Brew 10gal concentrated and adding 10gal boiled water

I have a kettle that can brew 10gals. I have a fermentor that can ferment 20gals (+room for fermentation activity).

I want to brew a 10gal batch with grains+hops for a 20gal batch. Add to fermentor and add 10 gals of boiled/cooled water. Then pitch yeast.

Any problems with this? Any affect on test?

Thanks. The thought of 20gals fermenting...:rockin:

I have a kettle that can *boil* 2½ gallons. I have a fermenter that can ferment 5 gallons

I *boil* a 2½ gal batch with grain+hops for a 5 gal batch. Add to fermenter and add 2½ gals of boiled/cooled water. Then pitch yeast.

x4 = yours. INCLUDING yeast

I don't see any problem.

except the thought of filling & capping ≈ 200 bottles

well, you need to make your wort doubly strong, so OG needs to be double the desired OG before you throw in that next 10 gallons of water. You can do the math but I reckon making anything beyond a session beer would mean a heap of extra grain and poor efficiency. And depending on whether or not hop utilization is or is not affected by OG of the wort you might need a heap more hops to get the same IBUs as well (Ive been reading on this topic lately and would seem that utilization is NOT related to SG of wort as previously thought). Other than the extra grains, should work just fine Id guess

GrogNerd said:

except the thought of filling & capping ≈ 200 bottles

Click to expand...

the beauty of kegging

Yeah, I wonder about the efficiency...I would just have to make sure to hit double OG. Hopefully hop utilization isn't affected much.

Maybe I'll have to do a 10gal batch then do same recipe with method described in op to produce 20gals and compare the two.

TTB said:

Maybe I'll have to do a 10gal batch then do same recipe with method described in op to produce 20gals and compare the two.

Click to expand...

Good idea, I love making double the beer with one small change to test things.

You can add dme to make up for it.

It can brew 10 gal or hold 10 gal. You have a 2 gal. difference right there.

How big is your mash tun? I'd rather mash and collect more wort, boil the first half for 20 minutes to sanitize and get hot break, then chill and move to the fermenter. Add another 10 gallons to the kettle and run the full boil and hop schedule, chill, add to fermenter. If not, you'd have to make a 1.100 wort just to get a 1.050 OG and a beer that big just puts so much sugar down the drain (trapped in the grain).

It can brew 10 gals, it is a 15 gallon pot.

Mash tun is exact same size, 15 gals.

Bobby_M, I like what your saying. Maybe if I do something of that sort I could aim for something less than 1.100. Maybe fill my BK as usual, then fill MT with all water in HLT (so it's empty), then batch sparge that back into HLT and boil there. I would fill HLT as long as gravity of the wort is > 1.020 (I believe thats the line where palmer says tannins will be extracted?..).

Then I would mix wort from BK gravity say hypothetically is 1.075 and 1.025 in HLT...to = 1.050 when mixed.

Can't wait to try this. I'll report back.

I would postulate that your hop utilization will be affected due to the higher gravity and additional break material in the boil.

In other words, your hop utilization probably won't scale linearly like gravity would after dilution.

If you're brewing a beer where hops aren't the emphasis it probably won't be a big deal. If you're trying to brew hoppy ale, you will most likely have to play with your hop schedule to yield your desired hop bitterness/flavor/aroma.