Whats the highest OG brew anyone has squeezed out of a BM

[rehabs_for_quitters]

just wondering as I have been having some grief tryng to get a 1.090 brew out of my BIAB rig and don't see any need to go 3V other than bigger beers that maybe a Braumeister might be the go if I am going to invest some coin in some new kit,

So just wondering whats the biggest brew anyone has done in a brewmeister as I have quite a few high gravity beers planned and weighing up options, is it possible to squeeze 23L of 1.090 wort out of a 50L unit?

 

[Wilkensone]

just wondering as I have been having some grief tryng to get a 1.090 brew out of my BIAB rig and don't see any need to go 3V other than bigger beers that maybe a Braumeister might be the go if I am going to invest some coin in some new kit,

So just wondering whats the biggest brew anyone has done in a brewmeister as I have quite a few high gravity beers planned and weighing up options, is it possible to squeeze 23L of 1.090 wort out of a 50L unit?

I think I saw somewhere that people were squeezing 6kg grist into a 20L BM to get ~20L of 1060 wort so on a 50L it should be easy.

I'm interested in this too so hopefully some of BM boys can post too.

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

sounds promising if they are getting those numbers, I hit the wall on my rig at 1.082 tried everything and after todays brew at 1.082 again I have admitted defeat

 

[Thefatdoghead]

I got 55 litres of 1.097 wort out of it a couple of brews ago. I used about 20kg of grain and mashed 2 malt pipe worth. Aiming for 52 litres of 1.085 so overshot quiet a bit.

 

[Black n Tan]

I got 55 litres of 1.097 wort out of it a couple of brews ago. I used about 20kg of grain and mashed 2 malt pipe worth. Aiming for 52 litres of 1.085 so overshot quiet a bit.

That is good to hear Gav80. Yes you need to perform a double mash using the same liquor to achieve gravities that high. I don't think the 50L offers any significant advantage over the 20L BM on that front, just a bigger volume.

 

[MastersBrewery]

If your a do it your self type guy, you could Build a BM clone, and in doing so configure to brew extra high gravity, though I believe what ever way you skin the cat (be that 1v, 2v or 3v) going over 1080 always poses difficulties that need working around.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yeah...1080 and above can be problematic.

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

I could maybe stop trying to mash 11kg of grain and do one mash of 5.5kg remove the grain give it a rinse or dunk sparge and then mash another 5.5kg of grain, the effiency is always going to suck but I want to brew about 10 batches of this big beer and put it away for at least 10 years and let it age, hence the question

 

[Wilkensone]

I could maybe stop trying to mash 11kg of grain and do one mash of 5.5kg remove the grain give it a rinse or dunk sparge and then mash another 5.5kg of grain, the effiency is always going to suck but I want to brew about 10 batches of this big beer and put it away for at least 10 years and let it age, hence the question

Fark 10 batches? What is this magical beer?

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/1909-beer-style-guide-courage-imperial.html

have got 1 batch at 6 months and man it's drinking beautifully so I thought I could age the bastard and see how it went, I tried an aged chimmay the other month and it got me thinking, and if I do one batch and its a ripper I have to wait 10 years so thought extremism and brew 10 that way if its good I have a supply till I make some more, or a session for my 50th

 

[MastersBrewery]

when I was at Lael's he was brewing a belgian quad, memory is rough but I think we got some thing like 28L 1076, 90min step mash, 90min boil, spaging the remaing grits with a further 5L? gave a gravity of 1020 so still more sugars could have been extracted. So full sparge and extended boil and you'd get there.

 

[Dan Pratt]

I got a 1079 from 8.4kg of malt when I tried the double mash. It was low on efficiency but I think I could go 2 x 5kg and get close to a 1.095. If you want a big beer a SBM its limited unless you double mash or reduce your final volume to about 16-17litres. I can fit 6.5 kg into the malt pipe but that is FULL, others have squeezed 7kg in.....

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

A good way is to do 2 mashes. Use the first runnings from your 2nd mash in your 1st mash. Keep the last runnings from your 1st mash and combine that with the remaining runnings from your 2nd mash.

This gives you a high SG 1st wort and a 2nd wort that is great for brewing milds.

 

[lael]

when I was at Lael's he was brewing a belgian quad, memory is rough but I think we got some thing like 28L 1076, 90min step mash, 90min boil, spaging the remaing grits with a further 5L? gave a gravity of 1020 so still more sugars could have been extracted. So full sparge and extended boil and you'd get there.

Spot on - I think the final numbers were a couple of points up on that, maybe 1078/80 - I don't remember where it ended up when the sample cooled in the refractometer to be honest. It was just over 10kg of grain.

I deliberately built my brau-clone so I could do high gravity beers. The brau wasn't really built for them. You will find that most commercial recipes/clone recipes use sugar / extended boils above 1.090 to get super high gravity. I haven't had any, but I think there is one recipe in clone brews that doesn't and it is described as being very very chewy...

There was a thread about it maybe a year or so ago - I was reading it when I was deciding what sort of system to go with. Maybe - Big Beers on the braumeister or something. Let me check my notes... here we go: http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/60261-big-beers-for-the-braumeister/%C2 - the short of it is what a few people have alluded to. Mash once - pull malt pipe out, empty, replace, fill, mash with second lot of grain (same wort). Alternative is to cram the malt pipe with as much as you can... but generally efficiency suffers massively and you don't hit anywhere near your targets.

 

[kezza]

We did a triple mash in on a bm50 and a 3 hour boil to get 60 lt at 1.120 so eff. Does suffer now we brew each year on bathurst weekend and use the bm as a big HX into a 100lt mash tun with 35kg of grain for our annual barley wine

 

[lael]

Kezza, were you recirculating through the mash run?

Edit: what numbers do you get from 35kg? That's massive.

 

[Donske]

A good way is to do 2 mashes. Use the first runnings from your 2nd mash in your 1st mash. Keep the last runnings from your 1st mash and combine that with the remaining runnings from your 2nd mash.

This gives you a high SG 1st wort and a 2nd wort that is great for brewing milds.

This is how I'm planning on knocking out a barley wine, except it will just be the first running from a double batch to make a very high gravity single batch, sparge and a second smaller mash will go towards a double batch of something lighter, hell, I may even get away with just the sparge depending on how much grain is used.

 

[lael]

I made a spreadsheet to calculate what was possible on a Braumeister when I was working out what sizes to make my clone machine. I'd be interested in getting feedback to see if it reflects reality from any Braumeister owners.

Long and Short of it -

50L Brau with a 20L malt pipe can do minimums of 3.59kg of grain, and max of 5.8kg of grain.
50L Brau with a 50L malt pipe can do minimums of 6.1kg of grain and max of around 12kg of grain.

What that translates to at different OG's is on the spreadsheet - key items to pay attention to: The Batch size is where to change the number, which calculates the grain bill for that OG. If the min water is lower than the malt pipe vol you are in trouble, but theoretically in a dark beer could boil down to hit numbers.

Be very interested to hear if this sounds realistic or if the numbers are out.

View attachment Theoretical Braumeister Volumes.xls

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

So the reality is I would be better to mash the grains split 50/50 then maybe a dunk sparge of the grain from mash one into a seperate pot at mash out temp, then mash the second and dunk sparge again then add that back to the mash, then boil for an extended time to get OG,

this is making it difficult to justify buying nice shiny new equipment, I might need to find another angle to get this one past the wife.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Buy the shiny new equipment then get a new wife ( if required ). Anyway....new girlfriends allways like shiny expensive things..