Brewing big beers

I'm interested in brewing big imperial IPAs and imperial stouts with my 10 gallon water cooler mash tun and 8 gallon brew pot. The problem is I only get about 60% mash efficiency at best when I load up the mash tun with grains. Should I adjust recipes to be partial extract to get the ABV? Any advise is appreciated.

Extract? NOoooooooo!!!!!!........Your extraction issue could be related to two things.
1. The crush of your grain.
2. Your method of sparging.

Your grain should be fully crushed. No intact grains. Here is a link to some good examples of a good crush. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Evaluating_the_Crush

For your sparge describe your method.

Adjust the length of your mash to 70 mins, too. And if you're using American 2 row, consider a temperature stepped mash.

aiptasia said:

Adjust the length of your mash to 70 mins, too. And if you're using American 2 row, consider a temperature stepped mash.

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I doubt its time, everything I read tells me conversion is done in less than 60min. Why would you step mash if your using 2-row?

Im guessing its sparge related or too deep of a grain bed. If it only happens with big beers Id upgrade your mash tun.

Marcorpheus said:

I'm interested in brewing big imperial IPAs and imperial stouts with my 10 gallon water cooler mash tun and 8 gallon brew pot. The problem is I only get about 60% mash efficiency at best when I load up the mash tun with grains. Should I adjust recipes to be partial extract to get the ABV? Any advise is appreciated.

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Until you adjust your procedures and equipment, adding the appropriate amount of DME would work like a charm. Looks like going to a larger mash tun would be in order if you plan on making bigger beers. I just brewed two big beers with 26 and 23 lbs of grain and space was tight in my 48 qt mash tun as well.

If you're running out of mash capacity in your tun and you have another container (2nd cooler, food grade bucket, etc), you could do two mashes. Divide your recipe in half, mash once, and lauter into your extra container. Then, clean out your tun, mash again, and lauter into your kettle. Add the extract from the first mash and boil as normal.

What exactly do you mean by "load up the mash tun with grains"? When you're doing a big mash, or just regular mash? You'll almost always see a decrease in efficiency with big beers due to the decreased amount of available sparge water, still though, 60% is kinda low. Do you crush your own grains?

When I brew a beer north of 1.080 I just account for the decreased efficiency with more grain, and I have yet to max out my 10 gallon cooler. Starting a boil with 7.5 gallons in an 8 gallon kettle is definitely an experience though. I figure a pound of grain is just as expensive, if not less, than an extra hours worth of propane for boiling, so I usually just adjust up the grain bill.

boil longer to increase the amount of sparge water that you can use

I also saw my efficiency jump when I switched from a SS braid to a false bottom (now I'm rinsing the grain bed better)

Thanks for all the useful advice. I've been ordering the grains already crushed from northern brewer and my mash tun has the braided hose instead of a false bottom. Would either of those be contributing significantly to mash efficiency issues? Usually I put all the grains in the mash tun at once. Would splitting it into two mashes help?

I use a stainless steel braid in my tun and average 75% efficiency when batch sparging. Are you batch sparging? If you are not switch over to batch sparging.

Marcorpheus said:

Thanks for all the useful advice. I've been ordering the grains already crushed from northern brewer and my mash tun has the braided hose instead of a false bottom. Would either of those be contributing significantly to mash efficiency issues? Usually I put all the grains in the mash tun at once. Would splitting it into two mashes help?

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You'll definitely see an increase in efficiency if you start crushing your own grains. From what I understand, homebrew supply companies use a pretty coarse crush to prevent any chance of a stuck sparge.

I've done it by adding DME as well as making two mashes one in the tun and one in BIAB. Both turned out great.

You could also do a double brew. Basically take your grist at normal efficiency and split in half. Mash with half, run off. Empty tun, add 2nd half of grist and your wort from the first mash.

I did this and got like 75% efficiency for a 1.102 barleywine.

I'm weird in that I still get huge eff on big beers. I got 87% on a 1.098 Quad, and usually get 85%. Crushing your own will probably get you better efficiency, which will allow you to get bigger beers with less grain.

I use a 10gal cooler with a ss braid and a 8 gal kettle too. I get about 78% efficiency, but i crush my own grain. I agree you should look into your low efficiency first and it probably is the crush of your pre crushed grains. Deffinently do it yourself.

As far as your question goes, dont use dme. You should be able to mash 24lbs of grain in a 10 gal cooler. 24lbs of grain at 60% is about a 1.100 You should be able to do plenty of big beers with what you are doing.

But look into improving your efficiency as well. My opinion, get a mill and find the right crush that works with what you do.


Good luck.

I agree with everyone here that you should be able to get your efficiency up. However, there is nothing wrong with using a couple of pounds of DME if you have to. It will not be noticeable in these sort of big beers. At the vey least, keep a pound or two o DME on hand just in case you need it.

When you do smaller beers, is your efficiency low there too? If not, I would disagree with the multiple posters that suggested that need to get your efficiency up. If your efficiency is good on smaller beers, then I would conclude that low efficiency with big beers is due to it being a big beer (less sparge volume) and not because of another factor.

Doesn't hurt to get a certain OG with some DME, if you need to do that.

Oh yeah, having a braid vs. a manifold won't make a difference if you are batch sparging...