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i need a thinner mash

itsratso

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recently bought the all electric brewboss setup, which is a full boil BIAB setup (okay, technically it has a grain basket but it's the same thing). in order to clear the heating element on the bottom of the kettle, the basket has approx. 3" legs to raise it over the coil. this means that especially with bigger beers, the water level is not high enough to completely cover my grain bed - a lot of times an inch or two of grain is completely above the water line. so I get efficiencies of like 40%  :( . the only thing that I can think of to raise the water/grain ratio is to do ridiculously long boils - my boil off is only 1/2 gallon per hour so we would be talking like 4 hours or so. any other ideas from anyone? thanx in advance.
 
go online and look up reiterated mashing this is one way that will help I can think of but there may be better or easier ways that others know of. I have done this myself, For a few RIS ,and think it works well if you do it right.
 
Have you manage to figure this out? This was the main reason that I chose to source/design my own system similar to the Brew Boss setup but without the basket limitations. You could certainly raise your Pwb level to get more boiloff. That's really your only option unfortunately.
 
sorry it took me so long to respond, beersmith is blocked on my computer at work and I haven't had much free time lately. so to answer your question, I have changed my mind on how I will brew big beers on this system. I have decided that ultra long boils are out, for several reasons. First, you don't get that much thinner of a mash. My boil off is about 1/2 a gallon an hour, so even a 3 hour boil would not raise the water level above the grain bed by much. And, in a recent episode of the jamil show he talks about how ultra long boils have an impact on flavor. So that's out. One way you could get around this would be to use a blichmann boil coil and get a custom made grain basket that would fit inside the boil coil, resting flat against the bottom of your pot. This would be more expense, and although blichmann makes a quality product, I wonder what would happen if your heating element fries 7 years down the road - would you even be able to replace it? My latest thought came from the same podcast episode of the jamil show on the brewing network I just mentioned. It is the recent  brewing big beers episode. Jamil talks about a new experiment he has been trialing, he's calling it "multigyle" or some such thing. The idea is when you have a big beer to brew, split the grain bill in half. Mash as you normally would (brew in a bag style for the brew boss) using only half the amount of grain. Pull the grain and dump it, then put in the other half of grain using the wort you just made instead of water. Mash as normal again. You will wind up with the same gravity as you would have if you had brewed as normal. Jamil says you can repeat this process again and again, adding in more and more grain until you get to whatever gravity you want. He says the efficiency loss is almost ZERO which sounds like magic, but he says he is working with Palmer and I believe white labs and they are finding the same thing. Of course you could also just add a butt load of DME and call it a day. I have also found that no matter how thick and dry my grains are I always now stir them for a full 5 minutes before mashing. Hope this helps.
 
That is interesting. Not sure how the efficiency would stay the same but then again I'm not a chemist. I'll have to try that sometime. Maybe try a back to back with the two methods. I like your idea of the boil coil and the custom basket. I actually considered that myself. That would certainly maximize mashable space within the kettle. Pickup tubes and probes and whatnot may get tricky with that angled space but doable I'm sure. I wouldn't worry too much about blichman going anywhere. Personally I chose the more generic route with a typical ripple 5500 watt element and the 1.5 inch tc connection and I've been very happy with the results so far. So many fun ways to skin the cat.
 
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