Making 15 gallons of beer out of 10

So I have a big party coming up and I want to brew 15 gal of beer to fill a sankey keg with. I've decided on brewing Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde, as it will be a big crowd pleaser. I have equipment to brew 10 gal batches...my thought is this:

I put the 5 gal recipe into Beersmith, and then scaled it to 15 gallons. It's a light enough beer that all this grain will still fit in my mashtun. Can I mash/brew 10 gallons this beer (with enough grain in there for 15 gallons)...boil and cool 5 gallons of water, add it to my fermenter (a 20 gallons food grade bucket), and then rack my 10 gallons of extra-strong centennail blonde onto the 5 gallons of water...leaving me with, if logic is serving me correctly...15 gallons of Centennial Blonde, at its proper strength/taste/etc. ?? Is there anything wrong with my plan here?

Thanks!

cabot said:

So I have a big party coming up and I want to brew 15 gal of beer to fill a sankey keg with. I've decided on brewing Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde, as it will be a big crowd pleaser. I have equipment to brew 10 gal batches...my thought is this:

I put the 5 gal recipe into Beersmith, and then scaled it to 15 gallons. It's a light enough beer that all this grain will still fit in my mashtun. Can I mash/brew 10 gallons this beer (with enough grain in there for 15 gallons)...boil and cool 5 gallons of water, add it to my fermenter (a 20 gallons food grade bucket), and then rack my 10 gallons of extra-strong centennail blonde onto the 5 gallons of water...leaving me with, if logic is serving me correctly...15 gallons of Centennial Blonde, at its proper strength/taste/etc. ?? Is there anything wrong with my plan here?

Thanks!

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Would it be easier to brew a 7.5 gallon batch at double strength then add 7.5 gallons of boiled and cooled water to the fermenter? I’m not a big math guy and think this would be easier.

I think that would be the same thing? The scaled recipe I am ok with, I just scaled it in beersmith so I know that's right. My question is that, assuming I scale the recipe correctly, is adding the 5 gallons of boiled and cooled water at the end going to cause any trouble. Again, beersmith did all the math for me, so I know I have the right amounts of grains and such.

I think you can get away with it

You'll have to augment your hops additions because of lower utilization and you might get lower extraction efficiency.

I hear this is what Budweiser does.

Your hop utilization will be different because your wort will be more dense. You'll have to adjust the hop schedule.

How much is a different question.

Bull

Should work....might want to guess a few points low on efficiency to account for the extra thick mash/sparge due to the extra grain but no extra water...

Not sure how concerned you are with hop utilization and efficiency but it's called high gravity brewing and it's what most--if not all--the big brewers do.

I would think your plan would be totally fine. It's also what some of us extract brewers are doing as well (me included, currently). Brew a smaller amount of concentrated wort and dilute to the desired fermenting volume.

Let us know how it turns out.

Thanks for the info folks. I feel pretty good about trying it out. I'll report back when its all said and done.

Gonna put 5 gallons on normal co2, 5 gallons on nitrogen, and gonna try to fruit 5 gallons with blueberries

Yeah, I think your biggest issue is that you won't be sparging very much so you're not going to get good grain conversion efficiency. You could always plan it with your normal efficiency and be ready with some DME in case you need to up it a bit. It would be too hard (impossible) to guess how much lower your efficiency would be so this is probably the best bet.

Just out of curiosity, what's your limiting factor? I assume you only have a 15 gallon pot? I did a 10 gallon Barelywine in a 15 gallon pot before by splitting the boil into two pots on two different burners. The bittering additions went into both pots but I poured the wort from both into one pot about 1.5 hours into a 2 hour boil (once some had evaporated) before it was time for the flavor/aroma additions. You could go ahead and sparge for 15 gallons, collect the extra in a bucket, and add it to the main boil as it evaporates. Whatever doesn't fit can go onto the stove and get boiled separately.

I guess what I'm saying is why boil a concentrated wort and water separately and then blend later when you could just as easily boil a concentrated wort (first runnings of the mash) and a weak wort (second runnings) separately and then blend them later.

ajwillys, you're right, I don't think there is any difference other than IMHO convenience. I only have to monitor one boil, add hops to one boil, etc. It seems like it'd be less of a headache to me. I am thinking that no matter which of the above suggestions I use, they will all end up fairly close to the same. Boiling a strong, and a weak wort, then mixing them is pretty much the same as boiling a strong wort and then mixing with water no?

I don't see anything wrong with doing it this way a lot of brewers do 3 gallon boils then top off . If you were closer I would lend you my pot you could do the whole 15 gallons in one shot

Only difference I can see is that you have to guess what your mash efficiency will be. It will be most likely be different, since you're changing your process (using a lower water/grain ratio and probably sparging less). You could sparge til you have 10 gallons, but then you're not sure what the OG will be. Or you could sparge til you hit your OG, but then you can't guarantee 10 gallons.

Either way, you will make good beer, I just wouldn't count on making the exact recipe that you made using a more standard process.

Springer, that's cool man. The Stripers gonna be running soon down there?

ajwillys I get what you're saying now. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

cabot said:

Springer, that's cool man. The Stripers gonna be running soon down there?

ajwillys I get what you're saying now. Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best!

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Couple of weeks

Took an OG before I pitched my yeast (of all 16 gallons mixed together), 1.044...was shooting for 1.040. I'd like to think this meant my efficiency was better than I had planned, but I didn't check at the time *sigh*. Either way, considering the process, I'm happy with it. Pitched my big starter this morning, now waiting for activity....

Wow, I think that is excellent planning! Good job getting it so close with such a different method.

Thanks, I'm totally psyched for it. And now we wait for in four to five weeks we feast!