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durand532 · 01-23-2013, 02:22 AM

I'm a moderately experienced all grain brewer with about 15 batches under my belt. I recently acquired a larger brew kettle and was thinking about scaling up my batches to 8-10 gallons and splitting between two carboys. I currently have a 5 1/2 gallon mash tun which works great for 6 gallon batches with 11-13 lbs of grain mashing at 1.5 qt/lb. My question is this:

Would I be able to achieve decent efficiency if I were to mash, say, 18-20 lbs of grain TWICE at a thickness of approximately 0.8 - 0.9 qt/lb before sparging? It seems like this would be a way to avoid mashing two different groups of grains in my smallish mash tun. I know people use this method to make different strength beers with their first and second runnings (traditional partigyle), but I was thinking of just combining two runnings to make a larger volume of wort. I understand mash thinkness can affect the body of the beer and efficiency of the mash, but was hoping to get others thoughts?

ApothecaryBrewing · 01-23-2013, 12:30 PM

I think if you are dedicated to making the move to bigger batches, I would upgrade the mash tun. Chances are you can save your braid, false bottom or manifold from your current tun and just buy a bigger cooler.

I would say that would be the easiest solution rather than having to do multiple mashes in a tiny tun. You can find bigger coolers for pretty cheap. I got a 10 gallon for like $15 off of craigslist.

dcp27 · 01-23-2013, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by durand532

Would I be able to achieve decent efficiency if I were to mash, say, 18-20 lbs of grain TWICE at a thickness of approximately 0.8 - 0.9 qt/lb before sparging?

what do you mean by mashing the grain twice?

carltjones · 01-23-2013, 07:54 PM

I don't believe there would be much wort produced with mash #1. Isn't mash #2 just a low temp sparge?

durand532 · 01-23-2013, 08:09 PM

What I mean is I'd mash the grains at 152 for an hour, collect the runnings, mash again with another volume of water at 152, collect the second runnings, then sparge at 170.

dcp27 · 01-23-2013, 08:22 PM

you can't mash grain twice, once conversion is done its done, that'd just be a long batch sparge.

the method people do for higher gravity you're thinking of is mashing a second set of grains in the runnings

WoodlandBrew · 01-23-2013, 08:28 PM

The results will be more like a extra sparge. There is a point when more grain produces less sugar, and it sounds like you are approaching that. See here for details:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/12/when-more-grain-doesnt-add-more-sugar.html