Reflections on the day:
10 gallon batches push the absolute limits of my mash-tun and boil kettle. Tun capacity looked ok after mashing-in (which we NAILED the temp on), but when I realized that I needed to add over 2.5 gallons of water for as a mash-out step and there was about 2 gallons of space in the tun.....
I did a single batch sparge and wasn't able to get all of that into the tun either. Again, I needed about 1/2 gallon more space than I had in the tun.
At the end of sparging, we had just a bit over 10 gallons in the kettle... should have probably had 11.5 or so, but we did not bother topping it off. I was already concerned about my llittle propane burner being able to handle boiling that much wort.
We put 4.5 gallons into two carboys through teh Baron's CFC and threw them into the fermentation fridge in the garage to cool off a little more. Temps were at 60*F last night, so one had a starter of bohemian pilsner pitched, and the other had a packet of dry swiss lager yeast (WTF is
that anyway?) It'll be interesting to see the differences caused by the two yeasts.
One thing is certain: This is going to be a hefty pilsner. The kit assumed 70% efficiency, we got about 80%, and we are about a gallon short in the fermenter because of not topping off.
Target was 10 gallons of 1.051 wort. We've got about 9 gallons @ 1.064.
I am considering topping off the fermenters when I rack to secondary or as part of the warming up for a diacetyl rest in primary.
boooo-ya! :rockin:
