Brautag: Direct Fire Duo

Brew Day With the Direct Fire Duo

One per year I brew a batch of Pale Ale using freshly harvested Cascade hops from the garden. I decided to film it this year to give a hands-on view of brewing on the new Direct Fire Duo system.

A few notes about brewing with the Direct Fire Duo, that I didn't fully cover in the video:

  1. As with any new brewing system, you'll need to brew with the system 2-3 times to really learn all the nuances. Don't be frustrated if your results vary between the first few batches.
  2. The mash tun false bottom sits on the 7 cm stand to provide clearance for the heating element. That is about 8L of wort under the false bottom. To figure out your mash thickness, use your normal mash thickness and add 8L of water to that. I forgot to do this in the video and had to add water from the HLT.
  3. When lautering, take your time. Towards the end of the lauter you will want to allow the remaining water to percolate through the mash bed before the pump runs dry. If you pump too fast, the water doesn't have as much time to rinse the bed, and you may also run the pump dry before extracting all your wort.
  4. Feel free to add more sparge water than needed into the mash tun, if you have the space. Then you just lauter until the boil kettle has the desired volume.
  5. Heating the sparge water above the mash temperature helps with stratification during the lauter. For best results heat your sparge water to 77C for the mash-out step.

I'm still pretty new at videography and I edited it down quite a bit so hopefully it is watchable. If you are interested in a specific part of the brew day here are the time markers for the various steps:

Introduction 0:00
Installation 0:54
Water Preparation 9:56
Mashing 11:27
Lautering 20:15
Boiling 28:47
Cooling 36:14
Fermenter Transfer 39:46

My apologies in advance to any non-german speaking viewers: I recorded the video in German. If you have any specific questions let me know in the comments I would be happy to clarify in English!

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