3 gal All Grain

Hey Guys

Just getting back to brewing after 15+years.

Working on getting my 2 x 15 gal kegs set up for larger scale operation but not there yet, so i'm anxious to get a beer going and decided to do a 3 gallon batch all grain in the kitchen. Went with all grain to save cost and because i used to do them years ago. I have my old brewpots but the largest I have is 5 gallon. So i went and bought a basic brown ale recipe for 3 gallons.

I was going to do BIAB since I dont have my old lauter any longer...I used to use Phil's 2 bucket system with the little sparge arm. I did not realize until reading on here as well as plugging everything into BeerSmith, that to do BIAB i need much more volume..even for a 3 gallon recipe...for all grain, and my 5 gallon brew pot is not adequate to hold enough liquid in order to get enough efficiency.

So I thought maybe I could get away with using a 5 gallon Rubbermaid water cooler. It was easy to pop off the push button spigot and replace with a twist valve spigot. I did a test yesterday dumping in 152 degree water, screwed the lid on, and waited 75 min like you would for a mash. The temp dropped 10 degrees!! I was disappointed as I hoped I could get away with doing a batch sparge using the cooler. Not sure why it didnt hold but the screw top lid may not be tight enough to hold temp.

I could keep the heat in the brew pot on the stove at 150 but the pot has no valve, so i would have to dump the wort into the cooler in order to recirculate, but wouldn't that be bad as it would agitate the mash too much and create foam by dumping it? Also would still be hard to hold temp to do vorlauf and batch sparge.

I could also just use the bag and use less water in the brew pot but then efficiency would be out the window i think. Given this is really a 'practice batch' for getting back into the swing of things, i guess it wouldnt matter so much but...i'd still like to make a decent beer.


Total grain bill is 6.6 lbs for a basic brown ale

Any ideas appreciated

You could always try wrapping your cooler in a comforter. Also what shape is your cooler? Mine had a lot of empty head space when I did 3 gallon batches (though it's a 10 gallon cooler) so I just fitted some cheap foam insulation from homedepot to the shape of the cooler and wrapped it in foil. Went from losing 10-15 degrees to losing 1-3 over my hour long mash.

Skeller said:

Hey Guys

Just getting back to brewing after 15+years.

Working on getting my 2 x 15 gal kegs set up for larger scale operation but not there yet, so i'm anxious to get a beer going and decided to do a 3 gallon batch all grain in the kitchen. Went with all grain to save cost and because i used to do them years ago. I have my old brewpots but the largest I have is 5 gallon. So i went and bought a basic brown ale recipe for 3 gallons.

I was going to do BIAB since I dont have my old lauter any longer...I used to use Phil's 2 bucket system with the little sparge arm. I did not realize until reading on here as well as plugging everything into BeerSmith, that to do BIAB i need much more volume..even for a 3 gallon recipe...for all grain, and my 5 gallon brew pot is not adequate to hold enough liquid in order to get enough efficiency.

So I thought maybe I could get away with using a 5 gallon Rubbermaid water cooler. It was easy to pop off the push button spigot and replace with a twist valve spigot. I did a test yesterday dumping in 152 degree water, screwed the lid on, and waited 75 min like you would for a mash. The temp dropped 10 degrees!! I was disappointed as I hoped I could get away with doing a batch sparge using the cooler. Not sure why it didnt hold but the screw top lid may not be tight enough to hold temp.

I could keep the heat in the brew pot on the stove at 150 but the pot has no valve, so i would have to dump the wort into the cooler in order to recirculate, but wouldn't that be bad as it would agitate the mash too much and create foam by dumping it? Also would still be hard to hold temp to do vorlauf and batch sparge.

I could also just use the bag and use less water in the brew pot but then efficiency would be out the window i think. Given this is really a 'practice batch' for getting back into the swing of things, i guess it wouldnt matter so much but...i'd still like to make a decent beer.


Total grain bill is 6.6 lbs for a basic brown ale

Any ideas appreciated

Click to expand...

The default in Beersmith will have you start with lots of water which you then boil off. That ensures you don't end up with DMS in your beer....but modern malts have very little SMM which converts to DMS so you don't need as vigorous nor as long of a boil. You can do the BIAB 3 gallon kit in your 5 gallon pot. Use as much water as you can to start with. I usually use about 3 gallons because then my grain bill will not cause the pot to run over but you might need to start with a little less because you kit is designed for a little lower efficiency and thus has more grain.

When the mash is over and you pull the bag out, you will notice you don't have enough wort for 3 gallons of beer. No problem, just do a sparge step, either by dunking the bag of grain in water or pouring water over the bag. Start your boil before adding the sparge water/wort as you might boil over at hot break. Once the hot break has subsided you can add the sparge. Expect a second hot break that will be smaller than the first, then continue the boil. You should be fine with just a slow rolling boil which won't boil off so much water. I tend to only boil off 1/2 gallon in an hour long boil and have also made good beer with only a 30 minute boil which gets me less boil off too. If you still are short on wort at the end of the boil, add water to get the proper volume, after all, that is what you boiled off.

RM-MN said:

The default in Beersmith will have you start with lots of water which you then boil off. That ensures you don't end up with DMS in your beer....but modern malts have very little SMM which converts to DMS so you don't need as vigorous nor as long of a boil. You can do the BIAB 3 gallon kit in your 5 gallon pot. Use as much water as you can to start with. I usually use about 3 gallons because then my grain bill will not cause the pot to run over but you might need to start with a little less because you kit is designed for a little lower efficiency and thus has more grain.

When the mash is over and you pull the bag out, you will notice you don't have enough wort for 3 gallons of beer. No problem, just do a sparge step, either by dunking the bag of grain in water or pouring water over the bag. Start your boil before adding the sparge water/wort as you might boil over at hot break. Once the hot break has subsided you can add the sparge. Expect a second hot break that will be smaller than the first, then continue the boil. You should be fine with just a slow rolling boil which won't boil off so much water. I tend to only boil off 1/2 gallon in an hour long boil and have also made good beer with only a 30 minute boil which gets me less boil off too. If you still are short on wort at the end of the boil, add water to get the proper volume, after all, that is what you boiled off.

Click to expand...

Awesome, thank you! i can do a sparge to add volume as you suggest. Should I set the water temp at 168 as BeerSmith suggests or should i do it with the mash temp of 150?. I guess 168 would be more of a mash out?

Skeller said:

Awesome, thank you! i can do a sparge to add volume as you suggest. Should I set the water temp at 168 as BeerSmith suggests or should i do it with the mash temp of 150?. I guess 168 would be more of a mash out?

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No, a mashout would be more like 205°-210°F, to get the total volume up to about 168°F. Being that you're on the stove and can apply direct heat, you don't need to mash out.

A typical sparge temp would be 168°F, so that's what you would want your sparge volume to be at.

MagicMatt said:

No, a mashout would be more like 205°-210°F, to get the total volume up to about 168°F. Being that you're on the stove and can apply direct heat, you don't need to mash out.

A typical sparge temp would be 168°F, so that's what you would want your sparge volume to be at.

Click to expand...

ok thanks

It's been found that there is little difference in the sugars extracted by sparging with cool water instead of hot. Your choice.

Don't listen to Beersmith! A 5 gallon pot is plenty large for a 3 gallon BIAB....for higher gravity you may need a sparge....but it can easily be done.

For mid gravity, I doubt you will even need a sparge. One work around is to max out the kettle to the rim post mash by adding boiling water to keep temps up resulting in less time to reach boil.

I'm doing 3 and 4 gallon BIAB brews with a 5 gallon pot. You need a little more water than that, but you don't need it all at the same time. Do you have 2 large pots or just one? (a bucket will do for one of 'em.)

I was using 2 pots; mash with 1.75 or whatever it was quarts per pound of grain, then sparge with the rest of the water, then combine them for the boil. Add a little more water to the fermenter if my boil-off was more than expected.

Last time I brewed I put a couple of gallons of water in the kettle, doughed in the grain, then added more hot water to fill it to the rim. Mashed for an hour, pulled out the bag, and squeezed the heck out of it, then proceeded to boil w/o a sparge. I had to add a little bit of water to the fermentor to top it up to the 4 gallon mark. That seemed to be just as efficient as the old way but it saved a few steps.

Thanks for all of the advice guys.

I actually ended up doing as suggested in my 5 gal pot. Yes, I have another 4 gal pot, so I had 3 gal of..worked out to be 161 deg water, mash in held at 153...then i put in the oven which was like 110degree ambient. Held 153 the full 75 min. Then I put 2 gal of water in the other pot to prep.

So then I got creative after finding my old 'Phil's Lautering' brass sparge arm. I pushed it through a drilled out stopper and had a neoprene elbow pushed through the other side which allowed me to attach a vinyl hose. I was also able to convert my 5 gal cooler as the push button spiggot just unscrewed and the spare bottling spigot I had fit easily and the other end of the hose went in there. So I put the 2 gal of water from the other pot to 168 poured it into the cooler, and used that with a hose down to sparge arm to create a sort of mini-sparge. The bucket it was going into already had a hole in bottom, which had a 5/16 vinyl hose through it. By carefully placing the bag into the bucket after the mash was done as my filter bed, i turned on the sparge. It made a holy mess because the hose was a bit too small for the hole in the bucket but I didnt lose much. Didnt have a nice even grain bed but again, sort of winging it this time.


So I think it was fine. I was careful not to oversparge using this wacky set up as i wasnt sure how much bad stuff i would pull off. My boil yielded near enough to 3 gallons i just topped off with spring water.
Took forever to cool it down as its been in the high 90s here with heat index over 100, so ground water running through my immersion chiller would not take it below 70, even after i added ice to the sink i had the water hose laying in.

Long story short my gravity was within .002 of target .

I pitched at 70 degrees and my basement is keeping at 70 where its fermenting. Maybe a little warm but shouldn't affect a brown ale too badly?

Good job, sounds like you reached your goal....but OMG what a bit of gymnastics you did getting there....

Next time I would suggest mashing in your 5 gallon pot, remove the bag and place it in your 4 gallon pot with sparge water, stir well, let rest a few minutes, stir again and combine runnings in your 5G pot and boil.

Or even easier yet, mash in your 5 gallon pot, remove bag and place it above the kettle in a colander, or just rest it on a couple of large kitchen utensils spanning the top of the pot, then gently pour your sparge water over the bag til you reach preboil volume.

I'm interested in this oven method for holding mash temp. Sometimes I do small 1-2 gallon batches on the stove to test recipes, but I have trouble holding temp in my non-insulated kettle. Do you just set the oven at 110, cover kettle, and set it in there for the duration of the mash? My other question is why 110 and not set for the mash temp?

danhauk said:

I'm interested in this oven method for holding mash temp. Sometimes I do small 1-2 gallon batches on the stove to test recipes, but I have trouble holding temp in my non-insulated kettle. Do you just set the oven at 110, cover kettle, and set it in there for the duration of the mash? My other question is why 110 and not set for the mash temp?

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Each oven is different, so you really need to work out the settings for yourself. On most ovens, the lowest setting is 160F or 170F. I preheat my oven at the lowest setting while the water is heating up to strike temperature. I add grains and stir the heck out of them to make sure I have no dough balls, especially since I grind on the finer side. When I've settled in on the mash temperature, I place the covered kettle into the oven (you need to remove the shelves -- preferably before you pre-heat the oven).

If I am mashing at a low temperature (146F to 150F), I turn the oven off after putting the kettle in and closing the door.

When mashing at 152F to 154F, I allow it to continue at the low temp setting for abut 10 minutes before turning the oven off.

Higher temperatures (156F to 160F), I will let the oven run for 20 to 30 minutes before turning the oven off.

In all cases I end up within around 2F of my starting temperature.

Of course, we replaced the oven last fall with one that has a "warming" feature, so now I can dial in the temperature a couple of degrees higher than my actual mashing temp and it holds within a degree for the whole 60 minutes of mashing. The couple of degrees higher reflects the offset of the oven setting to the actual temperature inside the oven.

I would recommend monitoring the temperatures a few times before coming up with your own specific times and temperatures, as all oven thermostats vary to some extent.

wilserbrewer said:

Good job, sounds like you reached your goal....but OMG what a bit of gymnastics you did getting there....

Next time I would suggest mashing in your 5 gallon pot, remove the bag and place it in your 4 gallon pot with sparge water, stir well, let rest a few minutes, stir again and combine runnings in your 5G pot and boil.

Or even easier yet, mash in your 5 gallon pot, remove bag and place it above the kettle in a colander, or just rest it on a couple of large kitchen utensils spanning the top of the pot, then gently pour your sparge water over the bag til you reach preboil volume.

Click to expand...

Lol thanks and yes that would have been SO much easier. Its just after i found part of the old sparge system i got excited and started tinkering...and well yea, it was messy. The next morning the dog was licking sticky mash wort I missed in clean up off of the cabinets lol

danhauk said:

I'm interested in this oven method for holding mash temp. Sometimes I do small 1-2 gallon batches on the stove to test recipes, but I have trouble holding temp in my non-insulated kettle. Do you just set the oven at 110, cover kettle, and set it in there for the duration of the mash? My other question is why 110 and not set for the mash temp?

Click to expand...

Yea as Oginme said experiment with your oven. Mine has a low temp setting...its a Bosch which is a pretty decent oven. I had done this a few times years ago but then also just messed around with trying to use the stove top flame to control temp, but as you've probably learned thats kind of a pain because its easy to overshoot.

So what I did the day before is heat up 150 deg water and put in the oven to test it (again been years since i had brewed and this is a new oven). I found that if i set the temp at 150, it actually seemed to heat the wort up a few degrees higher. I dont understand the thermodynamics of this but...would seem it should stay at 150 but i'm guessing the oven thermo can be off by a few degrees, and possibly depends on where the heating element is located vs the pot. So there are maybe some hot spots. Anyway I found if i heated it to somewhere in the low 100's (probably doesnt have to be exact 110), then turn off the oven, it just stayed . I am guessing anything around 100 degrees would have kept it just fine.

I like Oginme's analysis of doing the higher temp vs lower temp mash

A specific oven temp is not that critical for maintaning a mash IMO & IME. The idea is that anything b/w 140-170 is a helluva lot closer to your mash temp than ambient house air, and anything close will greatly reduce temp loss or gain, if the oven is warmer, temp gain will be minimal. Most just heat the oven to it's lowest setting and turn it off....close enough. You DON"T need to set the oven to your mash temp. for this method to work well, just get it close and RDWHAHB

FWIW, testing with water is somewhat inaccurate, as water will heat and cool easier / faster than a mash.

I do 1.9 gallon batches in a 5 gallon round cooler BIAB. I boil in a 4 gallon pot so I see no reason you can't boil at least 4 gallons in a 5 gallon pot.

I also loose about 10* in the 1 hour mash even when I cover it w/a bunch of jackets and flannel shirts. I'm thinking of using a 3 gallon cooler w/less water and then sparge to make up the difference. Should keep temps up if the whole cooler is filled w/no dead head space.

Be sure to pre-heat you cooler before mashing.

I've had similar experience with the oven method leading to warming of the wort. With a gas stove and small batches, I'm much happier with stirring often and monitoring the temp with a scientific thermometer.

Note I don't do full volume biab. I mash in 1.5-2 gallons typically.

Thanks for all the comments guys

Thanks for all the tips on the oven. I'd never thought to do something like that but it makes total sense. It sounds like it would be much easier to maintain temp (or at least close enough temp) than having to stir and apply heat every 15 minutes.

I'm going to give it a shot next time I do a small stove top batch.

Good luck! Let us know how it turns out

It sounds like you've settled on a process, but figured I'd share my experience with mashing in a cooler in case it helps anyone.

I always had problems holding mash temps in a cooler (I do 2 gallon batches and mash in a 5 gallon cooler) no matter how much I wrapped the thing in blankets, until I tried something MUCH nicer. Aluminum foil.

After I dough-in and reach the temperature I want, I put a layer of tin foil on top of the wort and close the lid. I don't bother wrapping it in blankets or anything. I lose maybe 2 degrees over the course of an hour now and don't have the roommates looking at me like I'm crazy for bundling up a cooler in blankets.

speek said:

It sounds like you've settled on a process, but figured I'd share my experience with mashing in a cooler in case it helps anyone.

I always had problems holding mash temps in a cooler (I do 2 gallon batches and mash in a 5 gallon cooler) no matter how much I wrapped the thing in blankets, until I tried something MUCH nicer. Aluminum foil.

After I dough-in and reach the temperature I want, I put a layer of tin foil on top of the wort and close the lid. I don't bother wrapping it in blankets or anything. I lose maybe 2 degrees over the course of an hour now and don't have the roommates looking at me like I'm crazy for bundling up a cooler in blankets.

Click to expand...

Wow great tip thank you!

speek said:

It sounds like you've settled on a process, but figured I'd share my experience with mashing in a cooler in case it helps anyone.

I always had problems holding mash temps in a cooler (I do 2 gallon batches and mash in a 5 gallon cooler) no matter how much I wrapped the thing in blankets, until I tried something MUCH nicer. Aluminum foil.

After I dough-in and reach the temperature I want, I put a layer of tin foil on top of the wort and close the lid. I don't bother wrapping it in blankets or anything. I lose maybe 2 degrees over the course of an hour now and don't have the roommates looking at me like I'm crazy for bundling up a cooler in blankets.

Click to expand...

When you say "layer" of tin foil, how thick i your layer? I guess you don't mix it during the mash. I usually open every 15 min and give it a stir.

C-Rider said:

When you say "layer" of tin foil, how thick i your layer? I guess you don't mix it during the mash. I usually open every 15 min and give it a stir.

Click to expand...

Correct. When I dough-in I mix like a mad man while waiting for the temp to drop and stabilize, after that I close the lid and just let it rock for the hour without opening. After the hour I'll mix again, drain/squeeze the bag (I'm BIAB) and then batch sparge with a mix.

What I do with the tin foil is pull a long piece off the roll and then fold in half kinda staggered on one end and push it down in the cooler. I only do that because I don't buy wide foil and want to cover the entire bed. You don't need a thick layer or anything at all. The foil just helps remove the deadspace and deflects the heat back at the wort.