Large grain bill in a 5gal Igloo MLT

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I've been planning on brewing an all grain batch with a larger than usual grain bill (15.5lbs including 1lb of rice hulls) It looks like I'll only be able to ad about 15-16 qts of water and still have everything fit in my Mash tun. I'll miss the recomended 1.25-1.5qts per lb. Anyone have experience with this? What kind of problems am I in for and are there any solutions? I could build a larger mash tun, but I'd like to avoid it if possible.
Thanks,
Zach
 
i've ran into this before, and what i did, (right or wrong) was put all the grains into the mlt, then fill it up with as much water as it will hold, do the mash, then verauf, drain as usual, then fill up again with your sparge water, and let it sit for about 20 minutes instead of 10, and verlauf, drain, and sparge again untill you reach your desired boil volume in your kettle.

now for me, this worked just fine, and i still hit my normal efficiency range. (75-85%)


brian
 
brian williams said:
i've ran into this before, and what i did, (right or wrong) was put all the grains into the mlt, then fill it up with as much water as it will hold, do the mash, then verauf, drain as usual, then fill up again with your sparge water, and let it sit for about 20 minutes instead of 10, and verlauf, drain, and sparge again untill you reach your desired boil volume in your kettle.

now for me, this worked just fine, and i still hit my normal efficiency range. (75-85%)


brian


That's what I did w/ my 5 gal cooler and it worked just fine as well.
 
Another alternative is to simply reduce the volume of the recipe (say to 4 gals instead of 5) to accommodate the big grainbill. This way, at least, you don't have to modify your process.

You could also reduce your grainbill, but use your same process and same volume, but make up the deficit of fermentables with some malt extract at the end of the boil. This method has some advantages in that if you are doing a hoppy beer, you will get better hop utilization (which can be tricky for double IPAs, etc.).
 
I had about 11lb grain bill yesterday...thought I had it covered...but either I had way too much evaporation, or not enough sparge water, cuz I ended up with only 4.5 gallons of wort in the bucket from my 5 gallon MLT.

and its hard finding the 10gallons this time of year...argh!
 
BierMuncher said:
I did a 13# Porter in my 5 gallon rubbermaid.

Just required some additonal sparging but it worked out fine.

Did my first all grain this weekend and ran into a problem filling my MLT with only a ten pound grain bill. I just added the sparge water till compacity then let it sit 15 mins. Then drained off slowly and added additional water by the cup as it drained. Hit 75% efficiency so it worked pretty well.
 
Jekster said:
Did my first all grain this weekend and ran into a problem filling my MLT with only a ten pound grain bill. I just added the sparge water till compacity then let it sit 15 mins. Then drained off slowly and added additional water by the cup as it drained. Hit 75% efficiency so it worked pretty well.

basically what I had to do this weekend too. a batch sparge with a little 'rapid fly sparging'.
 
Well 15.5 lbs of grain filled the MLT to the top. I batch sparged twice (drained the cooler three times total) And wound up with almost 6 gallons of wort at around 1.045 SG. The recipe called for a 90 minute boil in which I lost around 2 gallons and ended up with about 4 gallons at 1.073. which is the OG specified in the recipe (Beersmith said I should get 1.080 though) So maybe one more batch sparge would have given me a better starting volume. I didn't check the specific gravity of the runnings so I can't be sure. Overall I'd say it was a semi success and a good learning experience.
 
fakeghostpirate said:
Well 15.5 lbs of grain filled the MLT to the top. I batch sparged twice (drained the cooler three times total) And wound up with almost 6 gallons of wort at around 1.045 SG. The recipe called for a 90 minute boil in which I lost around 2 gallons and ended up with about 4 gallons at 1.073. which is the OG specified in the recipe (Beersmith said I should get 1.080 though) So maybe one more batch sparge would have given me a better starting volume. I didn't check the specific gravity of the runnings so I can't be sure. Overall I'd say it was a semi success and a good learning experience.
I usually try to limit my 5gal cooler to 12# grain and make up the difference with DME. However with 15.5# I would expect that you would have to do a third sparge. I usually do 2 sparges and get about 6.5gal which gives me a nice 5.5gal after a 60 min boil. With a 90min boil and more grain you are going to need an extra sparge.
Craig
 
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