Too small stockpot question !

Hi, I live in an appartment with no way to brew outside, so i'm gonna brew on my stove with my 5 gallon stockpot. Someone told me that I can brew with the same amount of grain as a final 5 gallon batch in my kettle and then add water in the fermenter to make a full batch. So my question is : What is the name of this brewing technic ? I searched on the web and didin't find nothing, maybe if I could know how it's call it may help me a bit. I have some questions about how to brew that way and want to find some ressources about it.

If someone have some good link don't be shy to tell me !

Thank you guys again.

You could do a partial mash, or mini-mash, or Extract plus steeping grains - all refer to using LME or DME for the bulk of the gravity points, with some portion of grains added for specific recipes. You can also check out brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) methods. You have lots of options for doing less than all-grain batches, with no loss of quality to your final product.

Cheers!

Another option is to use a brewing calculator like Beersmith to do smaller sized batches with BIAB (brew in a bag method) that allow you to do a full boil all grain brew. I use a 5 gallon kettle to brew 2.5 gallons (finished volume) sized BIAB brews in the winter on our stove top. I know that these might be smaller size brews than what you are looking for but it is still all grain brewing. Beersmith has a very simple scaling tool to adjust a typical recipe to whatever size you want.

Seb-Ass said:

Hi, I live in an appartment with no way to brew outside, so i'm gonna brew on my stove with my 5 gallon stockpot. Someone told me that I can brew with the same amount of grain as a final 5 gallon batch in my kettle and then add water in the fermenter to make a full batch. So my question is : What is the name of this brewing technic ? I searched on the web and didin't find nothing, maybe if I could know how it's call it may help me a bit. I have some questions about how to brew that way and want to find some ressources about it.

If someone have some good link don't be shy to tell me !

Thank you guys again.

Click to expand...

The name of the technique you are talking about is "partial boil". Many brewers do "partial boil" brewing (myself included) because they do not have a stockpot large enough to boil 5 gallons or a turkey fryer burner for brewing outdoors.

When partial boil brewing, you add your steeping grains, extract, hops, etc... to the largest stockpot you have with 2 or 3 gallons of water. My pot only holds 3 gallons, so I boil 2.5 gallons to leave some space at the top of the pot. This helps prevent the wort from boiling over when it first reaches a boil. Boil all the ingredients for a full 5 gallon batch in the smaller amount of water. Transfer this to the fermenter, and top off the fermenter to the desired 5 gallons with cool, clean water. Another benefit of this technique is that the cool top-off water helps cool the wort down to yeast pitching temperatures more quickly. This can help shave a few precious minutes off your brew day.

The only real drawback to this technique is that it changes the "hops utilization" rates. This means that you will get a different amount of bitterness from the same amount of hops if you use a partial boil or a full boil. Most good brewing software like beersmith, or www.brewersfriend.com have calculators that help you determine how the amount of boil water will affect the hops bitterness level of the finished beer.

Seb-Ass said:

Hi, I live in an appartment with no way to brew outside, so i'm gonna brew on my stove with my 5 gallon stockpot. Someone told me that I can brew with the same amount of grain as a final 5 gallon batch in my kettle and then add water in the fermenter to make a full batch. So my question is : What is the name of this brewing technic ? I searched on the web and didin't find nothing, maybe if I could know how it's call it may help me a bit. I have some questions about how to brew that way and want to find some ressources about it.

If someone have some good link don't be shy to tell me !

Thank you guys again.

Click to expand...

Check out this link by By DeathBrewer in the sticky area above your thread. There's some good info for apartment brewing.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/index134.html

Thanks guys ! I already read the DeathBrewer threat but i'm not really interrest about brewing with extract (partial mash) ... maybe I should make 2.5 gallons all-grain batch . The reason why I wanted more info about ''partial boil'' is because it's seems to be a great way to brew a full 5 gallons on my stove (My stove can't achieve a full 5 gallons boil).

Seb-Ass said:

Thanks guys ! I already read the DeathBrewer threat but i'm not really interrest about brewing with extract (partial mash) ... maybe I should make 2.5 gallons all-grain batch . The reason why I wanted more info about ''partial boil'' is because it's seems to be a great way to brew a full 5 gallons on my stove (My stove can't achieve a full 5 gallons boil).

Click to expand...

Neither can mine - I mash in a 10 gallon cooler, and runoff into two 4-gallon pots. Boil about 3.25 gallons in each, side by side, chill in the double sink, and pour into my 6.5 gallon Better Bottle. So, it can be done.

Hey frazier, thanks for the tips. I haved already thinking about a similar setup, but with this technic I can't (Or this is much more hard for a begginer) do multistep mashing. Adding hot water into the cooler until reaching the appropriate temperature is not something that interest me, maybe one day but for now I will be more confident about only have to turn the burner on to raise the temperature . I will probably do something similar to DeathBrewer all grains stovetop but with 2.5 gallons batch.

So for the main question, is this a viable option to do ''partial boil'' to have final 5 gallons or am I better doing the final 2.5 gallons setup with a full boil ?

The issue you run into is that you will need to double (probably not double but close) your grain bill to get enough high gravity wort that will then be diluted down. Or you could boil the first ~3 gallons then put that aside and boil the other ~3 gallons...This would be a "split boil" frazier mentioned. He was not talking about doing a multistep mash just collecting all the wort from the mash and boiling it in two pots. Does not matter if you boil them at the same time or one after the other. It will just extend your brew day another 2 hours (heat, boil, cool). Unless you do like I do and just stick the wort in a fermentor and let it cool to pitch temps overnight.

It's possible to do some 5gal BIAB all grain batches in a 5gal stock pot - you just have to be careful about the recipe you pick. The biggest issue is having enough pot space to do your mash/sparge. There are lots of different techniques for doing BIAB, but at an absolute minimum you'll probably want about 1.25-1.5qt of water per pound of grain in the mash. People generally report getting better efficiencies using more water in the mash (or adding more water in a mash-out step) or doing a pseudo-sparge technique where they pour water over the grain bag after pulling it out of the pot. Anyway, once you settle on a BIAB technique you like you can figure out how much water you'll need and can figure out how many pounds of grain your pot can handle. You'll probably have to use less water than you'd like, so your efficiencies may not be great, but it will probably be enough to brew low/medium gravity beers.

DeathBrewer also posted an Stovetop All Grain guide. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/ It does require a second pot though

DeathBrewer's guides for BIAB are both great

Remember if you want to do a full boil, but you don't have a pot big enough, you can split it up into two pots and then combine them into 1 for cooling after the boil off