brew 10 gal all grain in a 10 gal kettle...??

Anyone can give me any advice on how to brew a 10 gal all grain brew but all I have is a 10 gal pot. I just scorred a keg but I have not converted it yet. Brewing today.

Thanks!!

Richie

What size Mash tun do you have?

You can't - unless you use two pots. You can do about 8 gallons if you are careful.

You might need to split your batch...I'm guessing two 5-gal. batches. Split your hop bill in half, and just do 2 boils. It's extra time, but I think that's the...um...cleanest way to do it.

That is the way I did my batches before I got a large enough brew kettle, split. It is a pita, but works fine. You'll need to distribute your hops accordingly....plus here is the clincher....you are collecting a higher gravity wort in the first kettle and the second will be lower gravity. Mixing them is not adviseable, although you could but it is a chance for HSA. Then if you really want to be accurate to your recipe you'll need to measure the boil gravity of each pot and then add your hops accordingly. Cooling is fun too. But fwiw, here is how I'd approach it. Max out your 10 gallon leaving enough headspace. The rest of your wort will most likely be a smaller amount. As this boils off you can add it gently into the main kettle. Do the bittering and possibly flavor hops seperately (or until the smaller amount of wort can be added to the main) and then aroma hops addition in the one large kettle. The reason for this is it makes cooling easier. Hope that helps.

As rdwj said - do eight gallons, at most.

If you HAVE to do ten, one approach you could take, if the beer itself isn't all that big - develop the recipe as if it were for a bigger beer, collect eight, maybe 8.5 gallons of runnings (off a huge amount of grain), boil it, then top off in the fermenter with a gallon. Not ideal, your efficiency will be crap, but that's my only thought. If your target is a 1050 beer, develop the recipe as if it were eight gallons of a 1060 (or whatever the math would work out to), then dilute it in the fermenter.

Why not save the trouble and halve the recipe?

Trying to do a 10 gallon AG batch in a 10 gallon pot is a little like trying to put 15 gallons of wort in a 10 gallon pot. Splitting a batch is tricky and only works if you have TWO 10 gallon pots and a great deal of experience. Mashing big and throwing away most of the sugars (by under sparging) still leaves you trying to boil 10 gallons of wort in a 10 gallon pot, a dicey proposition at best.

Do a smaller batch today.

Get a die grinder w/ a cut-off disk after that keg. You'll have a 15 gallon keggle in 30 minutes tops! You can add the ball valve drain later. ;-)

How about : start boiling as soon as youve got wort to boil. Fill the pot to a safe level, 8 gallons? Then as it boils down, add more wort. If you are carefully watching to prevent boilover, maybe you can end up with 9 g to transfer to your fermenter, then top up to 10 with boiled, cooled water. You would have boiled your hops for the full time in nearly the full wort, everything would have been boiled for sanitation. ummm, ummm, I can't see anything wrong, that's why I do it to make 7 1/2 g batchs in a 9 g kettle, from 9- 10g of runnings.