I've now got a dozen or so extract batches under my belt and I'm ready to move to all-grain. I cook a lot and so far brewing has turned out way easier than I imagined, especially simple from extract. A well planned recipe, a bit of style, some common sense and good note taking with close temp control has given me some awesome beer.
So I'm piecing together a 10 gallon cooler mash tun but now I'm questioning the size of my current 8 gallon kettle for making 5 gallon batches.
If I'm doing 1-1.25qt water/pound grain for mashing and 2qt water/pound sparging as a general starting point... That means for a 10lb grain bill I'm using 10-12.5qt of water to mash and 20qt water to sparge which yields 8.1 gallons of wort and has just hit the limit of my current 8 gallon kettle.
I'm sure I can do 5 gallon all-grain batches in my 8 gallon kettle but if I want to do a couple of the big recipe's I've been eyeing they call for 17lb or more grain which means 14+ gallons of wort.
What am I missing? Do people really mash 17lbs of grain and make 14 gallons of wort that they then boil off down to 6.5 gallons or so? Palmer's example for your first all grain batch says an 8 gallon kettle should be fine for a 3 gallon mash and 4 gallon sparge, but his grain bill is about 8lbs.
I don't discount buying a larger Kettle, I'm just kind of wondering how far I can go with my current 8 gallon kettle. I've got about $100 cash to spend which was going to go toward a mash tun.
So I'm piecing together a 10 gallon cooler mash tun but now I'm questioning the size of my current 8 gallon kettle for making 5 gallon batches.
If I'm doing 1-1.25qt water/pound grain for mashing and 2qt water/pound sparging as a general starting point... That means for a 10lb grain bill I'm using 10-12.5qt of water to mash and 20qt water to sparge which yields 8.1 gallons of wort and has just hit the limit of my current 8 gallon kettle.
I'm sure I can do 5 gallon all-grain batches in my 8 gallon kettle but if I want to do a couple of the big recipe's I've been eyeing they call for 17lb or more grain which means 14+ gallons of wort.
What am I missing? Do people really mash 17lbs of grain and make 14 gallons of wort that they then boil off down to 6.5 gallons or so? Palmer's example for your first all grain batch says an 8 gallon kettle should be fine for a 3 gallon mash and 4 gallon sparge, but his grain bill is about 8lbs.
I don't discount buying a larger Kettle, I'm just kind of wondering how far I can go with my current 8 gallon kettle. I've got about $100 cash to spend which was going to go toward a mash tun.