The big brewing day was really busy, but lots of fun. We cleaned out the soup kettle using Bar Keeper’s Friend first and then an acid solution, and got it all nice and shiny. We put in the hose braid and false bottom and began heating the required 34.2 gallons of mash liquor in 3 kegs. Once up to about 165F we pumped the liquor into the giant mash tun and found that we had a strike temperature of 160F, only 1 degree off the target. We added the 107 pounds of malt (pale, crystal, Munich, aromatic, biscuit, and Special B, and got a mash temperature of 152, just right. After 30 minutes it had dropped a couple of degrees so we added some boiling water to raise it back up to 153-154F. It mashed for about another 35 minutes, by the time the hot liquor was ready. We sparged by gravity draining hot liquor onto the top of the mash while we pumped out the wort into four kegs. The hose braid worked marvelously and we got cyrstal clear wort right from the beginning. We did recirculate the first 7.5 gallons once, but there was no real need to. By intentionally varying the runoff rates slightly on the four boil kettles we got slightly different original gravities - 1.064 for our Simcoe IPA, and 1.069 for two of John’s batches, and 1.070 for the last one. John brewed a Moonraker clone, a Belgian ale, and a German alt. Our Simcoe IPA was hopped with seven ounces of Warrior for bittering, then three different additions of Simcoe for flavour and aroma.

The stainless hose braid worked so well as a mash screen that we’re going to have to incorporate one into our mash tun. It completely eliminates the need to recirculate and also prevents any grain husks from being carried into the boil. The hot break in the four boil kettles was incredible, better than I’ve ever seen, with huge flocs of protein whirling around in a crystal clear wort. It was fantastic! I made a trip next day to the hardware store and picked up more stainless braid, enough for the mash tun and some more for an experimental hop screen for the boil kettle. It may even work for hop pellets, which would be great, as we currently have no way of dealing with pellets in any quantities more than about 25% of the total hop bill.

The big batch didn’t take that much longer than a regular 10 gallon brew day, but it was a lot busier dealing with all of the issues that come with having four boils going and the plumbing needed for transferring so much wort from the mash to the boil and then chilling 4 boils into 8 fermenters. I’m sure we’ll do it again as it’s a fun group day and you get a lot of beer out of it, but we’ll have to streamline the process by having the right wort transfer hoses set up and remembering the details of the procedure.