On Ten Gallon Batches

10 gallons batches have opened my eyes to new facts. Obviously, with a mash so large, I have a mash tun large enough to extract at a pretty good rate. (Lautering rates are a direct function of the area of the false bottom.) However, for the continuous sparger like myself, one has to be able to put water in as fast as they take it out. My old phil's lauter-tun system doesn't cut it and my sparge time has shot up to over two hours. Since I've moved to 10 gallon batches because I don't have the time to do 5 gallon batches in quantity, this is pretty unacceptable. If I could get my sparge back to one hour, I could finish a brew session in under six hours.

I've been trying to figure out ways to trim the length of a brew session even more. Currently, my mash-tun and kettle are the same vessel. This increases my session time because, once my sparge is complete, I have to drain and clean my kettle to begin the boil. A further inefficiency in ten gallon boils is the lag from lighting the flame to reaching the boil. It takes about 45 minutes to get 10 gallons to 212 degrees.

I could significantly reduce my brew session time if I had a lauter-tun that wasn't my kettle. First, this would mean that I could light the flame once I'd collected about 75% of the needed wort. The remainder of the runnings will go to the kettle immediately upon collection, but the heating would already have begun. That should save me about 30-40 minutes.