For those of you that use a false bottom in your mash tun, do you add extra mash water to account for the water that inevitably falls below the false bottom and does not interact with the grains? For instance, in today's brew, a hoppy red, we used 4 gallons of mash water (per Brewtarget) and aprox. 2 gallons were below the false bottom, resulting in an extra thick mash above said false bottom. If it helps, today's brew was 13 lbs of grains in a 10 gallon Bayou Classic kettle with the matching false bottom. Thanks in advance!!
Yes, the brewing software I use takes care of the calculation for me. That said, 2 gallons seems like a lot of liquid below a false bottom.
The false bottom on our kettle sits right at the 2 gallon mark, which is stamped into the stainless so you can see it on both sides. So is the fix for me as easy as just adding 2 gallons to the mash water and subtracting 2 gallons from the sparge water to reach the same pre boil volume? Agree that 2 gallons seems high but thats where the lip is that the false bottom sits on.
I really wouldn't be happy with a tun that needs 2 extra gallons to account for a false bottom, unless it was a 30+ gallon setup. Can you perhaps modify the way it sits in there?
Two gallons of mash tun deadspace seems very excessive in a ten gallon kettle. But can't you extend the dip tube to very near the bottom of your deadspace (under the false bottom), make it almost touch the bottom? If you can "pick up" this liquid it is no longer dead space.
The pickup for the ball valve IS below the false bottom. Picking up the wort below the bottom isn't the issue. The issue is that with the false bottom in place, the mash is super thick since there is 2 gallons less water above the false bottom, where all the grain is. In my brewing software there is a input for "lauter deadspace" under the "losses" tab, but I'm assuming that isnt what I'm looking for since this isn't actually a loss seeing as I can get the wort out without issue.
My false bottom in a converted keg has 2.5 gallons under it. The pick up tube goes to the bottom of the keg. This system is designed so that you can direct fire and recirculate the wort with a pump as you are firing. That will not overheat the liquid in the bottom, and you get an even mash temp. Pull from the bottom, beneath the false bottom, that is what commercial breweries do. Edit, I see you posted as I was typing. Why don't you mash a little thinner? Calculate the mash thickness accounting for the 2 gallons below. If you recirculate for a while (manually if you don't have a pump) the space below becomes wort not water.
I don't know what software you're using, but in general this is a correct statement. As already mentioned, the solution to your problem, assuming you heep using this kettle, is to mash thinner and sparge with less water.
I'm using Brewtarget as my software. I figured the thinner mash was the solution (other than getting a different kettle.) My next assumption is that thinner mash + less sparge water = less "rinsing" of the grains in the sparging process which will result in a drop in efficiency?
It depends. It's all about the relative volumes and relative concentrations (due to dilution) of sugars. Given a particular setup, batch size, and grain bill size, there will be one unique combination of strike water and sparge water volumes that will result in the highest mash efficiency. (This assumes equal conversion efficiency regardless of the mash thickness.) ETA: I'm referring to batch sparging. I haven't really studied fly sparge dilutions/efficiency, which would require calculus and I'm getting too old for that.
