Equipment profile for 3.5BBl direct fire brewhouse.

[jcjohnson119]

Hi we are a startup brewery in Tucson,AZ. I am using a 2 vessel 3.5bbl direct fire brewhouse made by craft kettle. I am using instant hot water heaters for a HLT. I was hoping to get an idea of some equipment profile numbers. I will easily be able to calculate deadspace, total gallons in each kettle, kettle weights, and boil off volumes(once we get our vent pipe in for the boil kettle.) my question is what are you guys experiencing for boil off volumes for a 60 minute boil, average loss in single size fermenters, cooling loss,
hop utilization, specific heat(304 stainless I was seeing numbers around .12), and any other recommended data I can use.

cheers,
Josh Johnson
Head brewer/ manager

 

[brewfun]

For fermentation yield, you can start with 90% of your cast out volume. This'll cover most of the losses and may even be a bit high.

In many systems, 5% boiloff is typical.

I start up new systems with a water batch to gauge losses and flow. I then move on to a basic recipe like Pale Ale or American Wheat, that don't need a ton of hops. This tells me the basics of yield, efficiency and time. That's not as adventurous as starting with your biggest DIPA, but it does tell you a lot more. It sounds like you're probably already going to do something like this.