All grain kits from Midwest Supplies?

[VampireSix]

Does anyone know if the all grain kits from Midwest come with the base malts separated from the specialty grains, or are they all mixed together?

I know someone who bought some all grain kits from Midwest, but isn't setup to brew them. I'm not set up for all grain either, so I'd like to convert the kits to partial mash so they could at least be used.

 

[Face Eater]

I haven't bought one in a while but they were all mixed. You may be able to put in a request for it to be separated.

 

[wickman6]

What size pot do you use for brewing now? You might be able to biab on your stovetop. A friend of mine is doing just that, the drawback being that he has to split the mash and boil in two. He uses a 20 qt pot. It's double the work, but he doesn't seem to mind for now, at least until he can get equipment for a full boil.

He then combines the 2 half batches in the fermentor and from there on out its the same as any other batch.

 

[VampireSix]

I've got a 30 quart pot in which my stove will allow me to boil 5 gallons. With a boil off of about .5 gallons, that's close to enough for a full boil, but not quite.

I also just purchased a 20 quart pot to do my own BIAB partial mash dunk sparging.

Wickman, how is your friend sparging?

 

[wickman6]

He heats his sparge water in a smaller pot while the mash is working, then simply lifts out the bag of grain from the bigger pot/mash tun and puts it in the smaller pot. The bigger pot he brings to boil, then dumps the smaller pots contents into the bigger one. This gives him his final boil volume in the bigger pot.

Basically like making tea, but with sweet delicious wort.

He gets better efficiency this way than I get with my cooler mlt.

 

[wickman6]

Edit: I see you already mentioned dunk sparge. I said the same thing, just the long winded version. Haha

 

[VampireSix]

So I'm going to end up needing four pots (two mash/boil, two for sparging) to do one of these all grain kits? That sounds like one heck of a brew day.

 

[wickman6]

So I'm going to end up needing four pots (two mash/boil, two for sparging) to do one of these all grain kits? That sounds like one heck of a brew day.

That's one way to do it, he goes back to back with 2 pots. Definitely not ideal, but he makes do.

 

[wickman6]

You know, you might be able to mash all of your grain and do a near full boil and top up at the end. That way, you would do only one mash and boil with the equipment you already have. Just a thought.

 

[VampireSix]

For some reason, I'd been thinking that about 8lbs of grains was the limit of what I could mash in my 30 quart pot. Does this sound accurate?

 

[VampireSix]

I went back over my calculations, and I had been calculating 5 gallons for boil, -2 gallons for sparge = 3 gallons for mashing. At 1.5 quarts per pound of grain, that comes out to 8 lbs of grain.

I didn't know all-grain batches could be topped off.

 

[wickman6]

I think 12# would be max, but right to the top. 5# grain is about a gallon of displacement. Mashed at 1.5 qt/# of water to grain, that's 30qts. I wouldn't try moretthan 10 or 11#, and mash a little thicker. Maybe 1.25 qt/#. 10# at 1.5 qt/# would get you about 23qts total, giving you space to stir.

 

[wickman6]

I went back over my calculations, and I had been calculating 5 gallons for boil, -2 gallons for sparge = 3 gallons for mashing. At 1.5 quarts per pound of grain, that comes out to 8 lbs of grain.

I didn't know all-grain batches could be topped off.

Sure they can. If you have less boil volume with a given amount of grain, your gravity will increase, giving you room gravity wise to top up. You could also boil some second runnings in the smaller pot while the main boil is rockin, then top up with that rather than water.

 

[VampireSix]

I finally got a hold of the guy who has the all grain kits. The grains are all mixed up, just like Face Eater said.

At least I'll get my BIAB all grain split-boil system down.