High gravity beer in a 5 gallon mash tun

I was wondering if anybody has ever tried to brew a high gravity beer using a 5 gallon mash tun by splitting your mash into two separate mashes and taking your first and second runnings from the first mash and using them as strike and sparge water in the second mash. Here is what I'm thinking:

total grain bill:
22 pounds of Golden Promise
1 pound of Roasted Barley

first mash:
11 pounds of Golden Promise
.5 pounds of Roasted Barley
1.25 quarts per pound of water for mash and two batch sparges.

Second mash:
11 pounds of Golden Promise
.5 pounds of Roasted Barley
1.25 quarts per pound of running from first mash for the mash and first batch sparge, then use water to rinse the grains for the 2nd batch sparge.

I'm hoping to collect about 8 gallons of wort for a Wee Heavy. I will be mashing at 154 for both mashes.

Will this work? Has anybody ever done this? I am pretty new at all-grain but I know the PH levels have to be in a specific range to get the right conversion, will this give me a PH level in range to convert the sugars in the 2nd mash? Will my efficiency be low because I am using wort to rinse my grains in the 2nd mash?

If you use first runnings as sparge water, you'll be getting very inefficient extraction due to the fact that the wort is already high in sugar concentration. I'd just collect the first batch, set it aside, then collect the second and mix them.

Or, get a big rectangular picnic cooler and convert it.

I'm interested to see the replies as I am also mashing in a 5 gallon cooler and am interested in making some bigger beers.

Did you get any snow in Cambridge this morning??

I used a 5-gallon mash tun for a couple years....
I either did two separate mashes, or.... wimped out and did a "partial extract". Maxing out my mash tun with grain, and then adding up to 5-pounds of LME late in the boil.

SilverZero: Wouldn't the concentration of sugar be just as high if I were to do a single mash with all the grains together? Are you thinking that the runnings from the first mash wouldn't convert the grains in the 2nd mash because of the thickness of the wort that I'm adding?

Racidcrabtree: Yes, we did a light dusting of snow, just enough to cover the roads and sidewalks, but not enough to shovel.

Yeah, we got some this morning too but it seems to be melting off now.

What about using the second runnings from the first mash as the strike water for the first? Would that have any kind of benefit?

I bought myself a 3 gallon carboy to do high gravity batches with my 5 gallon cooler. From a budget standpoint, I know pretty much what all my batches will cost because I consistently use the same amount of grain.

It's not really about the money, I can afford a new 10 gallon cooler to convert to a mash tun, but for the majority of my beers that I make all I need is a 5 gallon mash tun and since I fill it to the top I get better heat retention than I would in a 10 gallon cooler. I guess I'm just curious to see if it will work or not, and if anybody has ever tried it. I might have to try it and see what happens. One of my concerns is that I will be producing more fermentables that I need and it will finish really dry since I will basically be doing a 2 hour plus mash.

No rule that says you have to do a 5-gallon batch. You can always run it through Beersmith and reduce the batch size to something that will fit in your 5-Fallon cooler. Green Bay Rackers says you can get 15-ish pounds in there at 1 qt/lb, so maybe do a 3.5 gal batch?

Either that, or reduce the base malt in the mash and make up the difference with DME in the boil.

mrdauber64 said:

SilverZero: Wouldn't the concentration of sugar be just as high if I were to do a single mash with all the grains together? Are you thinking that the runnings from the first mash wouldn't convert the grains in the 2nd mash because of the thickness of the wort that I'm adding?

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The concentration wouldn't be the same because you'd never be able to mash 22 pounds in a 5 gallon MLT. A 1.25 qt/lb mash thickness would take up almost 9 gallons of space, and that's on the thick end anyway. If you did it in a 10 gallon MLT, then you could get a proper thickness and get the sugars all converted and washed out.

And, yes, I would think that striking and sparging with wort instead of water would reduce your extraction efficiency because of the concentration of sugar already in the wort. I may be wrong, I'm not sure of the saturation point of those sugars, but it would certainly be less than just water.

SilverZero said:

And, yes, I would think that striking and sparging with wort instead of water would reduce your extraction efficiency because of the concentration of sugar already in the wort. I may be wrong, I'm not sure of the saturation point of those sugars, but it would certainly be less than just water.

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That's correct. The process of diffusion comes into play, and that's why sparging "works"- the sugars will go into the water. The principle of diffusion states, in short, that diffusion happens primarily due to a concentration gradient, which tends to adjust the component concentration until it reaches equilibrium. That means that water will get more sugars out of the grainbed than wort will, since the concentration gradient is more.

ok, thanks for the replies. I guess this won't work then. That does make sense that the water used would have reached it's max sugar concentration and couldn't extract anymore from the grains. Time to build myself a new 10 gallon mash tun, or down size my batch size for this brew! Happy Holidays everyone!

Yooper said:

That's correct. The process of diffusion comes into play, and that's why sparging "works"- the sugars will go into the water. The principle of diffusion states, in short, that diffusion happens primarily due to a concentration gradient, which tends to adjust the component concentration until it reaches equilibrium. That means that water will get more sugars out of the grainbed than wort will, since the concentration gradient is more.

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If only my chem students could articulate diffusion gradients so well.

SilverZero said:

If only my chem students could articulate diffusion gradients so well.

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Get 'em drunk. That always works for me. I've had three beers, and I feel smarter already.

Yooper said:

Get 'em drunk. That always works for me. I've had three beers, and I feel smarter already.

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But then nobody in the room would be sober.

JonM said:

No rule that says you have to do a 5-gallon batch. You can always run it through Beersmith and reduce the batch size to something that will fit in your 5-Fallon cooler. Green Bay Rackers says you can get 15-ish pounds in there at 1 qt/lb, so maybe do a 3.5 gal batch?

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This is the closest to a correct answer in the entire thread.

I do A TON of high gravity batches with my 5 gallon cooler. I just do them as a 2.5 gallon batch.

If I'm making a bigger beer I'm often doing a 2.5 gallon batch instead of a 5 gallon one the 14 pounds of grain that can be held in a 5 gallon makes a beer with an og of 1.151. That's a pretty big beer if you ask me.

I find that one case of big beers is often more than enough.

In fact my first partigyle pumpkin ale was 2 2.5 gallon beers from the same grainbed. A strong ale and a regular amber ale. They were 2 stove top beers from my lowly 5 gallon mash tun.

Here.

You can also do two mashes, sparge each on their own, then boil down one, add the other when the room allows, and boil down to your final volume and/or gravity.

The last test batch I did was a small batch, but I still had to boil down 6 gallons (what I had after sparge) to 2 gallons to achieve the gravity I wanted. The main issue here is that it takes a lot of water to make the higher gravity beers. Get rid of the water after you take the sugar out of the grain and there you go.

You would be surprised how a vigorous rolling boil will drop the volume before you know it!

Has anyone done a big 5 gallon beer or a 10 gallon regular batch with a 5 gallon mash tun and used fresh LME in place of some 2 row grain to hit the OG? If so how much did it affect the taste? Could you tell the difference? I went from extract straight to all grain back when I made the jump. I can boil the full 10 gallon batch, but my mash tun is too small. I don't want 10 gallons of beer that tastes like the old days, but there are times when making 10 at one time would be great if it tastes like all grain.