Obtaining high O.G. w/ 5 gal mash tun

Love this forum! :rockin: My question is: how can I brew a big beer (1.080+) when I max out at 11lbs of grain in my 5 gallon mash tun? Would adding LME or DME at flameout work? Or would that just give me a dry beer? (which I don't want for my Wee Heavy...)

Yeah, I know, going to a 10 gal mash tun is the best answer, but that would be too easy....:cross:

lme/dme. wouldn't necessarily add it at flameout, maybe last 10-15 min of boil.

Yeah, you will have to use DME to get your gravity up that high unless you want to make a 3-4 gallon batch and boil it down. DME tends to have poor attenuation compared to AG so you will not dry your beer out.

Thanks for the quick response all. Much appreciated! I will add DME the last 10-15 minutes of the boil per your recommendations. I do like the idea of a 3-4 gallon batch, but 5 gallons doesn't last SWMBO and myself long enough as it is!!!

What about just mashing twice per brew day?

Mashing at 1 quart of water per pound of grain you can fit nearly 15 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon cooler.

Mash thick, and you can make your high gravity beer without any extract.

This may help. I ran across the article in one of my old BYO issues.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/reiterated-mashing-notes-51706/

Thanks again for all the suggestions. I think I'll go with a 3.5 gallon batch and no DME, which puts my Makers Mark oaked Wee Heavy at 1.109.

So, out of curiosity, what are the advantages and disadvantages of adding DME/LME to an all-grain brew?

Advantage is you can get higher gravity with limited systems as well if I recall correctly the mash has a saturation point with the sugars somewhere in the 1.080's (someone correct me if I'm wrong as I would be interested to know) so that is your maximum first running gravity.

The more grain you use the more you have to sparge to get your efficiency, so it is diminishing returns the higher the gravity because you end up with so much wort that it would take longer and longer to boil down.

The disadvantage of DME/LME is what I said previously, it tends to not attenuate as well AG as you cannot play with the mash schedule to get a highly fermentable wort, its fermentability is pretty much set by whatever company makes it depending on their mash schedule.

As a side note, IMO, I generally do not make high gravity beers so my experience is limited. However, the only 1.1+ gravity beer I made (when I just started out brewing...of course new brewer going for a big beer syndrome) was cloyingly sweet. What I learned is you need to dry those big beers out to make them drinkable, that means adding sugar to get a balance. I assure you if you get 10-20% of your fermentables from sugar in a 1.109 beer you will still have plenty of body.

1. Mash in MLT and in a 5 gallon kettle

2. Put mash from 5 gallon kettle into MLT

3. Sparge

4. Enjoy your high gravity all-grain brew

I would have to agree about that saturation point. My calculations came out to 1.109 and I only hit 1.080, and I usually have an efficiency of 80%-85%... I'll be adding some Makers and oak cubes in the secondary, so that should bump it up a little...

Things went well though. Made a 1L starter and it took off within 5 hours.

Will keep you posted.

I would have to agree about that saturation point. My calculations came out to 1.109 and I only hit 1.080, and I usually have an efficiency of 80%-85%... I'll be adding some Makers and oak cubes in the secondary, so that should bump it up a little...

Things went well though. Made a 1L starter and it took off within 5 hours.

Will keep you posted.