What to do if your boil vessel is only 5 gallons...

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Willie3

Willie3

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What can I do to do an all grain batch with only enough space to boil in a 5 gallon brew kettle? I cannot afford a larger vessel at this time and it is too cold to brew outside, so how do I brew an all grain 7 gallons using a 5 gallon vessel?

Also I did an all grain at my brother-in-laws house using my 10 gal gott cooler as a MT with a steal braid and fly sparge. We reached an efficiency of 71.5% which we were happy with. If I had a false bottom instead of the steal hose braid, do you think that I would have gotten higher efficiency or is it OK to use the braid instead? Seemed to work fine for me, just curious?

- WW
 
Do you have a second vessel that you could boil in, in addition to the 5 gallon pot? HB_Bill, I believe, does AG inside using two pots. I've done the same, not by choice but becuase the electric fryer was a disaster and I needed to in order to maintain a boil. Do a couple separate boils, split the hops proportionately between the vessels, then combine in the fermenter.
 
wilsonwj said:
What can I do to do an all grain batch with only enough space to boil in a 5 gallon brew kettle? I cannot afford a larger vessel at this time and it is too cold to brew outside, so how do I brew an all grain 7 gallons using a 5 gallon vessel?

Also I did an all grain at my brother-in-laws house using my 10 gal gott cooler as a MT with a steal braid and fly sparge. We reached an efficiency of 71.5% which we were happy with. If I had a false bottom instead of the steal hose braid, do you think that I would have gotten higher efficiency or is it OK to use the braid instead? Seemed to work fine for me, just curious?

- WW
Click to expand...

Can you afford a Plastic pail and a few bucks for a kettle element? why noy make an electric kettle?
 
You have a few options here:
- brew 4 gal batches instead. I brew 5 gal batches in a 6 gal pot and it works fine, so 4 gal batches in a 5 gal pot should work too.
- brew a higher gravity wort of 4 gal that you then top off to get 5 gal. You may loose some efficiency, but you are still brewing AG. This is probably your best option.

As a side note, steel braid hoses are not doing so well when fly sparging. They lead to channeling. Try barch sparging instead.

Kai
 
wilsonwj said:
What can I do to do an all grain batch with only enough space to boil in a 5 gallon brew kettle? I cannot afford a larger vessel at this time and it is too cold to brew outside, so how do I brew an all grain 7 gallons using a 5 gallon vessel?


- WW
Click to expand...

Can't be any colder than me as I'm just a little north of you on the Atlantic seaboard, and stuck out a little further.

Can't say I enjoy the cold but make do with what the weather throws at me
and brew anyway. I brew 5 gallons of wort in a 7 gallon kettle and the rest
on my electric stove until the level of my kettle drops enough to add some of
the wort on my stove to it.
 
I did great at the kitchen store at the outlet mall - 7 gal stock pot for $32. It sure beat the >$100 the brewshop wanted. You could also check out the thrift stores, you'd be surprised what you might find for $5.
 

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