The colander I used was way too small to hold 13 pounds of wet grain. It would kinda spill over on the sides.
The most effective way to drain it was to just rest it on a baking tray about 3" deep. Just drain the puddle of wort repeatedly while you set up the sparge water.
This is cool that you can do all-grain with just a $29 kettle, a $5 bag, and ingredients. It would make things much quicker to have another $29 kettle however.
yeah, i often just set it in a small kettle after my sparge and let it drain, then add the little extra wort in there when i dump the grains.
Just an update: I bottled the Dunkelweizen after about 16 days in the primary, carbonating it to about 3.2 volumes (according to BYO article weizens should have higher carbonation). Tasted it after 2 weeks in the bottle and it was damn good! Since then I brought some to a party and everyone loved it.
Question: How is it a five gallon batch when you used 2 gallons of water for mashing, then 2 gallons as sparge water. with evaporation and water lost to grains it seems like you would end up with more like 3 gallons of wort. Did I miss something?
__________________ "Dad, Bob broke your beer!" Primary: air
Primary: Haus Pale Ale
Primary: air
Primary: air
Keg: air
Keg: air
Kegged: LightHaus Wheat, hopBOMB
Bottle: Terry Porter, Jubelale, MyBock, Edwort's Apfelwein, Saison!, ShookAle
Question: How is it a five gallon batch when you used 2 gallons of water for mashing, then 2 gallons as sparge water. with evaporation and water lost to grains it seems like you would end up with more like 3 gallons of wort. Did I miss something?
i split this 5 gallon batch into two 3 gallon fermenters and topped off with tap water. You may not be able to use your tap water to top off...you can either boil and cool some h20 or use bottled water if you'd like.
i no longer recommend unfiltered tap water without testing. i always use bottled water now and i recently bought a new filter.
so essentially you put one and a half gallons of wort into each of the three gallon carboys (assuming 3 gallons of boiled wort) then top the carboys off with water?
That sure sounds like a 6 gallon batch to me (two three gallon fermenters). Still very confused how this is a five gallon batch.
???
__________________ "Dad, Bob broke your beer!" Primary: air
Primary: Haus Pale Ale
Primary: air
Primary: air
Keg: air
Keg: air
Kegged: LightHaus Wheat, hopBOMB
Bottle: Terry Porter, Jubelale, MyBock, Edwort's Apfelwein, Saison!, ShookAle
i put 1.5 gallons into each container and topped off with 1 gallon each. thats 2 x 2.5 = 5 gallons
CARBOYS MUST ALWAYS HAVE HEADSPACE. i didn't top off all the way.
i've also used this method another way. i would boil down to about 2.5 gallons and put that in one 3 gallon carboy. then i would let that ferment as a strong ale. at kegging time, i would add 2 gallons of distilled water and dilute it down to a regular beer. it worked really well with some of the dark beers, not so well with my kolsch. it was a space-saving experiment
hope this helps let me know if you have any more questions.
__________________ "Dad, Bob broke your beer!" Primary: air
Primary: Haus Pale Ale
Primary: air
Primary: air
Keg: air
Keg: air
Kegged: LightHaus Wheat, hopBOMB
Bottle: Terry Porter, Jubelale, MyBock, Edwort's Apfelwein, Saison!, ShookAle
im yet to start all grain brewing.. i do have a 10 gallon pot tho. would it be possible for me to start with 7 gal of water.. do the 154 deg mash.. then pull the grains and heat the pot to 185 and put the grains back in for the 170 deg? that should leave me with 6 gal to boil down to 5 or so right? if not then im not sure i yet understand.
your first pot is for your mash, where you will get the majority of your sugars.
your second pot is for the sparge, where you will extract FURTHER sugars from the grains.
if you leave it in the same pot, you will get worse efficiency.
BUT, if you wanted to start with 7 gallons of water and do a no-sparge BIAB (brew in a bag) it will work. just have extract on hand to make up for your effiency.
if you search "BIAB" or "no sparge" you may find some alternate methods. i call this my "tea-bag" method and it varies from most others i've seen.
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