N00b Question - High Og, Low Volume

[kymba]

Sorry if this has been asked before or is so freakin obvious...

So my old man and i want to get into AG. At the moment we only have a 30 Litre pot to boil in, but we want to get enough wort at the end to fill 2 fermenters - 1 for bottling (23L) and one for kegging (19L).

Can we make just make a high OG wort then simply add water to the fermentor later to bring the gravity down and final volume up?



Cheers,

Kymba.

 

[troydo]

theoretically possible. you will need a MASSIVE mash tun... i would recommend just brew twice

 

[jonw]

Yes you can, but you might struggle to the end volume you're looking for (~40L).

I have a 25L pot. I don't want to fill it to the brim because it'll boil over. With evaporation, I usually end up with about 17-19L. I make my beers a little heavier, and dilute out to ~25L.

The trick is in working out your volumes. If your grain bill is 5Kg (for a 25L batch for example) your looking at 12.5L water for the mash. If you mash out, you're probably adding another 5L. You'd want your sparge to be about 12.5L too. That's 30L of water, of which 5L is retained by the grain, leaving 25L in the kettle. I work around that by using another pan for the first part of the boil to accommodate the excess.

Cheers,

Jon