Perhaps foolishly, I'm attempting to develop a process for a five gallon all-grain on my kitchen stove. I've (mostly) successfully done a 3 gallon all-grain and and "mostly grain, almost full-boil" partial mash for a 5 gallon batch. Today I attempted my first full go, brewing the Centennial Blonde from the recipe section here. I'm using BIAB.
I have a three and a four gallon pot. I split the 8lb or so of grain in half and did a mash in each pot. My first problem was that I missed the temps by quite a bit on one and didn't fix it because I had to be somewhere else for 40mins. I just left it out and uninsulated. It didn't drop as much as I expected over that time (or, quite plausibly, I rushed the initial measurement and it started even hotter than the 163F I thought it was). After the 40mins it was at 159. At that point I used cold water to get it to the low 150s. The other pot was spot on, and I had it in the oven on warm so held its temp perfectly.
That's all fixable easily enough with more practice and more care. The boil is where I think I'm in more serious trouble as far as getting a good process going is concerned.
My stove struggles to keep a rolling boil when those pots are mostly full. It's close; definitely more than a simmer. I'd say that "gentle boil" is a fair description.
My original plan had been to squeeze and dunk sparge the bags and add this liquid to the heating/boiling wort as it became available (and as space was available in the pots) but I didn't want to make the boil worse. Plan B was to boil this separately and add it once it was boiling, but I couldn't fit the third pot alongside the first two. Plan C, which I used, was to give the last of it (it was about a gallon) a vigorous 20min boil on its own once the first pot had finished its 60min boil (the pots were out of sync because of heating times and where I'd added the first bits of sparge wort).
So, I'm looking for ideas, including some sense of what changes will make the biggest improvements (assuming that I can fix the mash temp problems, which I'm confident I can). Some specific questions:
* Would a longer gentle boil (90mins? 120mins?) help? As I understand it the two issues are boiling off DMS and utilising hops. How are these affected?
* I have two 3 quart saucepans that I think would both fit next to the big pots. Would it help to have half a gallon in each of these at a rolling boil, switching the wort between the big and little pots occasionally?
* Any reason why consecutive boils wouldn't work? That is, doing, say, three 2 gallon boils, with at most two going at once (with the third in the same pot as the first). I don't like how much time this would add, but if it might be worth it.
I ended up with a little under 5 gallons at an SG of 1.055. The target was 1.040 but is listed as a 5.5 gallon batch, and so the volume presumably accounts for some of the overshoot. I'm more worried about the FG as I was mashing high, but we'll see how it comes out. I'm sure it will be beer, so it's not all bad.
Any help or ideas gratefully received!
I have a three and a four gallon pot. I split the 8lb or so of grain in half and did a mash in each pot. My first problem was that I missed the temps by quite a bit on one and didn't fix it because I had to be somewhere else for 40mins. I just left it out and uninsulated. It didn't drop as much as I expected over that time (or, quite plausibly, I rushed the initial measurement and it started even hotter than the 163F I thought it was). After the 40mins it was at 159. At that point I used cold water to get it to the low 150s. The other pot was spot on, and I had it in the oven on warm so held its temp perfectly.
That's all fixable easily enough with more practice and more care. The boil is where I think I'm in more serious trouble as far as getting a good process going is concerned.
My stove struggles to keep a rolling boil when those pots are mostly full. It's close; definitely more than a simmer. I'd say that "gentle boil" is a fair description.
My original plan had been to squeeze and dunk sparge the bags and add this liquid to the heating/boiling wort as it became available (and as space was available in the pots) but I didn't want to make the boil worse. Plan B was to boil this separately and add it once it was boiling, but I couldn't fit the third pot alongside the first two. Plan C, which I used, was to give the last of it (it was about a gallon) a vigorous 20min boil on its own once the first pot had finished its 60min boil (the pots were out of sync because of heating times and where I'd added the first bits of sparge wort).
So, I'm looking for ideas, including some sense of what changes will make the biggest improvements (assuming that I can fix the mash temp problems, which I'm confident I can). Some specific questions:
* Would a longer gentle boil (90mins? 120mins?) help? As I understand it the two issues are boiling off DMS and utilising hops. How are these affected?
* I have two 3 quart saucepans that I think would both fit next to the big pots. Would it help to have half a gallon in each of these at a rolling boil, switching the wort between the big and little pots occasionally?
* Any reason why consecutive boils wouldn't work? That is, doing, say, three 2 gallon boils, with at most two going at once (with the third in the same pot as the first). I don't like how much time this would add, but if it might be worth it.
I ended up with a little under 5 gallons at an SG of 1.055. The target was 1.040 but is listed as a 5.5 gallon batch, and so the volume presumably accounts for some of the overshoot. I'm more worried about the FG as I was mashing high, but we'll see how it comes out. I'm sure it will be beer, so it's not all bad.
Any help or ideas gratefully received!