15 gallon batch on a 10 gallon setup?

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bnscherm

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My friend has asked me to brew a hefeweizen for his house warming party. He has a sankey kegerator that he plans to use for the party, and would like me to brew 15 gallons to fill an empty 1/2 barrel.

The 15 gallon recipe calls for 20lbs of white wheat malt and 11lbs of pale 2 row. 31lbs total. This grain bill will not fit in my 10 gallon rubbermaid MLT nor will I be able to brew 15 gallons in my keggle. I have a 15 gallon fermenter, but I will probably put 5 gallons in a carboy to leave adequate headspace.

How do you guys recommend brewing this?

I'm thinking it would make sense to mash the 20lbs of wheat, and then sparge until the keggle is full to about 13 gallons. Then add extra light DME to the wort to make up for the 11lbs of pale 2 row. Boil as usual and then at flameout add water to the keggle to bring the volume up to 15 gallons (cooling the wort at the same time) and then transferring and pitching.

Anyone else do something like this, is there a better way?
 
Back to back.

One 10 Gallon batch and One 5 gallon batch. Blend the wort in the fermenter to aerate and pitch plenty of yeast.
 
if i only had the time for one batch, i'd do exactly what you said, except add the extract at the end of the boil to avoid too much darkening/caramelization.

the higher concentration of hops in the lower volume will lessen utilization a bit, but the lower gravity wort will bump it up a bit too so i don't think you'd have to adjust hops much if at all (although brewing software could help you figure that out for sure).
 
I have another idea I'd like to bounce off you guys.

What If I were to buy a 70qt. Coleman extreme cooler and convert it into a mash tun? That way I could mash all of the grains for 15 gallons at the same time. I'm using a HERMS setup so I could bring the temperature up to 170 degrees at mash-out in the cooler. I would collect 10+ gallons wort for the first boil while the mash stays at 170; until the kettle is drained into the fermenter. Then I would drain/sparge the remaining 5+ gallons to the kettle and do the second boil.

Would I be risking some nasty tannin extraction by letting the lower gravity wort set in the mash for an extra 1+ hour? Anybody try this before?
 
Why not make 10 gallons instead of 15? There is no reason the size of the keg should dictate the size of the batch (to the extreme of causing you to abandon your normal process).
 
Why not make 10 gallons instead of 15? There is no reason the size of the keg should dictate the size of the batch (to the extreme of causing you to abandon your normal process).

That was my question as well. Do your brew with the process you KNOW works. That way the guests will definately enjoy your offerings.
 
Why not make 10 gallons instead of 15? There is no reason the size of the keg should dictate the size of the batch (to the extreme of causing you to abandon your normal process).

Agreed, I say go with what you know works and make sure the beer you do brew and serve is as good as it can be. You could purge the headspace in the keg with CO2 from the tank if needed.:D
 
There is nothing that says you have to boil all of the wort at once if you are dead set on 15 gallons. You could collect all of your wort, and boil enough for a 10 gallon batch and then enough for the 5 gallon batch back to back, just make sure you adjust accordingly for hops and boil off rates. Wort that sits for an hour is still wort. Just don't let it sit in the MT for an extra hour while you boil. Never done this before, But I'd rather just have it inside a closed pot or container rather than having it sit on the grains for an extra hour.
 
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