50 gallon boil

Ok, hi everyone, im brand spanking new here. Im looking to get into some serious brewing and im going to need to be boiling around 50 gallons. I havent done the exact calculations yet but i will be useing 42 gallon fermenters so 50 gallons is a close enough estimate to matter for now. I would prefer propane over electric just because i have the rare opportunity of getting it for free. I'm trying to find out all my options, i would prefer cheap if not mostly homemade, i have many resources like welders, pipes you name it etc. etc. I havent yet passed the 5 gallon brew barrier but ya gotta start somewhere. Any help or suggestions will be great. I look forward to talking to all of you. Thanks.

You will probably have to build your own burner stand with a few burners on it unless you can find one HUGE burner. Your gonna need huge BTU numbers and your gonna need to insulate your boil kettle. Your biggest issue is going to be a mash tun to hold 2 sacks of grain plus specialty malt. I have a 162 qt cooler and that is the limit for it I would guess. Don't forget about heating water for that beer! and where will you collect the wort coming from the mash tun??? Can'tput it directly into the kettle if you plan on using the kettle to heat the water for the next addition. Gotta have a lot of buckets. how do you plan on chilling all of this wort? You'll need glycol or a chiller that won't consume a zillion gallons of water to chill it all. probably goingto need at least one march pump, maybe 2 cfc's for the 2 spigots on your boil kettle? You have to get the wort chilled quickly otherwise any "aroma" hops you put in will be in there so long that they'll become bittering hops. You local? I could go on and on about this for hours.

Good you're keeping my on my toes, i like the multi burner idea and insulation for the kettle. im gonna get a pen and paper for measurments and do some internet hunting to see what i come up with. I will post some of my ideas/findings. Thanks woodward.

And..... subscribed. I want to see some pictures when this thing is done!

Another guy looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Kep us informd and Best of Luck!!!

I too have started the wheels in motion for a 50 gallon setup, so I am interested as well. If I have any epiphanies, I will be sure to chime in.

I use propane as well. However I use it from the 100lbs tanks because the 20's freeze up.

Check out the equipment section and the diy section if you haven't already for some more 50+ gallon setups. I've got one in the beginning stages as well (see sig). Best of luck, and update often! Pics are worth a thousand words!

Are you using more than one fermenter for each batch? Because I think that those 42 gallon fermenters are ment to ferment 1 barrel batches which would only be 31 gallons, and slightly easier to boil/coil/etc. either way that is awesome and i wish i had the ability to go anywhere close to that size! Good luck!

I did some recipe measurements for a 40 gallon batch, all of this is from many 5 gallon recipes averaged out and multiplied by 8. Heres what i came up with: +/-80lbs grain witch by my current methods would need +/-25 gallons for the mash and 40 gallons for the sparge. Then assuming around 8 gallons of water would be absorbed by the grains leaving me with 57 gallons to boil, and i find it hard to bieleve 17 gallons is going to be lost by evaporation during the boil. So what is it that im going to have to skimp on, mash water or sparge? Unless i am under estimating the amount absorbed by the grain or boiled off, once again this is all calculated from my expierience using suggested measurement for 5 gallon batches multiplied by 8.

I will be using 2 fermenters and i am antisipating quite a bit of blow off during primary which i prefer.

MattTheBrewer said:

i find it hard to bieleve 17 gallons is going to be lost by evaporation during the boil. So what is it that im going to have to skimp on, mash water or sparge? Unless i am under estimating the amount absorbed by the grain or boiled off, once again this is all calculated from my expierience using suggested measurement for 5 gallon batches multiplied by 8.

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You won't multiply the boil off by 8. It's determined by the exposed surface area of the boiling wort. What is the surface area of your current pot compared to the area of your bigger boil pot?

well actually it should be the same i am using a 32quart pot and plan on getting a 200quart pot of the same style and manufaturer. Im not sure of exact dimentions but from the pictures is just much larger.

Both pots won't be the same diameter. That's what determines the surface area.

bja said:

Both pots won't be the same diameter. That's what determines the surface area.

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Maybe it will be the same diameter, just 6' taller

I'm assuming an 18-20% boil off for my 40 gallon kettle, but it may be even more

Just out of curiosity, assuming you are not trying to get a license and start a proper nano-brewery, and that you live with another adult... you do realize you are not legally allowed to do more than 4 of these 50 gallon batches in a year?

Lol, and the "enforcer" chimes in. I'm certain you broke the law in some way today. Maybe it was a simple little thing like speeding????

If the beer is all gone then how can you prove that I actually brewed? All they can count is what's in the keg now, and as long as it isn't over 200 then I guess that's all I brewed this year.

twoodward15 said:

I'm assuming an 18-20% boil off for my 40 gallon kettle, but it may be even more

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You don't get percentage boil off, its a constant based on the pot diameter and btus.


A 50g pot with 25g is going to boil off 1g in the same time as with 40g.

yeah the proper licensing and communication with county and city is in the beggining stages now. The whole plan behind this is to supply the local bar with a next door brewed tap beer, maybe even something as unique as a constant tally of patrons wishes for us to brew next. I am in a small town with only one well known and very populated bar. I may be a bit optimistic about it but i think the idea would be a big hit and people would ethusiastically vote for a new beer a month kind of thing.

What are you planning on heating this with?

propane with a multi burner stand.

Hey Matt no matter what you read here, keep working on it and take it one step at a time. I wish you the best of luck. Pics are always appreciated!

Hey guys i got another question. I need a massive counter flow wort chiller now. I was planing on making one using garden hose outer pipe and running water through it with a 1/4hp 22gpm water pump at the bottom of a larger bucket of ice water but im thinking that may not be enough(the flow of wort not chilling water) so i was wondering if any one had some good ideas for a high flow chiller, once again it will have to run 40 gallons of hot wort through it as fast as possible. The whole project: going good, i have three 42 gallon fermenters now. I need to get a huge brew pot and some more propane burners now but otherwise good. By the way the Gov of good ole' MN just made it legal to sell homebrew!!! Making my job easier and less paper work!!!!! Ok my Maple Sap Porter is just about done with the protein rest, Thanks for the help everyone.

MattTheBrewer said:

Hey guys i got another question. I need a massive counter flow wort chiller now. I was planing on making one using garden hose outer pipe and running water through it with a 1/4hp 22gpm water pump at the bottom of a larger bucket of ice water but im thinking that may not be enough(the flow of wort not chilling water) so i was wondering if any one had some good ideas for a high flow chiller, once again it will have to run 40 gallons of hot wort through it as fast as possible.

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Matt, what did you solution end up being?

Here's a pic of our group's 50 gallon pot. We are going to see if we can use two or three banjo burners to heat it. Cooling is a bridge we have not jumped off yet.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=1618448338037&set=t.1581332667&theater

MattTheBrewer said:

Hey guys i got another question. I need a massive counter flow wort chiller now. I was planing on making one using garden hose outer pipe and running water through it with a 1/4hp 22gpm water pump at the bottom of a larger bucket of ice water but im thinking that may not be enough(the flow of wort not chilling water) so i was wondering if any one had some good ideas for a high flow chiller, once again it will have to run 40 gallons of hot wort through it as fast as possible. The whole project: going good, i have three 42 gallon fermenters now. I need to get a huge brew pot and some more propane burners now but otherwise good. By the way the Gov of good ole' MN just made it legal to sell homebrew!!! Making my job easier and less paper work!!!!! Ok my Maple Sap Porter is just about done with the protein rest, Thanks for the help everyone.

Click to expand...

I'm a little late to this party, but good threads never die!
I made this pre wort chiller chiller that chills 27 gallons from boiling to 70°F in 20 minutes. The 120 quart cooler is filled with water and ice to prechill the wort chilling water which runs through two parallel aluminum radiators, housed in a protective 3d printed shell with one panel removed to reveal the radiators, and then an old homebuilt copper tube coil made of 1/2" copper pipe. From there the chill water goes through the parallel blichman chill plates (they're not the cheapest, but I believe them when they say that they didn't cut corners and use leaded solder) the water then goes to either my drip irrigation system in my garden or the drain, depending on the season. I have a submersible pump nested inside of the copper coil to recirculate the cooler water, through the radiators to keep the ice melting. I pile the right side of the cooler with ice and continually top off as it melts.
I live in Wisconsin so I see a large fluctuation in ground water temperatures...from 65° during an August heat wave to 35° during a January arctic blast. I make blocks of ice ahead of time, 1.5 gallon pucks stashed in the deep freeze at 0° or 5 gallon buckets in the backyard, depending on the season. In August, I'll use 55# pounds of deep freeze cold ice to prechill the water to cool 27 gallons, my most recent brew this January used less than 10#...and I may have had the water chilled an hour ahead of time too.
I'm not sure what the flow rate is, but I'm using a blichman pump to circulate the wort through a 1/2" stainless pipe system, including two parallel blichman chill plates, and city water pressure (50psi) to push through the resistance of two parallel radiators, a custom bent 10' piece of 1/2" copper and two parallel chill plates.
I'm thinking about going up to a 50 gallon brew kettle and adding a third chill plate... I figure that it should still chill a full kettle down in a half hour or less.
This was a considerable investment, but it made a huge improvement in the quality and flavor of the beer, not to mention the reduced time to turn a batch.

Can I just say, now that this thread is resurrected, you would have to really love your recipe to brew 50 gallons of it!

I have 4 recipes that I really love (pilsner, spotted cow, russian imperial stout and a scottish ale) that are all lights out.. enough that I'm wanting to continue upgrading the system to make more!