Is is possible to do 5 gal. AG with one 7.5 gallon kettle?

I'm trying to figure out if I can do my next batch AG or not. I can probably afford to buy a cooler and make the mash tun, but I can't afford to buy larger kettles/another burner.

absolutely. look up "brew in a bag" or "stove top brewing" or "BIAB"

All you need is a big nylon bag and crushed grain.

I've made dozens of batches using a single 7.5 gallon turkey fryer kettle and burner. It works great!

One kettle and a mash tun will work okay. You'll probably have to batch sparge so you can use the kettle to collect the runnings.

You'll need a mash tun of course and something to sparge into. You can accomplish this with three food grade plastic buckets. A bucket in bucket MLT/LT (see pic), and another food grade bucket to sparge into. This way, you can use your kettle for a HLT while you sparge and then transfer the wort into the kettle. A 7.5 gallon kettle is a bit small though, it'll work but you'll have to be super careful about boil overs.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, with only brewpot/kettle, its easier to fly sparge. Because you can heat your mash water, do the infusion mash. Then while mashing you heat up all your sparge water and then move it to a bucket/another cooler to sparge with (as in the pic above, but the sparge bucket isn't shown). Then you can start your runnings in the now-empty brew kettle.

You could do at most 6.5 gal of wort in the 7.5 gal kettle. After 60 min boil, its going to be like 5.5 gal. And then you will loss some vol to hop material and/or shrinkage (not that kind of shrinkage, cooling of the wort).

So you will end up with a bit less than 5 gal of beer in the end, but it will still be YOUR beer.

Then you can get a larger kettle or a keggle later.

With the system I mentioned you could fly sparge as well. You don't have to batch sparge.

alcibiades said:

absolutely. look up "brew in a bag" or "stove top brewing" or "BIAB"

All you need is a big nylon bag and crushed grain.

I've made dozens of batches using a single 7.5 gallon turkey fryer kettle and burner. It works great!

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I just did 2 batches BIAB in 40 qt pot and even that its too close to the top for my comfort. I though that with BIAB mashing really thin is a key to good efficency. So for 5 gal batch you need to start with 7.5 gal of water + 10-12 lbs of grains. How you going to fit that in 7.5 gal kettle and then not worry to splash it around when stirring and such

Ok so its possible, albeit maybe a little tricky. What about this: the recipe I'm going to do, Black IPA from NB http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/black-ipa-extract-kit-2.html, requires a mashout. How could I handle that?

My only thought was to use my kettle for heating the water for the mashout and the sparge. Then use some buckets to catch the wort while sparging, after sparging is complete, transfer the wort back to my kettle and do the boil like normal.

JohnK can you explain that bucket idea again? I see the picture but I don't know what is going on there exactly? It looks to be very smart and innovative to me.

I have a 8gal pot, and have no problem doing AG batches with full boils. I can even do high gravity 90min boils and end up with 5.5 gal, but those are almost all the way to the top, and i have to watch them very carefully to avoid boilover.

For 90% of the beers out there, you'll have no problem doing full boil AG batches.

neb_brewer said:

Ok so its possible, albeit maybe a little tricky. What about this: the recipe I'm going to do, Black IPA from NB http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/black-ipa-extract-kit-2.html, requires a mashout. How could I handle that?

My only thought was to use my kettle for heating the water for the mashout and the sparge. Then use some buckets to catch the wort while sparging, after sparging is complete, transfer the wort back to my kettle and do the boil like normal.

Click to expand...

Yup that'll work.

Lilahblossom said:

JohnK can you explain that bucket idea again? I see the picture but I don't know what is going on there exactly? It looks to be very smart and innovative to me.

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So this is the ZAPAP sytem that is described in Papazian's books as well as by others such as Mosher in Radical Brewing. The set-up consists of one bucket with a spigot and another standard food grade bucket with holes drilled in the bottom. The bucket with the holes simply fits inside the buckt with spigot crating a false bottom. Drilling the holes is a bit tedious but it's well worth it. Use an 1/8th inch bit and drill about ten holes per square inch in the bottom (I think I went one size smaller on the bit). I can take some more pictures and post them when I get home later if you want. Let me know.

I actually mash in one single food grade bucket because I don't like the dead space between the two buckets. I then transfer the mash to the double bucket system and do a mash out. I then fly sparge by trickling out at about a quart per minute keeping the water level in the double bucket just above the grain. To insulate the during the mash, I put my kettle lid on the top of the bucket and then cover with blankets or towels, I never lose more than 1 degree f. It's been argued on here before extensively but I think the food grade buckets are made of better plastic than coolers. They are rated to 180f, have fun finding what the coolers are rated for (they are after all coolers, not heaters). Let's not get into this argument in this thread though. Bottom line is that the ZAPAP system is cheap, easy to store, easy to clean, is very efficient, and easy to use.

Another option is to actually buy a false bottom to place in a single bucket, this is more expensive but is still cheaper than a cooler and works as well.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions or would like to see more pics.

About 10 cents worth of Fermcap-S solves a lot of problems, in my experience.

JonK331 said:

Yup that'll work.

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If I can put the wort into some buckets I can totally pull this off without doing BIAB or the bucket method. Thanks for the input everybody.

One more thing: would I need to sanitize(of course they'll be thoroughly washed) the buckets before adding the wort to them? Or no since it'll all be boiled for an hour after coming into contact with whatever may be in the buckets.

No just make sure they are clean. So how are you planning on sparging then???

I have a coleman rectangle cooler, a 7.5 gal kettle, and my bottling bucket. I batch sparge and have been doing so for 10 or so AG batches. Pretty happy with the setup, although I do have my eye on a keggle...

I can get first and second runnings into the bucket all the time using the kettle to heat mash and sparge water, then add my final batch sparge to the MLT, and transfer 1st and 2nd runnings to kettle, flame on while getting the third runnings into the now-empty bucket.

The multiple bucket approach looks pretty good too.

And definitely recommend Fermcap S. If you want to do 90-minute boils, it is pretty much required for a 5-gal recipe and 7.5 gal kettle.

Good luck!

FTW

You could also FWH (first wort hop) to control the boil-over in the brew kettle. It is amazing at how much less of a "head/foam" you get when coming to a boil when you FHW. Plus the effect on the beer is a nice smooth bitterness. Perfect in APAs and IPAs.

The real debate is how you go about FHW hopping. Aroma hops? Bittering hops? How much? Inc/dec calc. bitterness?

But if you search the forum and elsewhere you can get solid advice on how to FHW.

I use a fermenting bucket to capture my liquor from the MashTun. Then drain the 8gal pot and pour the liquor from the bucket in, and start boil.

I might lose about 30 minutes of time this way, but for now it works. I am going to get a 15gal boil pot so I can do either 5 gal or 10 gallon batches.

I get the time back when cooling wort. My cooling system takes the 5.5 gallons from boiling to whatever temp I want in < 30 minutes. This is with gravity. Getting pump, should be able to cut time in half.

I forgot to mention that I capture all my cooling water in extra carboys and use to clean everything up afterwards.

JonK331 said:

No just make sure they are clean. So how are you planning on sparging then???

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I would think I could either batch or fly sparge. My only initial problem that I was running into was what to do with the with the wort if I was using my kettle to heat the water and that was with fly sparging. If I can drain into a couple buckets, then add to the kettle that should work.

I may be wrong, but if I batch sparge I won't even need the buckets to drain the wort into, would I? Just heat my sparge water, add it to the mash tun. Drain the wort into the now empty kettle. Am I missing something there?

I'd prefer to fly sparge if I could get better extraction with that method, but if batch sparging is less complicated and easier with my limited equipment then I'll probably do that.

Assuming you are using a cooler as a mash tun and you can batch sparge all at once with one "batch" of water and not totally disturb the grain bed, then no you don't need another vessel. I would probably sparge into a bucket just to be safe though.

Also, for the record, batch sparging is not necessarily easier or less complicated. Many people on here seem to think so but it is simply not the case. Three buckets is a heck of a lot cheaper than a cooler and ball valve and will work just fine for fly sparging.

neb_brewer said:

I would think I could either batch or fly sparge. My only initial problem that I was running into was what to do with the with the wort if I was using my kettle to heat the water and that was with fly sparging. If I can drain into a couple buckets, then add to the kettle that should work.

I may be wrong, but if I batch sparge I won't even need the buckets to drain the wort into, would I? Just heat my sparge water, add it to the mash tun. Drain the wort into the now empty kettle. Am I missing something there?

I'd prefer to fly sparge if I could get better extraction with that method, but if batch sparging is less complicated and easier with my limited equipment then I'll probably do that.

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You're supposed to drain the wort from the mash, then add sparge water.

I use my boil kettle to heat sparge water too. For now what I do is pour the sparge water into a 5gal cooler, place the mash tun on top of the 5gal cooler (for height), drain the wort from the mash into the kettle, place the mash tun on the floor, pour the appropriate amount of sparge water from the 5gal cooler into the mash tun, let sit for 10 min, drain into kettle.

I'm looking forward to having another kettle with a ball valve for the HLT, it'll save me so much hassle and pouring of hot liquids.

I use just the turkey fryer setup. While mashing in the cooler, I heat all my sparge water in the boil kettle a little hotter then usual, and dump that into another cooler to maintain temp as best as possible. I also heat up more water then I'll need just in case I make a mistake, since the kettle will be spoken for from that point on. I'll then drain first runnings into the boil kettle and then dump in my sparge water (usually i split it in two).

It works perfectly fine for me. But... an extra 20qt kettle and an extra burner would make a much smoother operation. My brewery is in its infancy stage yet though. I have years to get to the optimal setup.

bovineblitz said:

You're supposed to drain the wort from the mash, then add sparge water.

I use my boil kettle to heat sparge water too. For now what I do is pour the sparge water into a 5gal cooler, place the mash tun on top of the 5gal cooler (for height), drain the wort from the mash into the kettle, place the mash tun on the floor, pour the appropriate amount of sparge water from the 5gal cooler into the mash tun, let sit for 10 min, drain into kettle.

I'm looking forward to having another kettle with a ball valve for the HLT, it'll save me so much hassle and pouring of hot liquids.

Click to expand...

Right, I would do something similar to this. I really appreciate all of the feedback from everybody!

johndeere - I have been doing basically that for years. My wallet loves looking at all beer pron pics on here.

One last question and calculations check:

Here are my calcs for strike temp and amount of sparge water:

(.2/1.3)(152-70)+152 = 164.6 degrees for strike water

12.5lb grain x 1.3 ounces/lb = 16.25 = 4.1 Gal mash water

4.1 x 1.5 = 6.15 gallons sparge water

My question is this: I know that the grain absorbs some of the water, but I'm using 10 gallons of water. When draining to my kettle do I just stop once I have my 5.5-6 gallons of wort? Or, will it all even out that when the sparge water is out I'll have my correct amount?