Big beer, little kettle

[bassman22]

I am looking to move from extract to my first all grain recipe. BIAB seems like a nice segway. I am learning a lot (the bag gets quite heavy, dont burn it on the bottom of the kettle, watch your temperature, grind grain twice or finer for better efficiency, sparge for better efficiency, boil longer or add a little dme to help hit OG, can use two grain bags to ease lifting, need to account for grain water absorption and boil off when deciding on how much water to use, take a gravity sample pre- and post-boil so you can get efficiency)

Ive done some forum searches and I believe what I want to attempt is possible, but ive found it wont be the no-sparge BIAB technique. After reading dozens of "Big Beer- BIAB" threads, people have mentioned big beers are possible with sparging (dunk-sparging?), but I am not quite sure of the process with my setup.

I have a propane burner (or electric stove) and a 7.5 gal aluminum kettle (standard turkey fryer kettle) and a 5 gal SS kettle. Plus some smaller 2.5 gal sauce pots and fermenting buckets (if those help).

So...how can a man like me, using the 7.5 gal kettle, brew a 5 gallon batch of Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter...a brew that has a grain bill of 17.25 gallons (rackers says this occupies 6.77 gal of space @ 1.25 qt/lb). I want to do all-grain- dont want to sub the 11 lb 2-row for DME (partial mash).

Can someone assure me this is possible with this recipe and equipment? And I assume I will be using some sparge technique- maybe someone can lightly (or in detail), explain how I would accomplish this (I am a noob and not familiar with the steps).

TIA

 

[haberdasher]

I am looking to move from extract to my first all grain recipe. BIAB seems like a nice segway. I am learning a lot (the bag gets quite heavy, dont burn it on the bottom of the kettle, watch your temperature, grind grain twice or finer for better efficiency, sparge for better efficiency, boil longer or add a little dme to help hit OG, can use two grain bags to ease lifting, need to account for grain water absorption and boil off when deciding on how much water to use, take a gravity sample pre- and post-boil so you can get efficiency)

Ive done some forum searches and I believe what I want to attempt is possible, but ive found it wont be the no-sparge BIAB technique. After reading dozens of "Big Beer- BIAB" threads, people have mentioned big beers are possible with sparging (dunk-sparging?), but I am not quite sure of the process with my setup.

I have a propane burner (or electric stove) and a 7.5 gal aluminum kettle (standard turkey fryer kettle) and a 5 gal SS kettle. Plus some smaller 2.5 gal sauce pots and fermenting buckets (if those help).

So...how can a man like me, using the 7.5 gal kettle, brew a 5 gallon batch of Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter...a brew that has a grain bill of 17.25 gallons (rackers says this occupies 6.77 gal of space @ 1.25 qt/lb). I want to do all-grain- dont want to sub the 11 lb 2-row for DME (partial mash).

Can someone assure me this is possible with this recipe and equipment? And I assume I will be using some sparge technique- maybe someone can lightly (or in detail), explain how I would accomplish this (I am a noob and not familiar with the steps).

TIA

I just moved from extract to BIAB and MAXED out my 8.8 gallon kettle (13.75in diameter by 13.75in height) with Denny Conns Rye IPA at 16.25# grain bill.

I'm not saying don't try it, but you are gonna need to crunch the numbers a bit more. Check out a thread I was involved in HERE: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/first-biab-427308/

 

[PRE66_6TART]

I use the exact same equipment except I do it on my stove.

What I would do is put the grain in two separate bags in the 7.5 gallon pot and mash with as much water as will fit. Put the rest of the water to reach your pre-boil volume in the 5 gallon pot. After the mash, take the grain bags out one at a time and dunk in the pot of cold water. Dunk it up and down for a minute or two like a tea bag and pull it out and give it a squeeze, then dunk the other one. Then combine the two pots and boil.

 

[Vellum]

You are going to mash at the volume your kettle allows then add additional water after pulling the grain bag to get your pre boil volume. Or at least this is how I've done it in the past.

I have a spreadsheet that does this for me but this is essentially the math.

Kettle volume 7 gallons (896 oz) I subtracted a half volume for wiggle room.

Grain space at assumed 10 oz per pound is 172.5 oz

This leaves 723.5 oz for water which is 5.65 gallons.

Mash with that water, do a dunk sparge if you like as it is a big beer. I do this by heating the kettle to 168 while holding the bag off the bottom of the kettle then once I have hit the temp I turn the heat off and stir the grain and let it sit around ten minutes. I have noticed that with my large grain bills I just grind extra fine and don't have to worry about it too much. You will need to dial in your system to find out what works for you over the course of multiple brews. Some people prefer to heat their top off water to sparge temp and sparge that way. The only reason I am wary of suggesting that is if you do not know how much water to top off with due to not knowing your system numbers it may prove difficult to gauge.

After the mash and dunk sparge (if performed) remove bag and allow to drip or collect the runnings somehow. Squeeze if you want, I do and have a water absorption rate of .03 gals per pound of grain. Your results will very.

Measure the volume of liquid in the kettle and top up to your pre boil volume (this is your batch size plus evaporation). Remember the liquid expands at temperature I believe 4% (don't remember but pretty easy to google).

Proceed with your boil as normal. I retread this and it makes sense to me but feel free to ask questions if you are unsure about parts. Sounds like you have done a lot of reading and I'm sure your brew day will go great whether you take my advice or not.

 

[Vellum]

Also just to clarify the method above uses the single large kettle which is plenty big. My buddy and I do a barley wine with 17-19 pounds of grain in an 8.5 gallon kettle and hit our numbers perfectly. We have had a bit of practice at bit though.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

Hey vellum it looks like you and I are mostly on the same page, but I'm confused about your dunk sparge. Just to clarify, are you keeping it in the same pot? If so I would call that a mash-out. To me a dunk sparge is dunking in a separate pot. Personally I like to use cold water for my dunk sparge so I'm not squeezing a hot grain bag. But hey, whatever works.

 

[Vellum]

Yeah I use the same pot. Could be considered a mash out. Either way it gets dunked around. Never thought of doing it in cold water. I was always told the water needed to be hot to rinse the sugar from the grain.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

Someone around here, I don't for sure remember who, did some experimenting and determined that you don't really get better extraction with the hot water. Raising the temperature is mainly to denature the enzymes so they don't keep converting during the sparge. But with BIAB your not doing a long sparge so it isn't really an issue. That's my understanding. I haven't done a comparison or anything. I've gotten good efficiency so far dunking it in cold water. And I'm not burning my fingers squeezing the bag.

 

[Vellum]

Is there a gain from dunking in cold water versus he mash water?

 

[PRE66_6TART]

Well I would say you get more sugar out by dunking in water that isn't already full of sugar. The higher concentration of sugar water in the bag will mix evenly throughout the pot and then when you pull the bag out less will be left behind in the bag. Same reason you don't batch sparge or fly sparge with your mash water. I haven't done a comparison though so I don't know how much the difference is. I'm sure it's something though.

 

[Vellum]

Sounds like an interesting experiment. Currently my kettle is 15 gallons so I just use total water in the mash. Wonder how much of a gain you see in rinsing in the cold water. Good luck to the op. So many ways to skin a cat, find something that works for you.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

Yeah if I had the capacity to do a full volume mash I might do things differently. But if you're not mashing with your full volume and and you've got the extra pot laying around I don't see any reason not to spend the two minutes dunking it in your top-off water. But that's just how I do it. Like I said earlier, whatever works.

 

[Klinzai]

I have a propane burner (or electric stove) and a 7.5 gal aluminum kettle (standard turkey fryer kettle) and a 5 gal SS kettle. Plus some smaller 2.5 gal sauce pots and fermenting buckets (if those help).

So...how can a man like me, using the 7.5 gal kettle, brew a 5 gallon batch of Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter...a brew that has a grain bill of 17.25 gallons (rackers says this occupies 6.77 gal of space @ 1.25 qt/lb). I want to do all-grain- dont want to sub the 11 lb 2-row for DME (partial mash).

TIA

Your pots are almost identical to my setup i use two 7.5 or one 7.5 and one 5 gallon pot depending on how i feel. i am about to try the "double" or "reiterative" mash technique. Give it a look. It's when you mash part of the grain bill and then remove those grains and use the wort left to mash the next part when your system is not quite big enough to handle the grain bill you are working with. It gets you around using dme to bulk up the gravity, shrinking your batch size, or other work arounds.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

Your pots are almost identical to my setup i use two 7.5 or one 7.5 and one 5 gallon pot depending on how i feel. i am about to try the "double" or "reiterative" mash technique. Give it a look. It's when you mash part of the grain bill and then remove those grains and use the wort left to mash the next part when your system is not quite big enough to handle the grain bill you are working with. It gets you around using dme to bulk up the gravity, shrinking your batch size, or other work arounds.

I haven't seen this discussed much but I have heard about it and am also about to try it. I will be mashing 30+ pounds of grain in my 7.5 gallon pot.

 

[FatDragon]

Someone around here, I don't for sure remember who, did some experimenting and determined that you don't really get better extraction with the hot water. Raising the temperature is mainly to denature the enzymes so they don't keep converting during the sparge. But with BIAB your not doing a long sparge so it isn't really an issue. That's my understanding. I haven't done a comparison or anything. I've gotten good efficiency so far dunking it in cold water. And I'm not burning my fingers squeezing the bag.

Late to the discussion, but one benefit of doing a hot water sparge is less time from mash to boil. If your burner, like mine, takes over an hour to get 7 gallons from 150 to boiling, you can save ten to fifteen minutes that way. However, not burning your fingers when squeezing could be a good thing in its own right...