Thanks for the feedback. I did fix the issue in the original post with strike volume. I’ll have to experiment a bit to get the most out of it. (Unibrau 10g pot/basket that I built up with my parts) Maybe try a sparge arm and adjust recirculation speed.. Might play with crush a little bit and try to maximize the sparge & boil for a bump in BH efficiency. Otherwise it functioned well.
yeah, if you look at the AIO help thread, there's a bunch of stuff on this.
For the crush, if you're doing BIAB, fine crush. Most say 'credit card' width and that's good for regular 2/6 row grains and similar sized. wheat & rye especially need a finer crush. If you are ordering the grains crushed, ask to double crush them. If you have your own mill, do only same sized grains at once. My old mill drove me bat shít crazy with the single roller hitting different sized grains and "stalling"by not picking up new grains until I got it unstuck.
For as often as I brew, I dumped a few hundred in a Spike mill. I've never had a mash bill take longer than ~6 minutes on the spike mill, most are much shorter. On that, credit card is ~ setting 4, I use 3.75 and for rye I use 2.5
I am not sure what the Unibrau has by way of sparge 'tools', but I have recently observed that by going immediately from mash out to sparge, quickly, using HOT water - just under 180; keeps my grain bed from losing too much temperature, especially in the middle. I've found that I lose much less gravity in the sparge with my system.
For recirculation: I recirc starting as soon as the mash is settled, all the way through mash out. I stop to periodically stir the mash, and a few times I lift the grain basket, let it drain about 30 seconds, re-seat it, stir it and resume recirc. The recirculation helps keep the grain a more consistent temperature than without and closer to the set kettle temp. I try to recirculate as fast as the grain bed will let me.
