On Tuesday we made the second of our Belgian beers – a Belgian Dubbel. The brewday was enhanced by the arrival of a shiny new boiler for my birthday (thank you Gill!).
“Hang on!!”, I hear you say, “you’ve got a lovely vintage Burco boiler, what do you want to replace that for?”
A couple of reasons really. Firstly, the new boiler is slightly bigger (29 litres versus 22 litres), which means we can boil the whole batch (previously we’ve always boiled a little under the full volume, then topped up with a bit of water at the end). Bigger also means the liquid isn’t anywhere as near to the top. Much safer!
The second reason is speed. We have been able to shave some time off our brewday by using both boilers. The old Burco is now just a Hot Liquor Tank (HLT). Previously it had to do both jobs, which meant that we had to collect the runnings from our mash tun somewhere else until we had completely finished sparging and no longer needed hot water. Then we transferred it all across to the Burco to start boiling it. Of course the wort was cooling down during all this time, so with the new boiler we can start heating the wort much sooner, saving time.
Oh, and I’ve just thought of a third reason. The new boiler has a nice filter at the bottom, which holds back hops and trub (precipitated proteins) as we are running off. I suppose in theory that should mean clearer beer, although there is some debate about that in brewing circles.
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