46 ltr batch brew

[Beak]

gday we have been doing 23ltr bactches with our all grain setup.. question is that when we double our ingrediants it aint the same as our
23ltr batch. any hints or tips on how to fix this? we can brew a perfect beer using 4 kilo s of grain. but once we up it to 8 kilos. it aint the same any idea?

 

[roastinrich]

tried it using beer smith software?

 

[butisitart]

might need to extend on 'ain't the same'.
could be that now you've got 46L, cos that ain't the same.

 

[jimmy_jangles]

yep brewsmith is the go, it will scale the recipe for you

 

[barls]

as a regular 40ish litre brewer its not the same.
i get 65% efficency on 20 L but over 85% on 46L

 

[antiphile]

+1 to the clever people above. Put simply, you have a mixture of variable and fixed volumes. On the same equipment, some things stay the same (eg. deadspace, and to an extent ,boil off etc). Others vary, like grain absorption. The Brewsmith (and similar) advocates have put you on the right path.

Other factors have no rhyme, reason or consistency. Often, quite inexplicably, a double batch results in a double blood alcohol content on brew completion. Yet, occasionaly it has little perceptible effect.

Being a bit of a girl, my sweetspot is around 42 litres. Much more than that and the FV weight and bulkiness make it awkward to move around and lift.

 

[Mardoo]

The first question that came to mind for me was did the fermentation happen in the same way? Was the yeast pitched at the same temperature? Were the batches fermented at the same temperature? Was the same amount of yeast pitched for each batch, or did you scale up for the bigger one? Etc etc.

For the same recipe, fermentation tends to have a bigger influence on final flavour than wort production so that's the first place I'd look. According to the Brew Strong folks scaling up to a double batch at the homebrew level shouldn't have much effect. Scaling up from 23 litres to 2300 litres would. Haven't tested that myself