Big RIS critique

Letting this one age till Thanksgiving thanks in advance for the feedback

19lbs 2 row
8oz chocolate malt
1lb 8oz Roasted barley
8 oz pale chocolate malt
8oz Black patent
8oz cars munich

2oz horizon @60min
2oz EKG @10 min
2oz EKG @ 5 min

This is a 5 gallon batch also going on oak cubes
Will be using 05 yeast not sure if I'm going to make 2 big starters or get some slurry from a local brewery



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that's pretty similar to the one I did at the beginning of the year. Came out really good. Have you done a really big beer before? If not, you might want to up your 2 row, since you'll probably lose efficiency. Either way, have some extract on hand in case you miss your OG.

good luck!

No I haven't done a beer this big how much would you recommend?


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a 3 lb bag of pale dry malt extract should be more than enough to make any correction you might want to a missed OG due to poor efficiency. It does tend to happen with bigger beers. I hope you are familiar with checking the gravity pre-boil and the math involved with seeing if you can predict the post boil gravity. That will help.

Also, one other thought: 20 + lbs of grain plus an appropriate amount of mash water can be a tricky thing to fit into a ten gallon mash tun. I shoot for 1.5 quarts per lb grain and you are looking at just about maxing your system out, if you are in fact using a 10 gallon tun.

When doing beers like this, I always do a batch with the yeast I want to use and transfer that beer on brew day when the wort is in its fermenter so I can just pour some of the active yeast right on into the big beer. Whatever you do, watch your fermentation because big beers often take off with all those sugars present, clogging then blowing off the airlock. Watch your temps and use cool towels and or ice packs to control the fermentation. If you can keep your temps under control, often the beer will be smoother sooner, though the fermentation will take much longer.

That was my next question,I actually have a wheat beer I did with 05 in the fermentor ready to be dry hopped wonder people's experience with just racking onto that yeast cake kind of like a big starter


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And yes I have a 10 gallon tun and 15 gal keggle


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