Partial boil with an AG brew.

Just wondering if this is possible. I just finished bottling my second extract brew and I will be getting my third into the fermenter tonight. I'm wanting to try an AG brew next. My only dilemma is I live in military apartments in Germany and my stove SUCKS. I can get 2 gallons of water to a rolling boil, any more and it just kind of sputters. This has been ok with my extract brews, but I'm not sure how I'd work with this in an all-grain brew. Here's my idea, any suggestions or verification on this would be appreciated:

Everywhere I've looked, when mashing for a 5 gallon yield of beer you tend to get 4-5 gallons of mash. I can't boil 5 gallons of mash, so can I just put 3 gallons into my fermenter bucket, then boil up 2 gallons of the mash with my hops and such? Then, just mix together that 2 gallons of wort with my other 3 gallons of mash? Will that work?

Chris

It's great that you want to go AG but you can't do a full All grain with out a full boil.

There are a few options.

Settle on doing a partial mash (i.e mini AG) for half the batch then do a extract batch for the remainder and top up the AG.
Boil the batch in two halves splitting the hops.
Stick with Steeping and mini mashes until you get a turkey fryer or another way to do full boils.
The reason full boils are needed is that to extract the maximum sugars from the grains you take wort down to around 1010 gravity so the over all gravity of the wort is lower and the volume larger.
If you where to only boil part of the wort the final gravity would be low.
Now you could put the first running (high gravity) in the ferementer and just boil the second running (lower gravity) but the problem with that is hop utilisation and the fact that a full boil drives off volatile unwanted chemicals. One of the easiest ways to boil wort is in a plastic pail with a couple of kettle elements in it or an immersion heater. Take a look at my links for my hot water boiler.

So in conclusion I'd say stick to mini mashes and steeping unless you want to boil the wort in 3 parts.

Thanks for the reply! A turkey frier is a great idea, I was trying to think of some way I could heat the full boil other than my stove.

Gonna definitely get one, thanks again.

Chris

seefresh said:

Thanks for the reply! A turkey frier is a great idea, I was trying to think of some way I could heat the full boil other than my stove.

Gonna definitely get one, thanks again.

Chris

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Are turkey fryers available in Germany? I seem to remember reading that Europe's not into the turkey fryer thing. IIRC, a lot of European HBT members have looked into getting U.S. users to ship fryers to them...

If that's the case, look into getting a propane camp cooker, that puts out a decent amount of BTUs. Then buy at minimum a 32qt stock pot if you only plan on doing 5 gallon batches. But, getting a turkey fryer set is definitely cheaper, so go that route if they're available in your area. Good luck!

I can order online and have it shipped to me. How big of a turkey fryer can I get? I figured they didn't make em bigger than 32qt. I'd love to start some 10 gallon batches.

seefresh said:

I can order online and have it shipped to me. How big of a turkey fryer can I get? I figured they didn't make em bigger than 32qt. I'd love to start some 10 gallon batches.

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You'd definitely have to split it into two separate boils if you want to do ten gallon batches (I'm sure I didn't need to tell you that, though). Truth be told, an 8 gallon turkey fryer pot will be pushing the limits of five gallon boiling. Typically, when brewing a 5.5 gallon AG batch, you're going to collect around 7 gallons of pre-boil wort. So, with a 32qt pot, you've got one gallon's worth of space to combat boilovers (not too much, IMO). So, if you get one of these, make sure you have a spray bottle filled with water nearby to control the foaming during the hot break.

I was all set on buying a 28qt SS turkey fryer set, when many helpful folks on this site told me that was really pushing the limits of 5 gallon batches. I eventually opted to convert a keg into a boil kettle. Now I have the flexibility of doing 10 gallon batches with ease if I ever want to.

This isn't exactly related, but another way to combat boil-overs is to make an addition of 0.25 - 0.5 oz of hops right at the beginning of the boil. The hop oils help keep the boil from foaming up too much. So this way you might be able to get away with having a little more wort in a smaller pot.

Well, I don't have have a turkey fryer yet. So I do two 1/2 boils. I used two 4 or 5gallon pots, and drained equally into them. I started with just under 7 gallons, and ended up with 5. I put half the hops into each pot. But if you're having trouble boiling more than 2 gallons that might not be ideal, unless you're doing half batches. You can do that, too.

This is the only way I can do this in my kitchen. When I get a turkey fryer and wort chiller, I'll move outside (at least in the summer).