how much should I start off with? Limited equipment....

I built a mash tun that's big enough to do 5-10 gallons however I can't yet afford a bigger brew pot, and I've been searching for a cheap keg on craigslist but can't find any that are cheap locally.

The pot I have can fit 4 gallons with some space or 5 gallons up to the brim, and I can probably borrow a turkey frying pot from a friend that could probably fit 5 or 6 gallons in it.

I want to put together a hefewiezen and test out the new mash tun. How much do you think I could brew with this setup? 4 gallons?

Also could anyone reccomend a german hefewiezen recipe for me to try?

In a five you can boil four or a smidge more, just keep a close on it until you get through the hot break, or you're at risk of boil over. In a six you can boil five. In either case, assume about a 10% loss in a 60 minute boil, yielding either 4.5 or 5.4 gallons into the fermenter.

get fermcap. its works and allows you to boil maximum amounts. you still need to be attentive during the hot break and hop additions, but besides those I regularily walk away from my almost full boiling pot quite often...no boilovers yet.

I agree with JNye, get some fermcap. I have an 8 gallon pot, and I have sucessfully boiled 7.5 gallons without a boil over. The stuff is amazing. I believe I have a pic of how full it was.


You can see the hot break ring at the top of the pot.

Hmm... after reading into it I'm going to have to give this stuff a try. Could have used this stuff in my strawberry wheat beer that clogged up my airlock sent strawberries to my ceiling.

HH60gunner said:

Hmm... after reading into it I'm going to have to give this stuff a try. Could have used this stuff in my strawberry wheat beer that clogged up my airlock sent strawberries to my ceiling.

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Yep give it a shot. It is well worth it IMHO.

You can also do a split boil. Boil 1/2 the initial target volume in 1 pot, 1/2 in the other (if you have 2 stoves, or two electric burners on a stovetop). Split the hop additions, etc.

Combine at the end in your fermenter.

portalgod said:

You can also do a split boil. Boil 1/2 the initial target volume in 1 pot, 1/2 in the other (if you have 2 stoves, or two electric burners on a stovetop). Split the hop additions, etc.

Combine at the end in your fermenter.

Click to expand...

Yep you sure can do that. Just make sure to take into account the additional boiloff that you will experiance using 2 pots. Also if you do end up using two pots, try and make sure you mix the wort good before you spilt it into the pots. If you take just the first runnings in one pot and seconds in the other, your hop utilzation will be different per pot due to gravity differences. Another thing that helps is starting the boil on the second pot later so your not watching for boilovers in 2 pots at the same time and when cooling if you only have 1 wort chiller/ice bath available it makes it a bit easier to manage. Thats how I first started doing AG before I got a bigger pot.

You can mash for higher gravity and then top off in the fermenter and do a partial boil just like as with extract.