55 gallon Boilermaker mash tun

Hey Guys,

Anyone with a 55 gallon blichmann mash tun who can tell me what the largest doable batch? How much grain can the 55 gallon reasonably hold? Thanks

Phil

check out the chart on this page http://www.blichmannengineering.com/boilermaker/boilermaker.html

about 95lb at 1.5qts/lb and 75% full.

DrPhilGood said:

Hey Guys,

Anyone with a 55 gallon blichmann mash tun who can tell me what the largest doable batch? How much grain can the 55 gallon reasonably hold? Thanks

Phil

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I've had 150 lbs in mine, but I swore I would never do it again. Most of my grain bills are between 95 - 120 lbs. I personally try to keep 130 lbs as the upper limit, and I have a couple recipes in this area. For me it gets to be pretty thick and right near the top of the kettle if you go much larger. This is for 50 gallon recipes.

ZymurGuy said:

I personally try to keep 130 lbs as the upper limit, cipes.

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My 10 gal mash tun max's out at 24 lbs., so if we extrapolate, 24 lbs. X (55/10) = 132 lbs.

Thanks for the responses. I was hoping to max out at 50 gallons.

ZymurGuy said:

I've had 150 lbs in mine, but I swore I would never do it again. Most of my grain bills are between 95 - 120 lbs. I personally try to keep 130 lbs as the upper limit, and I have a couple recipes in this area. For me it gets to be pretty thick and right near the top of the kettle if you go much larger. This is for 50 gallon recipes.

Click to expand...

holy crap. You still manage decent efficiency like that? I take it you drain and fly sparge or something?

CidahMastah said:

holy crap. You still manage decent efficiency like that? I take it you drain and fly sparge or something?

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Just went back and looked and I hit 72% on that one. I'm usually at 80%. I fly sparge, and I do remember it being a very slow runoff that day.

Hmm 72 percent. I've been getting 85 to 90 on 10 gallon batches with fly sparging. Is the reason for the low efficiency because the mash tun was too full to properly fly sparge?

DrPhilGood said:

Hmm 72 percent. I've been getting 85 to 90 on 10 gallon batches with fly sparging. Is the reason for the low efficiency because the mash tun was too full to properly fly sparge?

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Yes, it was a club brew we did. 1.090 beer. Just way too big for the mash tun. Normally I am much higher, but big beers do take a hit. It was actually one of the earlier beers I did on the system though, so maybe if I did it now it wouldn't be so low. I've done a lot to the system since then. Hmmm, maybe I should give it another try?