Second all-grain: Strong Ale

I'm looking to brew my second all-grain batch this weekend and it's going to be a "bigger" beer. The recipe is as follows:

15.5# 2-row
1.5# Crystal 120L

2.5 oz Chinook, 60 min
.75 oz Chinook, 15 min
.75 oz Chinook, 5 min

I plan to use 1.25 quarts/pound which gives me 5.3125 gallons of water for the mash. Let's say after the mash I end up with 4.5 gallons of wort, so how would I batch sparge? Reading Bobby M's guide I'd batch sparge with 2 gallons (split into 2 sparges of 1 gallon each) of water to reach the 6.5 gallon pre-boil volume. How would this work? That seems like a small amount of water to batch sparge with. With bigger beers should I go down to 1 quart/pound of water?

Brett3rThanU said:

I'm looking to brew my second all-grain batch this weekend and it's going to be a "bigger" beer. The recipe is as follows:

15.5# 2-row
1.5# Crystal 120L

2.5 oz Chinook, 60 min
.75 oz Chinook, 15 min
.75 oz Chinook, 5 min

I plan to use 1.25 quarts/pound which gives me 5.3125 gallons of water for the mash. Let's say after the mash I end up with 4.5 gallons of wort, so how would I batch sparge? Reading Bobby M's guide I'd batch sparge with 2 gallons (split into 2 sparges of 1 gallon each) of water to reach the 6.5 gallon pre-boil volume. How would this work? That seems like a small amount of water to batch sparge with. With bigger beers should I go down to 1 quart/pound of water?

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Don't take this the wrong way, but the only advise I suggest is to get some brewing software (beersmith/promash and so on) I use Beersmith, and take all the guesswork out of it. They have a free trial version for 30 days, so test it out on your strong ale.

Check Time Step
11/5/2008 Clean and prepare equipment.
-- Measure ingredients, crush grains.
-- Prepare 8.55 gal water for brewing
-- Prepare Ingredients for Mash
Amount Item Type
15 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain
2 min Mash Ingredients
Mash In: Add 21.25 qt of water at 168.0 F
60 min - Hold mash at 154.0 F for 60 min
-- Drain Mash Tun
-- Batch Sparge Round 1: Sparge with 1.62 gal of 168.0 F water.
-- Batch Sparge Round 2: Sparge with 1.62 gal of 168.0 F water.
-- Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.51 gal
-- Estimated Pre-boil Gravity is: 1.061 SG with all grains/extracts added
Boil for 60 min Boil Ingredients
Boil Amount Item Type
60 min 2.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (60 min) Hops
15 min 0.75 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (15 min) Hops
5 min 0.75 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (5 min) Hops
-- Cool wort to fermentation temperature



This is what I came up with in beersmith, it's figured at 65% eff.
It's figured for a 20% boiloff rate.
Mash in temp is figured with grains and mash tun at 68f.

He's using 17# of grain. Sparging with 1.62 gallons of water is only 0.38 QUARTS per pound. Will that even work?

If it were me, I'd mash thicker (like 1 qt/lb) and do one batch sparge. And I'd make sure the sparge water was hot enough to take the whole grain bed up to 168 F, so it'd have to be like 185 F or so (check that with a calculator).

I would also consider using more sparge water (and doing 2 sparges if possible), thus collecting maybe 8 gallons of wort, and boiling for an additional hour or so.

Big beers are a delicate balance. When your grain bill goes up, your efficiency goes down. At a given preboil volume, there reaches a point where each additional pound of grain starts undermining your efforts. Bad analogy, but it's like trying to put out a fire with a gallon of water tainted with a quart of gasoline.

I would try to limit my sparge infusion rate to no less than .5qt/lb.

First, I'm reducing the grain bill by 1lb for easy numbers. 1qt per pound at 16 pounds is 4 gallons of mash water.

After the mash, add 1.5 gallons of 190F water, stir, vorlauf and drain. You should get about 4 gallons because that 1.5 gallon addition made up for absoption.

Now add 2.25 gallons, stir well, vorlauf and drain. That should get you a bit over 6 gallons.

Are you limited to 6 gallons preboil because of your pot? I'd recommend sparging to 8 gallons and boiling down if you can. You'll get a much better efficiency. Do the extra 2 gallons in a spare pot if you have to.

Yeah, I've only got a 7.5 gallon pot at the moment. So lets say I do sparge to 8 gallons, how does that work? I'll have say 2 gallons in one pot and 6 gallons in another, but when the boil starts how do I do the hops? Put a little in each pot?

I've never boiled in two pots, so I'm not sure what the best option is. My intuition tells me to put all the hops in the big pot and just boil the 2-gallon pot down to about a gallon and then add it to the big one. Not sure.

Another option to consider is reducing your base grain to an amount that you can easily accomodate with your MLT and kettle (i.e., brew a normal size beer), then raise the OG to where you want it to be with some DME. This has the advantage that you don't have to strain your mashing/sparging to the limit so you don't suffer an efficiency loss, and you don't have to jury-rig a boiling scheme. You probably won't taste the difference between this and an all-grain beer either, because it is so big (and you'll only need a few lbs. of DME anyway). I have a fairly small MLT, so the next time I make a huge beer, this is how I'll do it. Just a thought.

Beerthoven said:

He's using 17# of grain. Sparging with 1.62 gallons of water is only 0.38 QUARTS per pound. Will that even work?

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He asked the question, I just ran the numbers.

wildwest450 said:

He asked the question, I just ran the numbers.

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No worries!

I do a mash-out with single batch sparge (Yes, I am a caveman), so I'm used to sparging with something like 3.5 - 4 gallons of water. Sparging with only 1.62 gallons just seemed awfully low to me. But it might work, that's why I was asking.

Beerthoven said:

No worries!

I do a mash-out with single batch sparge (Yes, I am a caveman), so I'm used to sparging with something like 3.5 - 4 gallons of water. Sparging with only 1.62 gallons just seemed awfully low to me. But it might work, that's why I was asking.

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I normally split my sparges, but I brew 5.5 gallon batches and have a super high evap rate, my normal splits are 2.5 gallons. In the op's case I would probably go with a single sparge.

Well I calculated it, if I used:

13.5# 2 row
1.5# crystal 120L
2# Amber DME

That would put me at 1.078 OG with a 5.25 gallon batch. How does this look?

Brett3rThanU said:

Well I calculated it, if I used:

13.5# 2 row
1.5# crystal 120L
2# Amber DME

That would put me at 1.078 OG with a 5.25 gallon batch. How does this look?

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Looks good to me, but I'd go with light DME to replace 2-row.

Thanks guys, I think I'll go the light DME route.

Well guys, I brewed yesterday. Instead of 15.5 lb of 2 row, I just used 13.5 and added 2 lb of Light DME isntead. I mashed @152F with 4 gallons of water and double batch sparged with 4 gallons of 180F water. After that I ended up with about 6 gallons (less than I hoped) of wort that read 1.062 temperature adjusted. After the boil that would have put me in the low 70's for OG, so I decided to add 2 # of Light DME at the beginning of the boil. After a few boilovers (every time we turned our backs for a minute!) we ended up with just about 5 gallons of wort, maybe 4.9 gallons, but the OG post-boil was 1.091 temp adjusted Needless to say I overshot my target OG, but oh well. I guess I'm now making a Double Arrogant Bastard.

Just racked this bad boy to the secondary and the SG after 11 days is now 1.016 with no krausen left, a little lower than I had targeted, but at 9.8% alcohol I'm happy. I guess I mashed at too low of a temperature because I was expecting about 1.02. I think I'm going to let it sit in the secondary for at least 3 weeks, probably 4 though, then in the bottle for at least 4 weeks.