5gal to 10 gal grain bill

[skallywag_brewing]

I have been brewing in five gallon batches for awhile and have had friends and family ask for more. I would like to start brewing 10 gallon all-grain batches and wonder do i just double the grain bill for 5 gallon batches? I have looked at the recipes and noticed that some people double the grain bill while others leave it at the original 5 gallons.

 

[SavoryChef]

Just double it. Use a recipe program like BeerSmith and it will help a lot.

 

[Natdavis777]

+1 for a program, as sometimes its not always just doubling of the numbers...

 

[fimpster]

I have looked at the recipes and noticed that some people double the grain bill while others leave it at the original 5 gallons.

I'm curious to know where you saw people brew 10 gallons with a 5 gallon grain bill.

 

[TungstenBeer]

I'm curious to know where you saw people brew 10 gallons with a 5 gallon grain bill.

I'd love to know how to get 10 gallons of beer out of a 5 gallon grain bill!

But seriously, I'm assuming that they just used the same percentages.

 

[wardens355]

You may need to up your grain amounts a little bit more than double. For example: For a 5-gallon batch you want 5.5 gallons of cooled wort. Let's assume after boil-off & shrinkage, you lose 1.5 gallons. Your pre-boil wort is going to be 7 gallons. When you move to 10-gallon batches, you will probably want to end up with 11 gallons of cooled wort. Assuming the same boil-off & shrinkage rate, you would need a pre-boil volume of 12.5 gallons. However, to try to match your 5-gallon efficiency, you would need to run-off an extra 1.5 gallons (scaling 2X from 7 gallons pre-boil to 14 gallons pre-boil) and then boiloff an extra 1.5 gallons. If you don't, you will likely have a slightly lower starting gravity.

I would guess maybe 5% extra grain or so.

Just a thought.

 

[jgers]

Doubling the recipe is the easy part -- the equipment and process is the tricky bit.

You need twice the mash tun space (maybe you already have a 10g cooler) and twice the kettle space (in one or more kettles). You will have one burner working on twice as much wort (unless its in 2 kettles on 2 burners) and your chiller will also have to work through twice as much hot wort. There are some big growing pains with upsizing batches - either in time, labor or money for bigger equipment.

Jason