Beer Forum

I'll be doing my 1st all grain brew in Jan sometime, a cherry stout. Right now I brew outside w. 1 burner. Am I going to need > 1 burner? I'm trying to work out the logistics of heating the sparge water and the water for mash out if I do a step infusion.

In all the years I have been brewing I have only used one burner. You can use your boil pot for your hlt. Do your sparge into a bucket until you are done with the sparge and then transfer back to your boil kettle.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

As Bug says, you can use one burner.

Heat Mash water, on it, pour hot water into mashtun (Cooler), drain wort out of cooler into bucket as you heat up sparge water. pour sparge water into mash tun, put boil kettle back on burner, then pour first runnings into boil kettle. Bucket goes back under mashtun to collect second runnings, and then also gets dumped into boil kettle.

Thats one way to do it. The key is having buckets around to catch stuff as it is waiting to go on the burner/boil kettle.

Good Luck

Sean

Here is how I was setup for a long time.



I used the pot on the burner to heat my mash/sparge water then had to lift it and dump into the mash tun (cooler) on the table. Drain the mash to my keggle then drain the sparge to the keggle. Lift keggle onto burner and boil.

It's a lot easier having two burner, but you can get away with just one.

Travis

I would do it similar to Sean and Lufa. I had a 5 gallon Gott that I would use as my HLT. First I would heat the strike water. Add it to the mash straight from the pot. (Good heat resistant gloves help here, ask me how I know.) Then heat up sparge water. Pour it into pre-heated Gott (pre-heat it with about a gallon of boiling water for a few min.) and place it above the MT for my sparge. Rinse into the pot and lift it to the burner.

My concern was with the fact that during the saccharification rest I'll be heating sparge water to 170F, but I'll also need some water at 200 or so F to do the mash out and get the mash temp to 168-170. I wasn't sure where I would heat the additional water for mash out. I've also read that some people don't do the mash out at all, I know I didn't when doing a partial mash. I guess my question now is, why the mash out? Is it really necessary to help with sparging and is mash out really needed to stop starch conversion considering that the wort is going right into the kettle anyway?

Thanks again,
Eric/Portly

Ok I see. I keep forgetting about the hot liquor tank/cooler. I can heat the sparge water, pour it into the HLT and then use the kettle for mash out or whatever step infusions I need.

I was told by a number of people here that a mash out is a waste of time. I have always heated my sparge wter to about 180 and get the grain bed to 168F. What are you mashing in? In my cooler I don't even lose 1deg during a 60 min mash. I wrap it in two blankets and it stays right where I leave it.
Stick to single step infusions for now. The multi step stuff is more for when you have multiple burners.