Fizzy yellow biab with a 5 gallon kettle

So I am beginning my foray into all grain using the "Fizzy Yellow Beer" recipe from this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f62/fizzy-yellow-beer-120939/ that Yooper posted. Now, this is also going to be my first biab batch, and all I have is a 5gallon ss kettle that's been doing me good so far when producing extract beers. I've also got access to a couple aluminum turkey fryer pots.

My question is, I've got the stuff for a 5 gallon batch, and I can do a 5 gallon(ish) boil with my kettle but I worry that I'm not going to have the efficiency I really need to make this come out right using a single pot mash/sparge.

Should I do a 5 gallon mash, pull and drain my bag, and then get an additional amount of water (however much would equal the headspace left in my kettle after grain bag removal) up to sparging temp and do a second dunk to get the rest of the sugars in the grain and supply the rest of the boil volume?

I am not a biab'er but yes I would preheat some volume of water in a separate kettle while mashing, then after squeezing the bag over your mash kettle, dunk, stir and squeeze in the second kettle for a "sparge" then combine for boil. This may be verboten in biab circles, but should up the efficiency.

You will need to do some math to get the proper volumes. You'll want ~6 gal preboil, I use 6.5 preboil because I use only whole hops which soak up more liquid.

Excellent, that's what I was thinking. This is surely taboo in the biab world but I am stuck with the kettle I have for now, and I only have a single crush on the grains, and buying more grain to up efficiency isn't really an option at the moment either.

Is 6.5 gallons the pre-mash volume to end up with 5 gallons after boil is through? I'm only using 2oz total of pellet hops so they shouldn't soak much up.

DerCribben said:

Excellent, that's what I was thinking. This is surely taboo in the biab world but I am stuck with the kettle I have for now, and I only have a single crush on the grains, and buying more grain to up efficiency isn't really an option at the moment either.

Is 6.5 gallons the pre-mash volume to end up with 5 gallons after boil is through? I'm only using 2oz total of pellet hops so they shouldn't soak much up.

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When I had a small kettle (30 quarts), I would start with 6.25 gallons of wort, just so it wouldn't boil over. You will probably boil off +/- a gallon an hour during the boil, more on dry or windy days.

Well I need to end up with 5 gal of wort because that my kettles max. I usually just top off my fermenters with a gallon or so of store bought bottled water to make the proper fermenter volume.

DerCribben said:

Well I need to end up with 5 gal of wort because that my kettles max. I usually just top off my fermenters with a gallon or so of store bought bottled water to make the proper fermenter volume.

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You can do that, and increase the grainbill accordingly, but I have never done it so I'm not sure how much more grain you'll need. If you're topping up with 25% of the volume, I'd start with increasing the grainbill by 25%, though.

DerCribben said:

I've also got access to a couple aluminum turkey fryer pots.

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I'd use the aluminum turkey fryer pots if they are bigger than 5 gal. Then you can do a full boil without needing to top off. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I started doing BIAB with. My turkey pot is 7 gallons.

None of them seemed that large. I guess I'll need to go look and see exactly how many gallons all of these pots are. They all look to be much smaller than my stockpot.

DerCribben said:

None of them seemed that large. I guess I'll need to go look and see exactly how many gallons all of these pots are. They all look to be much smaller than my stockpot.

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My turkey fryer pot is 30 quarts- that's 7.5 gallons to the tip. I was able to put 6.25 gallons in it, without boiling over, but I had to watch it carefully until after the hot break!

Annnnnnd.....yup, 7.3 gallons...I guess I know what pot I'll be brewing in from now on...