Pot too small

[cabbie92]

My neighbor is a pit master and we've made an arrangement where I give him homebrew and he gives me ribs and brisket! I do BIAB and with this great arrangement I took it as an opportunity to upgrade to a 15.5 gallon pot so I can do 10 gal batches (I'd hate to make just 5 gallons and give it all away). I did my first batch in my new pot (an IPA) and quickly realized that I can't get all my mash water into the pot with all the grain.

I read lots of posts on here before I got my new pot to make sure it would be large enough, but I guess I didn't check on the types of beers that others are making. I now have to essentially sparge my grain to get my full pre-boil volume which is counter-intuitive to the simple BIAB process I like. Do others have this problem when doing 10 gal batches (post boil volume) in 15 gal pots? I'm a little frustrated and am contemplating a 20 gal pot, but it would probably be too big for the 5 gal batches I will still do fairly often.

 

[tservice]

I have the same size as you. I will be biab soon. I would have thought it would have been large wnough to do 10 gallons.

 

[chumpsteak]

Install a valve and a braid and just mash in the pot with batch sparge. Or better yet go buy yourself a 48qt cooler and build a cheap mash tun.

 

[cabbie92]

@ tservice- it isn't, at least not for ipa's. I have beersmith and should have created a test recipe to determine volumes. I have a recipe with over 26 lbs of grain and it specifies about 18 gals of mash run volume if I recall correctly ( don't have the recipe handy) to account for grain absorption, boil- off, etc. in my first batch I had to sparge 3 gallons after removing my grains to get my pre-boil volume. I wish I had thought of setting up a test beersmith profile to check my recipes before buying.

 

[tservice]

@cabbie92 thanks for the heads up. will make a mash tun. I am glad I seen your thread before I did the same thing. Have a good X-Mas