Help Me Upgrade

Got 9 extract batches ( all with specialty grain steeping) under my belt and want to take it up a notch. My favorite part about home brewing, even more so than drinking the beer confused, is the brewing process itself. I'm looking to upgrade, but want to make smart decisions. First and foremost, I need to do full boils for the sake of beer quality, so I'm pretty sure a 8-10 gallon kettle will be the first new purchase. Propane burner probably in conjunction with it. I'll eventually go AG, but want to maybe try BIAB for a bit first before buying too much more equipment. Some sort of fermentation chamber would be nice so i can try lagers. Any suggestions what can make my brew day even more fun as I try to take a step up? Already have the following: IC, 6 gal Better Bottle, 5 gal carboy, 6.5 gal ale pail, 2 bottling buckets (with most bottling related stuff), digital scale and thermometers (though they kinda suck)...

I would definitely get a bigger pot. I am however going to recommend that you get a 15 gal pot, not a 10. My friend has a 10 gal and he barely has enough room to do a 5 gal batch. I took his advice and bought a 15 gall and I can choose to do 10 gall batches if I wanted to. I would hold off on a fermentation chamber as you can make great ales and the money could be used somewhere else. I would also consider getting a few more primary fermentation vessels. You can go to BIAB first, but very soon, you will want to go the traditional route and get a mash tun. So my recommendations are, a 15 gallon pot, a mash tun, and a few more primary fermentation vessels. And lines of course to go with it.

I am interested in this as well. I have about the same setup. I have been doing some all grain and partial mash BIAB on the stove top which has been a ton of fun. Unfortunately, I can only do about 4%abv all grain and I do partial boils.

From my research, it seems like a propane burner and a big bk would be a good next step. My basement stays at 64-65f so I don't need a ferm chamber just yet. More of an ale man. I'd love to get a Blichman bk, but can't justify it to the wife after just spending a good bit on a beautiful new bicycle.

Make yourself a keggle! Thats what i did, and i love it. I can do 10 gallon batches if i want, but also have plenty of room in there for 5 gallon batches during the hot break.
Then from there all you really need to do is make yourself a MLT from a cooler and some copper pipe.
One thing that you might want to concern yourself with is fermentation. Keeping your wort/beer at the right temp will have amazing effects on your beers. You might want to invest in that first. You can make some great Extract brews, but if you don't ferment at the right temperature, it may not turn out well.

I just made a similar transition a few months ago. I went with a propane burner, and 50 ft. copper immersion chiller. I already had an expensive 7.5 gallon aluminum pot, which is fine for now, but I'll be upgrading that shortly when I have more time to modify my half barrel keg. I've done BIAB with this setup. Since my BK is only 7.5 gallons, I just scale down the recipe to fit my equipment. I'd suggest using brewing software when transitioning to AG as well.

Bigger pot and propane will be a great addition.

a chest freezer and temp controller also.

full boil and easy temp controlled fermentation before anything else.

If you plan on going AG in the future then go with a 15gal pot or keggle.
Also you will need at least 2 burners; here is my two tier system:

I simply modified the height of the top burner of a King Kooker stand with cinder blocks so I can gravity feed my Mash tun to my Boil Kettle.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00264G584/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Fermentation Chamber is a must in the Texas heat, I picked up a standup freezer at a used appliance store and added a Ranco controller. I have $275 invested in it.

+1 on the keggle. After my first all grain batch, it was easy to see an upgrade was needed, and it has really paid off! Now I can go between 5 or 10 gallons with no issues or worries of not having enough room to collect the proper amount of runnings.

Keggles are awesome and can be the best bargain if you're able to score one through legal channels. I never would have spent money on a pot had I known how great keggles were for 5-10 gallon batches. I'm able to get kegs for $30 each once in a great while.

Bayou Classic SQ14 burner is a good choice for a keggle.

Get a weldless SS ball valve fitting set and build your own dip tube from copper. It's not hard at all.

Another nice option is to get a thermometer / sight glass combo from Bobby M's website. But if money is tight then you can just make a dipstick to gauge the volumes in your keggle and use a stick thermometer.

If you go AG, then I believe getting your own grain mill is a must. Sure, you can order pre-milled grains from a mail order place or have them milled at your LHBS, but you will invariably end up with less than satisfactory efficiencies from those places, and you won't be able to store unused grains for very long, and one of the fun parts of going AG is milling your own grains anyway. A $50 corona mill will do the job if money is tight.

If you don't use them already, invest in some silicon hose. Quick disconnect camlocks make brew days a lot easier as well.

If I can ask a potentially silly question related to the recommendations. I've see a few "get bigger than a 10 if you go All Grain" comments. Does it really matter that it's all grain? Wouldn't a full boil 5 gallon extract and a full boil 5 gallon AG be the same (provided both are 60min boils)?

On that note, do you really need that much extra room (over a 10gal) for a 5 gallon batch? I totally get future proofing, but if you are only boiling off around a gallon, that should give you 3-4 gallons of extra space if using a 10 for 5 gallons?

Not trying to hijack, figured it was relevant and I'm interested for my future upgrades as well

Kosch

I typically boil 7 gallons when doing a 90 minute 5 gal batch.
10 gal pot min; 15 gallon just works better.

For BIAB, this is a typical no sparge brew. So you need to have room for 8 gallons +10lbs of grain. You can do this in a 10gallon pot if you like; you just use less water. Top off water after removing the grain.

Consider this; it doesn't take more work to do a 10 gallon batch than a 5 gallon batch.
It does take a little more time to get up to boil, however many brewers will naturally move to 10 gallon batches because of this.

Kosch said:

If I can ask a potentially silly question related to the recommendations. I've see a few "get bigger than a 10 if you go All Grain" comments. Does it really matter that it's all grain? Wouldn't a full boil 5 gallon extract and a full boil 5 gallon AG be the same (provided both are 60min boils)?

On that note, do you really need that much extra room (over a 10gal) for a 5 gallon batch? I totally get future proofing, but if you are only boiling off around a gallon, that should give you 3-4 gallons of extra space if using a 10 for 5 gallons?

Not trying to hijack, figured it was relevant and I'm interested for my future upgrades as well

Kosch

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Yes, a five gallon full boil extract and a five gallon full boil AG would need the same BK size. Unless you want to get nit-picky and say that for a extract batch you could hold off on adding some of the extract until close to the end, and by that time some of the water would have boiled off, ergo, the extract batch would need a somewhat smaller BK.

If you're positive you're never going to do more than 5 gallon full-boil batches, then yes, a 10 gallon BK would be fine. But this hobby has a habit of making us go bigger and bigger, and brewing 10 gallons is about the same work as brewing 5, so...

I lose 1 gallon of water in a 60-minute boil, and I lose about a half of a gallon per carboy from trub and testing. So for a five gallon final volume batch I need a volume of 6.5 gallons pre-boil. Water expands about 4% when heated to boiling, so you have to account for that too. You could get away with an 8 gallon pot for a five gallon batch, but I would not go any less than that, and even with that 8 gallon pot you're going to have to watch it like a hawk.

LandoLincoln said:

Yes, a five gallon full boil extract and a five gallon full boil AG would need the same BK size. Unless you want to get nit-picky and say that for a extract batch you could hold off on adding some of the extract until close to the end, and by that time some of the water would have boiled off, ergo, the extract batch would need a somewhat smaller BK.

If you're positive you're never going to do more than 5 gallon full-boil batches, then yes, a 10 gallon BK would be fine. But this hobby has a habit of making us go bigger and bigger, and brewing 10 gallons is about the same work as brewing 5, so...

I lose 1 gallon of water in a 60-minute boil, and I lose about a half of a gallon per carboy from trub and testing. So for a five gallon final volume batch I need a volume of 6.5 gallons pre-boil. Water expands about 4% when heated to boiling, so you have to account for that too. You could get away with an 8 gallon pot for a five gallon batch, but I would not go any less than that, and even with that 8 gallon pot you're going to have to watch it like a hawk.

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Awesome, thank you for the detailed reply! I'm planning on getting a 10gal BK myself because I am 99% sure I won't be going for 10gal batches within the next few years, but I will be sure to re-think that when it's time to purchase.

Thanks!

Kosch

Everyone here is awesome. Thanks for the replies and input, I'm excited to make a jump and will take all of this under consideration. I think there's agreement that a bigger kettle (10-15 gal) and taking the operation outside with a propane burner are a must. If I'm thinking AG in the future a MLT is also on the must list. I would really like better control over temps, so a chest freezer and temp control would be the next items on the list it sounds like. Anyone have thoughts on how much I should expect to spend/know of good ways to keep costs down/wants to give me free stuff?

The other reason is that if you are going to spend the money on a 10 gal BK, a 15 gal is not that much more. The extra room is definitely worth the extra $ it would cost.

Kosch said:

If I can ask a potentially silly question related to the recommendations. I've see a few "get bigger than a 10 if you go All Grain" comments. Does it really matter that it's all grain? Wouldn't a full boil 5 gallon extract and a full boil 5 gallon AG be the same (provided both are 60min boils)?

On that note, do you really need that much extra room (over a 10gal) for a 5 gallon batch? I totally get future proofing, but if you are only boiling off around a gallon, that should give you 3-4 gallons of extra space if using a 10 for 5 gallons?

Not trying to hijack, figured it was relevant and I'm interested for my future upgrades as well

Kosch

Click to expand...

I have a 10 gallon pot and do 5 gallon all grain brews just fine.