All-Grain - Double-W Imperial Stout - Page 3

**claphamsa** · 03-03-2009, 01:31 AM

nothign wrong with blow off.... cut a garbage bag open and put the bucket on it... so if you overflow it doesn't stain the floor... other than that who cares

**r2eng** · 03-03-2009, 01:33 AM

WOAH! I collected 7 gallons of wort and boiled for an hour to get 1.113!

I admire your hard work... you will love it, I am sure!

Report back and let me know how fermentation goes!

**claphamsa** · 03-03-2009, 01:35 AM

then send beer

**r2eng** · 03-03-2009, 01:37 AM

I would love to try other's batches and compare... I'll have to do that sometime and do a swap!

PtotheL · 03-05-2009, 01:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by r2eng

WOAH! I collected 7 gallons of wort and boiled for an hour to get 1.113!

I admire your hard work... you will love it, I am sure!

Report back and let me know how fermentation goes!

Fermentation is going... smoothly ?... well smoothly wouldn't be the right term to describe the activity that's going on... it's been bubbling like crazy since monday night with no signs of slowing down.

No mess... yet !

This might be a question for another thread, but how the hell did you collect a high enough pre-boil gravity wort to only need to boil 60 minutes to get up to 1.113 ?

My pre-boil grav was something along the lines of 1.060 for 11.50 gallons of wort.

It's my first time brewing a big beer ( I just made a mash tun from a 70 quarts Xtreme Coleman cooler ), so I might not know any better...

If I had mashed thicker ( I did a 1.50 quarts/pounds ) and batch sparged with less water, would I have obtained something like 7.5 gallons at 1.09, therefore reducing my need to boil for 3 hours ?

Thanks!

Thor the Mighty · 03-05-2009, 01:30 AM

damn i am going to brew this!

**r2eng** · 03-05-2009, 01:48 AM

Well, I had a longer mash (90 minutes), and then double-batch sparged.

I boiled the 7 gallons to 5.5 and got 1.113. Higher efficiency with the longer (15min) sparges?? I was impressed by my efficiency, as I expected much less for this big of beer. My photos show the SG reading.

I am entering this beer into Nationals. I hope to earn a few points for the HBT Brewers Club

edit: I also crush my own grain... EVERY supply store drops my efficiency unless I run it through the Barley Crusher!

s1080 · 03-14-2009, 12:32 AM

I'm planning on brewing this in celebration of St Patrick's Day followed by aging for a year. This is going to be my first big beer so I'm a little apprehensive as to how well this is going to turn out. One question I have is with the water to grain ratio. I too worry about boiling down for 3 hours and was thinking about bringing it down to 1.10 qt/Ibs to give a lower boiling volume. Would this work?

**r2eng** · 03-14-2009, 03:56 AM

I am not sure about that ratio. I did not have a 3 hour boil. I used 1.25 qts/#. Keep in mind that the grain sucks up some water, too.

It doesn't need a year of aging, either

Although I have some on the shelf for later dates!

crazyboy · 03-25-2009, 04:41 AM

How much did water did you use for mashing and sparging?The Beersmith profile says 18 gallons of mash water and 12 gallons sparge water while a mash calculator says a more reasonable 12-13 gallons mash water and no sparge.

Will the grain really absorb 20 gallons of water?!?