Large Brew With Small Equipment

[bigbanko]

Hi All

Been a while since I last posted here and have a question for the more experienced guys here.
As brew day is a fairly time consuming process I quite often brew twice so I have enough brew to fill a 19 L and 23 L keg.
What I would like to do is brew only once, ferment in a 60L fermenter and have enough beer to fill both kegs (42L). What stops me from doing this is my mash tun is only 30 litters and boil pot 45 litres.

What I would like to know would it be ok have a grain and hops bill for a 42 liter batch, but only using the water qty for a 26 litter batch.
This way I would have a sort of concentrated wort of 26 litters I would then add this to the 60L fermenter and top up with water to the 42L mark.(extra 16 litters of water)
I would then pitch a double yeast starter and ferment away.

As I mostly do pale ales and the odd amber ale, does anyone see any problems with what I describe above and if so maybe a way around it.

Cheers

 

[ledgenko]

I may be totally wrong here but it seems like a pausable plan. I have over boiled my brew before and ended up with a concentrate so this seems like a similar solution to what I was told ..

I would give it a crack and see what happens ... I think it would work out ok ...


Matt

 

[npenno]

I also may be wrong but if you have a 45L pot why dont you top up with water up to 40L before you start to boil but after the mash?

Nick

 

[loikar]

Hi All

Been a while since I last posted here and have a question for the more experienced guys here.
As brew day is a fairly time consuming process I quite often brew twice so I have enough brew to fill a 19 L and 23 L keg.
What I would like to do is brew only once, ferment in a 60L fermenter and have enough beer to fill both kegs (42L). What stops me from doing this is my mash tun is only 30 litters and boil pot 45 litres.

What I would like to know would it be ok have a grain and hops bill for a 42 liter batch, but only using the water qty for a 26 litter batch.
This way I would have a sort of concentrated wort of 26 litters I would then add this to the 60L fermenter and top up with water to the 42L mark.(extra 16 litters of water)
I would then pitch a double yeast starter and ferment away.

As I mostly do pale ales and the odd amber ale, does anyone see any problems with what I describe above and if so maybe a way around it.

Cheers

High gravity brews are common.

You can either make a high gravity wort and split it pre-boil, or boil the high gravity wort and split it afterwards.

I do a high gravity mash and then split the wort.
Then I do 2 boils with different hops and yeast in each.

BF

edit: Eye carnt schpell goodn shit

 

[stevem01]

I do this all the time, works fine for mids 3.5 or 4.0 percent. 8 to 10 KG grain in 40L mash (BIAB), bring to boil and top up with BOILING water throughout the boil, I get about 35L into the fermenter, then top up with cold tapwater to req OG Usually 60L at 1035

 

[bigbanko]

I also may be wrong but if you have a 45L pot why dont you top up with water up to 40L before you start to boil but after the mash?

Nick

As my pot is of large diameter and shallow I don't have enough headspace to control a boil over

 

[bigbanko]

Thinking about it, I could add boiling water after the boil started as was suggested here. I could get it to say 35 - 38 litres and add the remaining cold water to the fermenter.

 

[punkin]

How would one go about calculating that in Brewmate?

Just thinking about extrapolating the concept for myself, i have a 160+ litre boil pot, but can only heat 45l at a time for a sparge or mash and have only a 120l esky for a mash tun.
I can do triples fairly easily (but usually do doubles), but just thinking if i wanted to do a 4X batch of smurtos or another house ale to split into two fermenters and save me an extra brew day.

How would i calculate the mash so as to brew a 4x brew and only use 3x mash and sparge water and top up in the kettle?

 

[punkin]

It's ok, you can all stand down.

I used the Lock ingredients button and then scaled down.

 

[Nick JD]

Mash 10kg of grain in your 30L tun. Sparge with enough water to get ~ 35L of wort. Measure the gravity and adjust your hop schedule.

Dilute in the fermenter to your required OG.

Check out the 20L Stovetop thread. It's easy to get 20L of 1.045 wort using one 19L pot. Not sure about your mash tun, but you could always get some swiss voile and mash in your bigger volume kettle.

Another "cheat" for high gravity brewing is the Belgian Ales - they contain large amounts of adjuncts meaning you can brew large volumes of big beer with small equipment.

 

[np1962]

One of the problems with what you are suggesting is going to be very low efficiency as well as lack of room in your tun.
Mashing the amount of grain, 10-12kg (7-9L of space), and getting pre boil wort of say 30-32L (40L of hot liquor required) is still going to take more space than you have in your tun.
This is even before we think of sparging. For which you have no hot liquor left anyway as you've used it all for the mash.
The one possibility is to mash in your kettle somehow and collect your runnings in buckets before transferring back to the kettle later. Maybe fit a braid for mashing or even, dare I say it a pillow case.
You could get a bigger final volume this way and your efficiency won't suffer as much. Will still be less than for a normal mash and sparge or full volume BIAB mash.
Can be done but I wonder if all the messing about is worth the time saved.
Cheers
Nige

 

[technoicon]

High gravity brews are common.

You can either make a high gravity wort and split it pre-boil, or boil the high gravity wort and split it afterwards.

I do a high gravity mash and then split the wort.
Then I do 2 boils with different hops and yeast in each.

BF

edit: Eye carnt schpell goodn shit

do you boil at the same time?

I have had this idea, I have a 80l pot but dont have enough power to boil 2 batches. I was thinking of mashing a double batch, then boiling a single batch at a time.

but i'm worries about leaving the wort there for 60mins...

maybe i could do a 120min mash for one batch??

 

[Nick JD]

You could leave the wort for 12 hours and still be okay.

It takes about 24 hours for the sour critters to actually change its flavour.

 

[technoicon]

cool might give this a go..

 

[ekul]

If this was me this is what i would do.

Buy some swiss voile and make a biab bag.

Say you're using 9.5kg of malt. I'd put 4.5kg in the 45L pot in a biab bag and 5kg in the mashtun. Make the biab mash a pretty thick one.
When you're sparging just let let the runnings go into the 45L pot on top of the grain in the bag, then pull out the bag. Then dillute post boil. Maybe you'll avoid the low efficiencies sometimes associated with high gravity brewing. I've never tried this but this is what i would do if faced with the same problem.

Or you could do a mash, sparge and start your boil. Mash a second time and put that into the kettle as well. This will make your beers a little darker though because of the extra boil time.

For reference my 80L stainless pot was $99 from a cheap asiain store. Its thin but never had issues with scorching, and i have a massive burner.