Our New Automated German Brewhouse - Post Three

In this series of posts, we'll offer some insight into how our new two-vessel automated brewhouse will significantly change our brewing process — and, in turn, the final product — by highlighting each of the steps of brewday workflow from start to finish.

Stage 3 - Lautering

Once the mash rests are complete, the mash is transferred over to its own purpose-built lauter tun (the vessel pictured here). Here the grain bed settles and forms a natural filter bed, through which we recirculate wort until it runs clear, before starting runoff back to the kettle (the dual purpose vessel that we also used as the mash mixer).

Sparge water is added on a controlled schedule to rinse the remaining sugars from the grain bed as the wort level drops, and the automation manages rake height and rotation to keep the bed from compacting or channeling as it's drawn down.

On our old system, this all happened in the same vessel we mashed in, which meant far less control over the grain bed itself and more hands-on attention to keep runoff moving evenly. Now, with a lauter tun built specifically for the job, we're getting a cleaner separation of wort from grain, better extract efficiency, and a more consistent process from batch to batch - all while freeing the team up to focus on other tasks rather than babysitting the runoff.