BrutalBrew
Well-Known Member
I have a question about boiling down large volumes of wort. I'm going to brew a barley wine. Ive read and have been told to brew 2 beers. A big beer and then a smaller pale ale with the rest of sparge. What if you just want a really big brew. Why cant you just sparge until you have removed the mass majority of starchs from the grain and boil it down? I know you may end up with 10g to boil down to 5g. My LHBS said boiling down the remaining runnings wont help. I believe this, I just dont understand why. I would think you could boil it down to concentrate it? Does it caramelize the sugars so much that they become useless to the yeast, causing just a sweet brew? I know boiling down 10g to 5g would take 5 hours, BUT i planned on using 2 x 6g pots so that would actually decrease boil time to 2 - 2 1/2 hours. Im using 24lbs of grain in a 10g cooler MLT w/7.5g strike. That would give me about 6g first running's , then I was going to fly sparge 4g thru the grain to get all the goodies out. Am I better off just sparging the 1.5g LHBS recommended? Need info/input