Doing first 10G batch on my system today!

Got the 60qt pot and knew I would have to make a 10G batch. Today's the day! Have 32lbs grain for Yoopers Dead Guy Clone. Fairly confident my 52qt Extreme cooler mash tun will hold the grain and water at 1.3q/lbs.

Still don't have my tower setup, so I'll be hand transfering from HLT to mash tun. Gravity gets it to the kettle.

Have starter going for WLP001 on stirplate since yesterday. Will reconstitute US-05 prior to pitching. Going to have 2 primaries going simultaneously! That's a first in my brewery.

Great way to end a really good weekend. Extra day off and brewing beer.

How did it go?

I just moved up to 10 gals fun stuff....

I just started doing 10 gallon batches and still keep running out of homebrew... Just got the ok from the wife to get some kegging equipment so I am siked.. Hopefully that will get the beer to the glass alot faster.

Dumb question: how do you deal with hot break when making that sort of volume? I wouldn't have thought there was enough room in the pot to prevent it from boiling over.

10 gallons is a big step up from five........but you will soon be figuring out how to do 20's . I wasn't overly anal about sanitation when I was doing 5 gallon batches. I got moderately concerned when I started doing 10's. When I moved up to 20's, I got anal about EVERYTHING. I can't stomach the thought of screwing up $100+ of grains, hops, etc.

Greenglass said:

Dumb question: how do you deal with hot break when making that sort of volume? I wouldn't have thought there was enough room in the pot to prevent it from boiling over.

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It's all relative...A 60qt pot is 15 gallons, so (roughly speaking) if he's doing a 12 gallon boil it's the same as doing a 6 gallon boil in a 7.5 gallon pot.

Yea I'm still up, I just goyt home from work. For hot break you can use a fan or keep a spray bottle of water handy. They'll both knock the foam right down.

Went, um... ok?!.

Some Dumb Darts hit me.

Like, I messed up the calc for volume of grain and water to mash with in my 52qt Xtreme cooler mash tun. With 32lbs of grain, I'm only going to get at most 9 gallons in there with it. Lost a couple cups liquids and grains to overflow. And even though I had pre-heated with 1 gallon hot h2o, I lost too much heat while mixing in grains and preventing spillage. So, twice I drained off around 2-3 gallons and heated to ~180 and put back into mash. Finally got it to 155F.

Another dumb dart for not completely planning out sparge process. New kettle heated 11 gallons mash water. Fine there. Using 30qt stockpot for 7 gallons of sparge and freebie brand new electric turkey fryer for another 3 gallons. Electric is really freaking slow raising 50F tap water to boil. Had to boil and clean aluminum pan, then heat sparge water. Using different method next time. Sparge ended up going in spurts.

Yet again, dumb dart hit me in the a$$. I made a curved copper tube to attach to inside of bulkhead on boil kettle. 3/8 in. copper curved to bottom of the pot and against the side wall. Hopefully to keep some of the trub out of the fermenters. Anyway, I left the bazooka screen type mesh that came with the kettle on the diverter tube. Damned thing clogged when I was transfering wort to fermenters!!!!! So, I scrubbed my arm down in the PBW bath, rinsed and soaked in starsan. Reached into my cooled wort and removed the screen. Pissed me right off that one did.

So, I made beer. It will taste Awesome, because I made it! I also learned a few lessons and will be applying them to future brews and the design of brew stand. Also going to start converting to polysufone QD's and eventually a March pump. Need a really compact storable stand setup because there just isn't much space to store things right now.

Happily, I looked in ferm champer last night. US-05 bucket bubbling like a college freshman sucking on his first hooka. WLP-001 in Coopers fermenter had a monster krausen going.

In spite of the mishaps, I still want to brew again next weekend. I love this sick affliction

Warped04 said:

It's all relative...A 60qt pot is 15 gallons, so (roughly speaking) if he's doing a 12 gallon boil it's the same as doing a 6 gallon boil in a 7.5 gallon pot.

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I'm greedy. I had 13 at beggining of boil and added another gallon in gradually as the evaporation occured. Gives me 5.5 gallons into keg when all is said and done.

And you are absolutely right about the fan and spray bottle. Wind is my friend while boiling. I've even rigged a fan to blow over the surface of the kettle while the boil is going. Keep an extra spray bottle of filtered water by the burner just for big foamy heads and to rinse off any splaters that occur.

Wables said:

10 gallons is a big step up from five........but you will soon be figuring out how to do 20's . I wasn't overly anal about sanitation when I was doing 5 gallon batches. I got moderately concerned when I started doing 10's. When I moved up to 20's, I got anal about EVERYTHING. I can't stomach the thought of screwing up $100+ of grains, hops, etc.

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I've been OC on sanitation from the get go.

For future 10gallon batches, I'll need to upgrade one pot so I'll have the volume for sparge. I also want to get my own mill. LHBS grind leaves me needing to use 32lbs for the batch and I only ended up with a 1.070 OG. Want some better efficiency.