Partial Mash, Upping My Grain Bill

[Bribie G]

I'll get back to AG eventually - have recently started partials with very encouraging results but the 1kg minimash seems a bit woosie to me so I decided to go as big as I can get on my current equipment.

So far I have used a 3L jug in an esky water bath for a 1kg mash and batch sparged in a 5L stockpot and boiled in a 10L stockpot.

I decided to go to 2kg and today bought a 9L cute little container - a good 'decor' brand - from Woolies:



It fits perfectly in the esky and will handle 2kg no worries.
I also took advantage of CraftBrewer's discount on 5kg plus grains and ordered the 5kg of Malt.

It occurs to me that maybe I should try for a 2.5kg mash but would I be pushing my boiling capacity?

Plan is to mash 2.5kg then do two separate batch sparges with two halves of the grain using the 5L pot as a sort of Lauter Tun with the results going into the 10L pot. I'm sort of getting the hang of batch sparging but would the quantities required for 2.5kg 'overwhelm' the pot or should I cut back to 2kg?

I'm fairly confident that the pot will handle the spargings from 2kg based on my experience with 1kg.

Sure I can buy a bigger pot but I'm looking for the best possible result from what I've got now.

 

[buttersd70]

Bribie
You will be able to boil in 10L, but I would assume that to avoid boilover you'd really only be looking at 8L. The main prob that I see is efficiency drop due to the concentration of the wort, which for 2.5kg made to 8L total will give 1077. In order to have an effective mash, you would be sacrificing water for the sparge, which would be a bit stiff, and vice versa.

2kg of grain, on the otherhand, will allow 5L for the mash (2.5L/kg), with 2.8L to kettle (assuming 0 deadspace because of your method) and 5.2L for the sparge (in total, giving 3.7L/kg) and 5.2L to the kettle for a total of 8L of 1062. So I think 2.5kg would be pushing your luck in a 10L pot.

 

[Bribie G]

2kg of grain, on the otherhand, will allow 5L for the mash (2.5L/kg), with 2.8L to kettle (assuming 0 deadspace because of your method) and 5.2L for the sparge (in total, giving 3.7L/kg) and 5.2L to the kettle for a total of 8L of 1062. So I think 2.5kg would be pushing your luck in a 10L pot.

Thanks, that's what I had suspected. I can always go out around the Chinese and Korean Stores in Fortitude Valley where I work and suss out a big cheap pot, but then 10 L is about the limits of what our stove can handle. Next step would have to be a NASA burner etc
Based on your calcs I would say that 2kg is still going to give me a good whack of malty goodness in my ales for the time being. I'll also be using steeped grains like crystal etc so I'm gradually homing in on target

Courier should be here this morning ... woohoooo

 

[buttersd70]

Oh yeah, if youre doing (what some people call) low OG, in the low 40's, 2Kg will make up about half the bill anyway. With the 'steeping' grains, if doing a mash, put it in the mash. Firstly it saves doing a seperate process, secondly you get much higher colour extraction, and thirdly, particularly for the darker grains, the potential in the mash is almost double that of steeping, so you do get contribution to gravity, as well. Theres a chart in palmers how to brew with average potential of grain, and it's interesting to look at the difference between mash/steep for the darker crystles, choc, etc.

 

[braufrau]

Thanks, that's what I had suspected. I can always go out around the Chinese and Korean Stores in Fortitude Valley where I work and suss out a big cheap pot, but then 10 L is about the limits of what our stove can handle. Next step would have to be a NASA burner etc
Based on your calcs I would say that 2kg is still going to give me a good whack of malty goodness in my ales for the time being. I'll also be using steeped grains like crystal etc so I'm gradually homing in on target

Courier should be here this morning ... woohoooo

Can you straddle two burners on your stove? Then you can use a bigger pot. I have a 23l pot that I boil on the stove.
But then .. if your goal is AG then better to stick with partials in the 10l until you're ready to get a full sized pot and nasa burner.