Brewing System Information

In order to understand my processes and equations later, I need to cover some details now.  As I mentioned, I am using the 15.5 gallon Ruby System.  Here is an image from their website:

The Hot Liquor Tank (HLT) feeds hot water into the Mash/Lauter Kettle (MK) via gravity.  The HLT merely holds hot water used for dough in and sparge - I actually add my grains directly to water in the MK, so the HLT is only used to hold sparge water.  The MK uses the pump for recirculation of the wort as well as transfer to the Boil Kettle (BK).  The BK also uses the pump for recirculation (to sanitize the hoses and pump as well as assist in cooling via an immersion chiller) and transfer of wort to my primary fermentation (6.5 gallon glass carboy).

Each kettle is the same size, but the MK and BK both contain a false bottom:

In the next post, I will go through my calculated water amounts.  Before determining the amounts, I had to run through some tests on my system:

Test 1: Find losses when pumping water from one kettle to another.

• Basically I just put 2 gallons in my MK and then pumped the water to the BK.  The result was a loss of 1 quart.

Test 2: Find losses from boiling for one hour.

• Just as the test suggests, I filled a kettle with 3 gallons of water and boiled it for one hour.  Keep in mind that I am at about 5400 feet in South Denver, Colorado.  The result was a loss of 1 gallon and 3 quarts.

Test 3: Find how much water exists under the kettle's false bottom.

• I added water 1 quart at a time.  The result was that a full gallon of water exists under the false bottom

There are more tests that could have been done, but as you will see in the next post, I will use some pre-calculated constants instead.  That is it for now.  Next time we will use these numbers to figure out how much water I need to brew a batch.