Finally, I ran a batch with the 30 gallon Mash Tun.
And to be sure it could handle whatever I wanted to throw at it, I made a 27 Gallon Batch of Vienna LSA (headed for the barrel).
63 lbs of grain, no problem.
Heated the water with the boil kettle, cross connecting it with the HLT using both the pumps to heat up 45 gallons of water at once...that took some time, definitely will be putting both of the elements on electric at once when I move the brewery to the garage.
When ready to move strike water, I balanced the correct amount plus 1/2 gallon into the Boil Kettle, shut off pumps, reconnected boil kettle pump to MT and transferred until it lost siphon. Used a towel to soak up what was in the bottom of the kettle.
The HLT was then connected to the electric to keep it's temp stable and the MT connected to the heat exchanger.
At the end of the mash, I elevated the MT temp setting to 168 and 15 mins later the mash was there, then did a 3 step sparge that was a combo batch and fly...drained the MT completely, started the first 10 gallon sparge, and as soon as the grain was fully covered began a fly sparge until the full 10 gallons had transferred. Stopped waited for a few mins, Full drain of the MT and repeated the process for the second 10 gallon Sparge.
27 gallons is still a bit much to handle in the 30 gallon kettle, even doing a fakr and transferring more as the evap happened, I took 2 gallons to the stovetop, boiled it there and then transferred it back during the whirlpool.
Ended up with 27 gallons of 1.073 and 86% efficiency, could still be better, as the Gravity of the sweet wort left over in the MT was still 1.040.
In future, I'll stick to 25 gallon maximum I think, then go to 4.25 gallons per corny for spunding, instead of 4.5 gallons.
JQ
