Question on High gravity beers

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DustinHickey

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Hello All,
I am planning on making a barley wine soon and have one question. I currently use a 8 gallon kettle and am looking to hit an original gravity after the boil of around 1.105.

My question is as follows:

Is it possible to acheive such a high gravity in 5 gallons of wort from batch sparging without having to boil off extra gallonage to get to your target?

For example, since I only have 1 (8 gallon pot) I am hoping to hit my target OG boiling down from 6.5 to 5 gallons without having to boil down to 5 gallons, add additional wort from sparge, and then boil down to 5 gallons, and repeat until I hit my gravity.

I was just hoping someone would have some experience in this?

In other words, if I am mashing at a grain to water ratio of 1 quart per pound of grain and using about 21 pounds of grain, the first runnings would provide about 5 gallons of wort giving me about 1.5 gallons to sparge with. Do you think I can hit my taret gravity with this amount of water or would I have to sparge with more water to get the correct amount of sugars out of the grain and then boil it down over and over?

Notes:
My mash effeciency is always right on at about 75%.

-Thanks,
Dustin Hickey
 
Just brew as usuall, boiling down from 6.5 to 5 gallons, then add a pound or two of DME or even some sugar or honey to hit your OG.

Your boiling forever may result in more unfermentable sugars, which is exactly what you do not want in a barley wine. Besides, there is no reason to get hung up on hitting such a huge number. Brew within the means of your equipment and drink the results. 1.090 is pretty easy to hit, if you boil down from 6.5 gallons.
 
personally I would add some extract or sugar to get the gravity up.

I don't think your gonna get to 1.105 with out a super long boil. Maybe if you put is like 32lbs of grain and mashed at 1 qt/lb and did no sparge. That might give you 6.5 gallons of 1.085 preboil wort. Not very efficient is it?
 
I would just add the sugar. There is soo much malt in there that it will help you get the higher abv, and barleywine is sweet as is, substituting the sugar isnt gonna change anything.
 
Perhaps you should brew a half batch. Then you will have the capacity to do an all grain barleywine. Plus, I never really need 2 cases or a full keg of barley wine. Just a thought...
 
Do a mash aiming for 1.060, then use that to mash in a batch of fresh grain. That'll get you up there. I'd probably bank on worse effeciency in the second mash, though, and don't mash too low or too long. Any longer sugars from your first mash will probably get clipped in the second, and if you're not careful you can kill the mouthfeel.
 
TANSTAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Brewing higher gravity beers requires you either:

1) Increase your boil volume and therefore boil time
2) Accept reduced efficiency and increase your grain bill
3) Accept reduced efficiency and make up the deficit with DME/sugar
4) Some combination of above.

In your situation I would decide what boil off I'm willing to work with, guesstimate how much my efficiency will be reduce by and up the grain bill and then have DME and or sugar standing by to make up any deficit when you check your preboil gravity if you undershoot.

GT
 
I would collect as much wort as you can in you boil pot, 7 - 7.5 gallons, measure the gravity and you have collected, do some quick math and make up the difference with 1-2 Lbs. DME.
 
TANSTAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Brewing higher gravity beers requires you either:

1) Increase your boil volume and therefore boil time
2) Accept reduced efficiency and increase your grain bill
3) Accept reduced efficiency and make up the deficit with DME/sugar
4) Some combination of above.

In your situation I would decide what boil off I'm willing to work with, guesstimate how much my efficiency will be reduce by and up the grain bill and then have DME and or sugar standing by to make up any deficit when you check your preboil gravity if you undershoot.

GT

+ 1 to the above
I'd also add partigyle brewing as another option.
 
You are right on track. The thicker the mash, the higher the o.g.
Kai has a chart on his site of gravity vs mash thickness. http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/File:First_wort_gravity.gif
If you batch sparge you can check your own gravities for future parti-gyle brews.
On my last barleywine my first runnings were 23B or about 1.096 s.g.
The efficiency is a lot lower. I use Kai's chart and then ProMash to figure out the volume. I would mash at 1.1 qt/lb and figure out how much grain you need so the first runnings are enough for your pre-boil volume.
 
Thanks guys.

Tom, what efficiency is the first wort runnings chart based on? My plan was to use 26 or so pounds of grain and mash in at 1 qt per pound but wasn't sure if my efficiency would yeild the proper amount of sugar.

-Thanks,
Dustin
 
I don't use Kai's chart to figure out the efficiency, but to figure out the mash ratio. And my gravities are a little lower than his. If you batch sparge you can check the gravity of your first runnings for future reference. (You could also check it if you fly sparge.) My barleywine last week was 62% efficiency with a small sparge. Usually the bigger the beer, the less efficient it will be. My regular mash/lauter efficiency is usually about 75-80%.

This is how I calculate out a parti-gyle brew when using only the fiirst runnings. You want a pre-boil volume of 6.5 gallons and a post-boil gravity of 1.105. If you boil down from 6.5 gallons to 5.0, you will be concentrating the wort by 6.5/5 or 30%. So your pre-boil gravity only has to be 105/1.3 = 1.080. If I mash at 1.25 qt/lb I get gravity of about 1.090's (barleywine), 1.5 qt/lb 1.080s (RIS) and 1.7 qt/lb 1.070's (Wee Heavy). I would mash at 1.5 qt/lb.

So how to figure out how many lb of grain mashed at 1.5 qt/lb will get me 6.5 gallons of pre-boil 1.080 wort? First, remember that each lb of grain absorbs about 1 pint (or 0.5 qt) of the wort. So you will only get 1.5 qt - 0.5 qt = 1.0 qt/lb. 6.5 gallons = 26 qts, so you'll need 26#. How fortuitous.

How big will the mashtun need to be? Each lb of grain takes up about 1/3 qt. So 26# * 0.33 + 26# * 1.5 qt/lb mash water = 47.5 qt or 11.9 gallons. Hope you have a 15 gallon mashtun. You can always use 2 mashtuns if one isn't big enough. (If your mashtun is 10 gallons we can work with that and sparge with the other 2 gallons.)

Then, if you want to make a 2nd runnings beer, just batch sparge with 6.5 gallons. If you have 2 boil pots you can have the 2nd runnings boiling within 15 minutes of the first. My second runnings beers usually come out about half the gravity of the first. So you'll have another brew of about 1.050.

And fermenting a big beer takes some extra attention. Make sure to use lots of yeast. I used 3 packets of US-05 for my barleywine. If you'll be using liquid yeast, check out Jamil's yeast starter calculator at www.mrmalty.com . And shake the bejeesus out of it to oxygenate it well. And lots of yeast with lots of sugar make lots of heat, so keep it cool.

Brew on

:mug:
 
Thanks guys. And thanks for the info tom. I'm definately goingt to give it a try. I just have to check my mash tun volume. I think I use the 70 quart coleman "EXTREME!!" cooler. I have to check the volume on it tough. Hopefully it's "EXTREME!!" enough for my barleywine.

-Thanks again,
Dustin
 
Thanks guys. And thanks for the info tom. I'm definately goingt to give it a try. I just have to check my mash tun volume. I think I use the 70 quart coleman "EXTREME!!" cooler. I have to check the volume on it tough. Hopefully it's "EXTREME!!" enough for my barleywine.

-Thanks again,
Dustin

I have a feeling that cooler is plenty big for a 5 gallon batch of just about anything. If for some reason your ton is not big enough you can always just make a smaller batch.
 
I'm pretty lazy when it comes to math. If it wasn't for software there is no way I'd ever make a recipe of my own.

My take on what to do would actually be to mash enough grain to get to your desired OG. It's a lot of grain, but unless you're buying really expensive grain, it shouldn't be the end of the world. However, since it is an expensive, after getting the desired boil volume for your barleywine, sparge more to get extra runnings to make a partigyle. You could even freeze the extra runnings and make your partigyle at a later date. At least that way you get to stretch the value of your grain bill, oh and you get more beer. =p
 
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