Another Newby Questio

[Spartan 117]

Hey Guy's

I have a problem... I bought a 15 odd litre pot from savers a while ago hoping it would suffice as a boil kettle given that i only brew about 20 or so litres at one time, I was rong and not for the first or last time i might add. my question is would it be O.K to use say 15 litres for boiling adding hops etc and then with the 5 or so litres left after sparging just into the fermentor??? Then once the boil is over just add them together?

would this work or am i totally wrong ??

Aaron

 

[bradsbrew]

You need to boil all your liquid. If you had to do it add the first lot to the fermenter then boil the second lot then add it down. If you were to do it this way you could ratio your hops to the liquid.

Cheers Brad

 

[seemax]

I wouldn't put wort straight from the grains into a fermentor.

Why not do a split boil, get another 15L pot and boil half half, and split the hops.

Otherwise try and find a bigger pot on eBay or 2nd hand catering shop? I found a 36L pot for $20, added a ball valve and pickup tube for $20.

 

[fonzy]

This maybe wrong but i would've thought you would need to make sure you boil all of your mash including the sparge bit becasue the boil, as well as redcing water in the wort also kills of bacteria and if you just added 5L of sparge into the fermenter straight up you could risk infection? But I maybe wrong. I personally only have 2 19l pots and I pour 15l of mashed goodness in each and boil them at the same time, splitting the hops between the 2 and then once cooled add both to the fermenter to make up my 23 or so litres....but I maybe wrong too

 

[buttersd70]

...use say 15 litres for boiling adding hops etc and then with the 5 or so litres left after sparging just into the fermentor??? Then once the boil is over just add them together?

If water has come into contact with grain, it needs to be boiled...grain is full of bugs.

The other issue you would have is loss to evaporation...so your 15L pot, at the end of a 60min boil, would actually have somewhere in the region of 13L in it, meaning it would take 7L to make it up to volume. You can concentrate a boil, adn make it up to volume with water at the end....but a 1/3 addition of water means that you are going to have a pretty concentrated wort. I presume youre talking grain, because you mention the sparge...if thats the case, the mash would suffer (due to a lack of available water) with such a heavy concentration...if you are aiming for a 1050 OG, it would be the same as mashing for a beer in the high 60's (and then diluting it), which means you would likely drop efficiency as a result. You would also have a much lower hop utilisation due to the higher boil gravity

If you're talking partial mash, or extract with specialty grain, thats a totally different ball game, because you can hold back on some (or all if it's partial) of the extract, and just add that at the end, which overcomes those problems. So doing a 50% partial, with the grain portion boiled in 15L means that you have the same water/grain availability as a AG with a 30L boil...for all intents and purposes, your doing a half size AG (hopped as per a full size batch), which is then mixed with extract and water to bring up to full size volume.

 

[brettprevans]

Mate thats the usual for small pot brewers. you will get a reduced hop utiilisation from it but basicaly its fine.

you AGing or partials (I assume your not K&K as your talking about sparging)? probably better to put the question in appropriate forum. you'll get more anwsers.

but basicly so long as your using wort to boil your hops your fine. you can use water instead of wort but hop utilisation decreases.

EDIT: oops just reread your post. yes all liquid that comes into contact with grains needs to be boiled. just use less water to steep your grains in.