20 Gallon Setup

I have been doing 5 gallon batches for a while. Iv'e got a 7.5 gallon brew pot, 25' counter-flow chiller, march pump, and a small Rubbermaid cooler for batch sparging. I want to get into doing 20 gallon batches because the 5's go way too fast. Is there anyway that I can use my current equipment to do 20 gallons batches with only upgrading my fermenter and maybe mash tun? I have alot of free time and am fairly mechanically incline. Any advice would be helpful, thank you., Philip.

Ummm... sure. 5 gallons at a time!

With some variations due to recipe choice, you will need about a 20 gallon Mash Tun and a boil kettle in the 25 gallon range. You could split the boil between two keggles.

You can still ferment in 6-gallon carboys. Four of them.

philip8614 said:

I have been doing 5 gallon batches for a while. Iv'e got a 7.5 gallon brew pot, 25' counter-flow chiller, march pump, and a small Rubbermaid cooler for batch sparging. I want to get into doing 20 gallon batches because the 5's go way too fast. Is there anyway that I can use my current equipment to do 20 gallons batches with only upgrading my fermenter and maybe mash tun? I have alot of free time and am fairly mechanically incline. Any advice would be helpful, thank you., Philip.

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Back to back batches Ie mash while one is boiling and move down the line or go back to extract with specialty grains use the mash tun for all the special grain plus some 2 row for conversion boil as much as possible add Extract and top off with water in your fermenter. beer quailty will suffer greatly though.

I would suggest looking at a ten gallon setup before moving to 20 gallons thats alot of BTUs to boil hard to control temp during fermentation. among other issues a 10 gallon gott cooler, a keggle and your current boil kettle for a HLT can be had for pretty cheap around 200 bucks if you look around. shich is less than you will spend upgrading the fermenter alone

A full scale brewery does not do a full boil right? What about doing 4 batch sparges or herms in a row with the same pre-wort, boiling it, then adding it to 15 gallons of filtered water? Would that work or would that mixture be too thick? What do ya think?

philip8614 said:

A full scale brewery does not do a full boil right? What about doing 4 batch sparges or herms in a row with the same pre-wort, boiling it, then adding it to 15 gallons of filtered water? Would that work or would that mixture be too thick? What do ya think?

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every brewery that i know of does full boils and i would venture to say that all do.

I dont understand the 4 sparges in a row thing. Herms is a brewing system that controls mash temps. an average gravity batch at 20 gallons is going to be 40-60lbs of grain for All grain or 23-30 lbs of extract I dont see that it is feasible with your current equipment

I think your right... I was just hopping there was something I wasn't thinking of. Thank you for the advice. Philip:rockin:

This is my set up. I do two 10 gallon batch's every time I brew. After I've sparged the first batch and I'm getting the boil going I get the second batch in the mash. It takes about 8-9 hours from set up to clean up but a single batch is 5-6 hours so why not make the most of that day. Not to mention when you buy a large quantity of grain it's less expensive.

That's a nice set up. Can you do both batches in the same fermenter? Brew one, pitch, then add more cooled wort if your fermenter was large enough? Could I do it X 4?

philip8614 said:

That's a nice set up. Can you do both batches in the same fermenter? Brew one, pitch, then add more cooled wort if your fermenter was large enough? Could I do it X 4?

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Yes I believe you can keep adding the wort to the fermenter prior to the start of fermentation. Large fermenters bring another set of issues being that they are hard to move, and also generate heat so cooling is more of a reqt.

I would suggest baby steps...maybe 5 to 8 gallons...then move up to ten or 15. Moving from 5 to 20 is kind of a giant leap! But don't let me discourage you.

philip8614 said:

That's a nice set up. Can you do both batches in the same fermenter? Brew one, pitch, then add more cooled wort if your fermenter was large enough? Could I do it X 4?

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I use four 6.5 gallon carboys. Some times I wish I could ferment all together. The last time I brewed though I made two different pale ales with two different yeast. Batch 1 had two carboys and each carboy had different yeast. Same with batch two. Looking at what the difference just the yeast makes.

I also like to brew 2 elven gallon batches on a brew day. Only difference is that I use a mash tun/kettle combo with a lauter tun. When the first kettle is full I dump the grain and transfer the second mash and start my recirc. I can have the 2nd kettle full about 20 min before flame off on the first batch and that gives me time to clean my heat exchanger and lines before the first cooling.

And I second the use of 4 -6.5 gallon carboys. It can be very productive to use different yeast strains and dry hopping on the same wort. That way I can fill up the 5 taps quick if I need to!!!

Cheers,

BW

Do you guy think I can put 5 gallon in a 20 gallon fermenter, pitch yeast, and add another three 5 gallons batches as they come, one per hour? Maybe a big yeast starter... theoretically of course. I like the baby steps idea. A large fermenter actually produces heat? That's crazy.

If you had everything in the fermenter in one day, I think you would be just fine. You would need to make a starter appropriate for the final size of the batch.

There are a number of commercial breweries that do this. They can make X amount of beer and have fermenters that can handle 2-4 batches.

Sweet! Maybe do one of these(http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=25197&catid=513) in a 15 gal in a temp controlled room!

I've been thinking about going to 20 gallons. I could do a PM and do it with my 60qt pot and 52qt cooler. With 100qt pot I could do all grain session beers. I'd still ferment in 6.5 gallon buckets. Bigger fermenters would be a PIA without some way to pump it around, that could be accomplished with CO2 or a march pump.

I tried to cook a 20G batch in a 25G pot once and it didn't really work. I was going for a 22G batch though! Had to top up with water a few times.

On the simplest level a 20G batch will create 4x the heat of a 5G batch. There is less surface area per volume though, so the ability of the fermenter to dissipate it will be less than 4x, so you should see a slightly greater rise in temperature, compared to the ambient, in the larger fermenter.

I agree, buy a 15 or 20g pot and just do 10-11 gallon batches