How do you make a big beer all-grain in 5 gal batches?

jigidyjim · 03-19-2010, 03:56 AM

I don't do all-grain, but I'm confused by one part of the process. If you are doing a big beer, such that you have a significant amount of mash water, then you can't use very much sparge water or you'll be over your 5-gallons (or 6 or whatever you start your boil at). But if you stop your sparge early, you lose efficiency, and therefore defeat the purpose of a big beer.

So what do you do? Do you still sparge like normal (like 2x your mash water), and then just let the beer boil down to ~6.5 gallons and then start your hops timer? Does all that extra boiling change the beer much?

Thanks!

whatisitgoodfor · 03-19-2010, 04:01 AM

Yep, long boil or low efficiency are your two options.

Of course you can also make two different batches from the same grain. Something like a 1.120 beer and a 1.040 OG beer from the runnings.

Oh, and a super long boil will give you some extra Mailard reactions (sp?) which will end up changing the flavor a bit.

philrose · 03-19-2010, 04:07 AM

The guys on can you brew it just discussed this last podcast. One alternative is to keep a few pounds of dme on hand for the big mashes.

**eanmcnulty** · 03-19-2010, 04:22 AM

Thanks for that tip! I am going to listen to "Can You Brew It?".

Chuck_Swillery · 03-19-2010, 05:09 AM

Guess I missed that episode... I'll have to go back and listen.

However, being new to AG myself I've been kicking this around. I see a couple of ways around it and the easiest is adding extract after mashing as much as my 5 gal set up will do. The other would be basically mashing twice and boiling it all down which would be hugely time consuming but a viable option if I had the patience to do so. The other restriction I face is my brew kettle is only 7 gallons so realistically I can only get 6 gallons to a good rolling boil at at time. To compensate I'm pulling off wort after the sparge and boiling it in a 20 qt stock pot on my stove then combining the two once my pot can handle the resulting volume. Its all about what you're willing to do to get the beer you want.

PS... already have a 60 qt brew kettle HIGH on the wish list. Father's Day is less than 3 months away!

**Bobby_M** · 03-19-2010, 05:14 PM

If I do a beer over 1.100, I always bump up the grain bill and go for a sparge or small beer. The first beer comes from first runnings only. Search "partigyle".

**Homercidal** · 03-19-2010, 07:06 PM

I would do two runnings. First for the big beer, then whatever I got from the second and third runnings would be a smaller beer. The extract is nice to hit your numbers exactly if necessary. A longer boil for me would mean much less than 5 gallons. If I had a larger brewpot, no worries. I barely squeak out 5 gallons as it is.