Super High Gravity Beers

Hi All,

I am considering trying a Barley Wine type beer and I want to get an OG around 1.1 or so and really try to get a FG of around 1.01 or less. I want to use pretty much just malted barley and maybe a few sugar additives like molasses but try to get a majority of those sugars from the barley.

My question is theoretically I am going need to use something like 20lbs + and my Mash Tun I believe can handle it (10 gallon cooler with false bottom). But my brew pot is only 5 gallons.

What is the forum's experience with this? Is a 5 gallon pot big enough for this, am I even going to be able to get the sugar to water ratio I want just adding more and more grains like that without making syrup?

Thanks,
~Brewing

I max out the mash tun, and make up the difference with extract. I also adjust the size of the batch to accommodate the size of the kettle.

Most recently, I did a 3.5 gal batch of an all-maris otter barleywine. I figure after trub loss, i should be able to fill my 3-gal jug up to the tippity-top for bulk aging. I also added 3.15 lbs of northern Brewer's maris otter extract and boiled for 3.5 hours.

Theoretically with a 10 gal mash tun you could make 5 gals of 1.1 SG wort. However your preboil volume would be higher than 5 gal.

Scaling down your batch size seems like a good idea since your pot can only hold 5 gallons. Hell I made a 1.1 ris the other day that lost 1 gallon due to blowoff so maybe if I had a smaller batch size less would have been spit out of the fermenter

What about a partigyle? Wind up with 2 or so gallons of 1.100+ barleywine and a separate batch of average gravity brew?

Be very careful about using things like molasses in your beer. Even a tiny addition can have a huge flavor impact (and not in a good way).

You'll probably want a larger boil pot/kettle for this batch. In order to properly mash/sparge 20# of grain that is. Unless you do a partigyle that is, which can present you with a different set of difficulties.

Any thoughts on doing two 2.5 gallon batches and then combining them?

If I mash/sparge 12# grains or so and yield 3 gallons or so, I can boil off the rest to 2.5 and then do another batch just like it and combine in the fermenter.

What is partigyle?

Doing two 2.5 gal batches allows you to either 1) combine them for one 5 gal batch, or 2) try different things with the other half like using a different yeast, oak aging, etc...
Or you could spend another $30 and buy a 5 gal pot. You could boil 7 gal of wort in two 5 gal pots.

You can usually get a 32-40 quart aluminum pot from a restaurant supply store for under $50. That can easily be converted into a kettle and used for all your 5 gallon batches (especially if you get the 40 quart).

Golddiggie said:

You can usually get a 32-40 quart aluminum pot from a restaurant supply store for under $50. That can easily be converted into a kettle and used for all your 5 gallon batches (especially if you get the 40 quart).

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+1, I actually use a 40qt aluminum tamale pot that I bought for $20 on sale at a local grocery store (Kroger). If I had to to it over again, I would have spent a little more and gotten a 10 gallon pot though so I don't have to worry about boilovers as much.

OClairBrew said:

+1, I actually use a 40qt aluminum tamale pot that I bought for $20 on sale at a local grocery store (Kroger). If I had to to it over again, I would have spent a little more and gotten a 10 gallon pot though so I don't have to worry about boilovers as much.

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Ummmm, you do know that 40 quarts IS 10 gallons, right?

IMO/IME, you want to go with thicker wall aluminum pots. The 4mm thick pot I converted into a kettle is still going strong. It will cost more than the thin one, but it won't get F'd up like the thin ones tend to. There's at least a few threads from people having warped/distorted aluminum pots. Those were the tin walled ones. The 4mm thick pots are made to be used all day long, in restaurants.

Lol, my bad... My pot is 32qt. That's what I get for posting while I'm trying to concentrate on work.