An insight into the Saltaire Brewday procedure

[EccentricDyslexic]

Never heard of spray balls before-- http://www.tankcleaningtechnologies.co. ... balls.html

steve

[WishboneBrewery]

What volumes are your caustic and rinse tanks? Is the rinse tank just cold water? Could you direct "used" mash tun pre-heat water to the rinse tank? Do you refill the rinse tank from the heat exchanger during cooling? Do you use a non-water coolant?

No idea, Large!
The Rinse tank is actually fresh water that has been used to rinse vessels of caustic earlier and saved as a mild pre-wash.
We don't re-use Mash Tun Pre-heating liquor.
We do refill the HLT with heat exchange liquor while cooling.
We used chilled water as coolant.

Is your mash tun heated? How do you monitor and maintain the mash temperature during the mash?

No, Just insulated, the Mash maintains its own temperature.

Could you expand on the Copper Cleaning process? First two sentences. I got lost as to what was actually happening here.

What is "boosted water"?

Do you treat your water at all? If yes, do you do this in the cold water tank or in the HLT?

What is your caustic solution made from? This may be a stupid question.

How much rinsing does caustic require? Do you make a neutral pH check in this part of the process to make sure it is clear or does a set rinse pattern ensure the caustic is gone?

Boosted water is simply Pumped high pressure water.
We use Liquor salts (DWB) as an addition to the Malts before Mashing in.
Caustic is either TC-86 or something else I can't remember the name of!
We rinse 3 times, each time with a complete drain down, pH check is just to be sure, I think the Casutic is probably gone after the first Rinse, and there is no Alkaline pH during the 2nd Rinse.

Hop-sparging. Has hop-sparging now become accepted? I thought I read somewhere that bitter stuff came out of sparged hops? Has that now been proved not to be so significant?

No idea, how can pouring Hot water over hops that have already been boiled extract anything you haven't already extracted? Seems bad logic to me.

Hope that helps

[WishboneBrewery]

Never heard of spray balls before-- http://www.tankcleaningtechnologies.co. ... balls.html
steve

Clever things, save a load of work, bet you could fashion one for a small vessel out of something, though you need some good pump pressure.

[Jon474]

Thank you pdtnc. It's really interesting and useful stuff.

I was wondering about using mobile tanks as caustic and rinse tanks - each comes with its own pump and pipework which can be hooked up as required - or actually plumbing them into the pipe network, so seeing how you use them is very helpful. I had no idea about volumes although you have given me an idea.

I have been given the opportunity to visit a brewery down Lincolnshire way - going to have a chat with the owner about operations - especially pipe layouts, CIP and mashing - and about marketing and bottling! He is a BIG little brewer (if that makes sense) so I am hoping he will not scare me mtoo much.

Thanks again.
Jon

[Gricey]

Darkstar brewery control panel as snapped by Kelly of Thornbridge, how shiny is that

PS, the image is clicky

[WishboneBrewery]

Ours isn't that shiny and a bit more simplistic.

[chivelegs]

Reminds me of

[WishboneBrewery]

I'd rather have a Speak n Spell, much more Circuit-bent-synth