The limits of an 8 gallon mash tun

I should have used my buddy's keggles, they were sitting right there, but I'm used to my setup, so I went with it.
For future reference, 18.5 #s of grain is the absolute max when mashing in an 8 gallon pot. It was so full I had to stir air out of it to get it all in the pot. I used 6 gallons of water, just a hair under 1 1/3 qt/liter, so I guess I could have left it a hair thicker. I collected down to 1.010 gravity then boiled in my 9 gallon pot, again, instead of a keggle. That was a mistake - it took for frakkin ever to boil down and get my all wort in there. In the end I got 7 full gallons at 1.088 OG - over 90% brewhouse efficiency the way I figure it. The whole thing took from ~ 10 AM until 9:30 PM. This had better be some good beer.

An epic brew day, that's for certain!
Hopefully it'll come out just as huge!

Cheers!

Why is it that you collect the runnings down to 1.010? Is this only necessary for larger grain bills or for any grain bill? That may seem like a simple question to you, but I only have 3 batches under my belt so I am very interested in the answer!

P.S. The first batch I ever tried was an IPA recipe I created on Beersmith that called for about 16 pounds of grain. I realized my mistake when I dumped all those grains into my 5 gallon mash tun and realized that I would have no room for water haha. I ended up cutting my recipe by a 1/3 and winging it. Oh, and I also found out that day you could not boil 6 gallons of wort on an electric stove! Strangely, the IPA turned out great .

Pat

mtbfan101 said:

Why is it that you collect the runnings down to 1.010? Is this only necessary for larger grain bills or for any grain bill? That may seem like a simple question to you, but I only have 3 batches under my belt so I am very interested in the answer!

P.S. The first batch I ever tried was an IPA recipe I created on Beersmith that called for about 16 pounds of grain. I realized my mistake when I dumped all those grains into my 5 gallon mash tun and realized that I would have no room for water haha. I ended up cutting my recipe by a 1/3 and winging it. Oh, and I also found out that day you could not boil 6 gallons of wort on an electric stove! Strangely, the IPA turned out great .

Pat

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Hey, you got three batches for one
I just hate to waste good wort. I was scaling a 5 gallon recipe up to 7 and I overshot a bit - I was shooting for 1.070. The significance of the gravity is that as your wort gets watery your ph goes up, you start extracting tannins which make your beer astringent - like sucking on a teabag.
If I'd been prepared, maybe I would have made yeast starters out of a couple of gallons. As it is, I guess I can call it an Imperial Bitter instead of just a strong bitter. I'm curious to see how the long boil Maillard reactions effects the final product.

mtbfan101 said:

Oh, and I also found out that day you could not boil 6 gallons of wort on an electric stove! Strangely, the IPA turned out great .

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The stove I have was in the house when I bought it. Glass-top electric, probably 5 years old. I boiled damn near 7.25g. in a 30qt. pot (yes, it was within an inch of the top the whole time) and continued to boil nearly 7g. until I had the rest of my wort into the BK. It took a while to get up to boil, but I had to turn it down a few times. Temp checked a few times and was above 212 with good circulation of wort.

tre9er said:

The stove I have was in the house when I bought it. Glass-top electric, probably 5 years old. I boiled damn near 7.25g. in a 30qt. pot (yes, it was within an inch of the top the whole time) and continued to boil nearly 7g. until I had the rest of my wort into the BK. It took a while to get up to boil, but I had to turn it down a few times. Temp checked a few times and was above 212 with good circulation of wort.

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Haha, wow. Lucky dog Do you still use the same system or have you moved onto a turkey burner? This may seem hard to believe but my electric stove top brought the wort up to just a couple ticks past 211 degrees. I'm not superstitious, but I was under the notion that the beer witch cast a spell on my stove at that point. I ended up putting the wort into two different vessels and that helped bring it to a boil.

I've made two batches, one smaller (boiled about 4-5g) and this last one that was damn-near 7.25g boiled (and 6 in the FV). Until the stove stops boiling and the outside temps warm-up, I'll probably keep brewing inside. I ordered two 32qt. kettles that I'm semi-unclear on the diameter, but they were cheap and commercial grade. If they don't boil well I'll switch to garage brewing with my neighbor's turkey fryer. I have 3-tier capability out there with huge built-in wooden shelf attached to back-wall and with BK on burner, it's below my saw-horse table that the mash-tun will be on. It should be very efficient that way, just not as cozy temp-wise for me!