacketed condenser using garden hose as the outside jacket.

He did go into a little detail about the differences in using a counterflow cooler and a wort chiller.
At the high temp there is still stuff held in suspension in the liquid that when cooled will drop out of suspension. Not sure what stuff he was talking about? But he said they were not fermentable and would cause problems with a bottom feeder yeast?

When using a wort chiller. They will fall out in the boiler and can be filtered off while being transferred to the primary fermenter. So this method would be used if using a bottom feeder yeast.

When using a counterflow they will drop out of suspension as you transfer to the primary fermenter. So they will fall to the bottom of the fermenter. So this method would be used with a top feeder yeast. And is faster cooling.