What's the grain bill #'s with high gravity?

[mrbeachroach]

Hey guys trying to get an idea of how many pounds of grain you need to push out 8%-10.5abv with all grain.

Trying to keep this in mind for 5 gallon batches and what size minimum brew pot to use.

 

[eric19312]

It depends...

BIAB no sparge you need a pretty big kettle. My guess is 15 gal.

Batch or fly sparge with 85% efficiency...16.7 pounds of grain would give you 6 gallons of 1.090 wort. That would hit your range with most yeast.

 

[SleepyCreekBrews]

I've brewed a 10 gallon batch of 10% Doppelbock with 32 pounds of grain in a Keggle (15.5 Gal) ...so it may be possible to do 5 gallons of 10% with 16 pounds in a 8 gallon kettle ...

 

[mrbeachroach]

I've brewed a 10 gallon batch of 10% Doppelbock with 32 pounds of grain in a Keggle (15.5 Gal) ...so it may be possible to do 5 gallons of 10% with 16 pounds in a 8 gallon kettle ...

Considering the brewers edge mash and boil, looks like I would be pushing it.

 

[Lefou]

You could easily do a Belgian strong or tripel by adding your candi sugar immediately after the boil. I would like to do an all grain traditional bock. Love that style, but my boiling setup cannot handle high gravity worts of more than 4 gallons - so I improvise a bit.
To be on the safe side, get the larger kettle if you can swing the price. For me, ten pounds of grain and 4-5 gallons of mash water pushes my 7.5gallon Anvil kettle to the limit - then again, I rarely brew beers over 1.060 OG.

 

[beernutz]

If you want to brew high gravity beers why do you want to keep the brewpot size to a minimum?

 

[Lefou]

"Are you talking to me?" - Travis Bickle

Well, if that was for me, there's one big reason.
I brew on the stovetop and a four gallon boil is all my setup will really handle, so I improvise a bit. I don't really want to invest in burners or extra propane to make more than 5 gallons at a time due to space AND keeping my Other Half satisfied my brew obsession doesn't overtake things .... you know ...

 

[Kent88]

Brewersfriend is telling me that 16.25lbs of grain would produce 5.5 gallons of 1.082 wort at 75% efficiency. The Green Bay Rackers (not to be confused with the football team) calculators suggest that if you keep the water:grist ratio at or below 1.75:1 you could mash in an 8.5 gallon vessel.

Need to keep in mind that sparging is going to yield a lot more pre-boil volume than 5.5 gallons. Not sure how your system handles sparging that amount of grain.

Something else I'll throw out there, it takes a long time to boil down that much wort. Consider parti-gyling. Check out these links: MoreBeer, BeerSmith. The math between the 2 doesn't always want to add up for me, but they'll get you started. The big issue with parti-gyling is that you'll need a larger grain bill, but you wont have to boil for as long. Bonus: you get a small beer that you can drink almost right away while you're waiting for the big beer to finish up.