Brewing all grain with 5 gallon pot

Is it possible to brew a 5 gallon batch with only a 5 gallon brew pot? I was thnking that i could boil about 4.5 gallons when adding the hops and once it is in the carboy add some sterilized water to get it up to about 5 gallons.

Your main problem is that with all grain, you will have to boil the wort for at least an hour (to remove potential for DMS). If you start with 4.5 gallons, you'll end up with 3.5. You could do a higher gravity wort than you want and then dilute it later.

You could plan on doing 3.5 gallons (final volume) at 1.069. This would mean a pre-boil volume of around 4.5 gallons or so. While that's boiling, you'd also boil a couple gallons of water for 20 minutes. At the end, add 1.5 gallons of the water to the wort for a final volume of 5 gallons at 1.048.

For the long term though, I wouldn't recommend it for all grain. Your efficiency will suffer greatly (because you're not sparging very much) and it will limit your options. What is the motivation for such a small volume? Do you have to brew on a stove? Not have the necessary burner/pot?

Yeah I have to brew on a stove but I am thinking about buy a bigger pot. I guess I would have to do extract grain brewing with what I have available right now?

I guess I could also just do 3.5 gallon batches. Also, any good websites for recipes or specifically 3.5 gallon recipes?

jakis said:

I guess I could also just do 3.5 gallon batches. Also, any good websites for recipes or specifically 3.5 gallon recipes?

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3.5 gallons is about 70% of 5 gallons ... reduce the recipe by 30% and round up and bingo...a 3.5 gallon batch.

Edit ... I been doing 3 gallon batches from the 5 gallon recipes here on this site with wonderful success. 3 gallons is 60% of 5 gallons so I would reduce by 40%.

What about partial mash? You could mash on the stove top with your current kettle, using the brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) method. That's what I do and it works great. I use a 5 gallon paint strainer.

The other option is to do split boils. You could get two 4-5 gallon pots and just always split your recipes evenly. I would put all the wort runnings into one bucket or something so it's evenly mixed, then divide it into two pots and also divide your hop additions. I've done this a few times when my pre-boil volume was too big for my (15 gallon!!) pot with good success. When I do it, I usually mix the two during the last 20 minutes or so (right before the flavor additions), but I don't see why you couldn't do it separate the whole time.

There are lots of ways to brew beer and you will find something that works for your situation. I wouldn't let it stop you from going all grain. You'll probably find it to be much more rewarding because you have so many more options. At some point in the distant future, if you still can't get a outdoor burner and pot, you could always consider making an electric kettle and plug it into your dryer outlet. That's a conversation for another thread though.

Although some folks with flat out say it can't be done, it screws with your efficiency, it makes crappy beer, I do top off ag batches all time. I often do 5 gallon batches dilluting 2.5 gallons of wort with 2.5 gallons of water.

And I've won awards for some of them...

I've been doing quite a lot of them in the winters in the last couple of years.

I do it a lot in the winter when I can't brew outside. I use a pre-boil gravity of 3.5 gallons boiled down to 2.5 and topped off with 2.5 gallons of water, and I've never had an issue with efficiency whatsoever, or hop utilization problems either.

I use beersmith to calculate everything then use their "dillute with water" calculator and hit my numbers all the time. A recipe calculated in a program like beersmith that takes into account for boil size will tell you how much grain you need to achieve whatever your set efficiency is. Basically you are still making a high grav wort, like your extract extract actually is, and then using the calculator dilluting it down.

The only thing I account for is hop efficiency. And I simply up my hopbill by about 18% to overcompensate for poor hop utilization. And I bet you with a better understanding of the formuals and such, you could nail the amount you need to overcompensate more precisely that I do, but 18% more seems to work for me.

I've done everything from IPA's to really light lagers this way and have had some great beers come out of it. My Wit and my Vienna Lager made this way have both placed in comps. And another one, my chocolate mole porter picked up a bronze.

I still do a lot of half sized Ag batches, because there is no extra math involved, but over the last two years I've found that the "you can only do full sized all grain batches, and can't dillute with water," isn't exactly true....it just takes a little finegaling with the maths.

I think the idea that you "can't" is just one of those common wisdom things that folks repeat because they've heard it, and never really give it much thought, or worse yet, just repeat the premise verbatum...

Funny thing is I've discussed this with brewers who own 2 different LHBS's (and have decades more experience than me) and they've been doing the same thing for years. I first thought about it, when I overboiled a 5 gallon batch on my turkey fryer by a gallon, and sat down and played with the dillution ration to top off with water, and it returned to the gravity had I not missed my post boil volume...I started to wonder what if....and it's been fun. Especially finding out that it works for many different styles, from really hoppy to not subtle brews.

Someone asked me once for a detailed overview of the process-

Revvy said:

Honestly it's any typical 5 gallon recipe. Nothing really special in the grain bill. It's all in playing with the numbers in BS.

I can try to explain it off the top of my head, but forgive me if I miss a few details. Though it's not difficult.

1) Basically you create a 5 gallon recipe in beersmith.
2) Make note of the og and ibus.
3) Figure out what 18% more of your ibus are, then using the ibu's tab in beersmith let the software recalculate the hopping amount to account for it, or do it yourself.
4) Change the Batch Size to whatever you want to be able to boil on your stove. If it's 4 make it 4- I tend to do 2.5 with a 3.5 pre-boil volume-make sure you adjust BS to the pre-boil volume to reflect your boil off rate.
5) After you change your batch size your og is now going to be quite a bit higher than it was when it was a 5 gallon. Obviously- a thicker wort is going to have a higher gravity. Make a note of this higher gravity.
6 Click on the dillution ratio calculator in your software, beersmith's looks like this-

7) Enter the starting Wort volume (which is your final volume from step 4 above, mine would be 2.5).
8) Enter the specific gravity of the thicker wort.
9) Click on the "dilute with" drop down and select water.
10) Enter the top off amount of water you need to get to your 5 gallons (Volume to add) and you should see that "magically" the calculated "final specific gravity" will be what it would have been if you had done a normal 5 gallon final volume boil. In other words it should match the Og you made note of in step 2.

Now what I do on brew day to take it out of the theory of recipe creation and into the practice of what really happens on brew day is that I mash and sparge into a bucket with graduated measurements so I know exactly what my preboil volume is. Then I take a refractometer reading to see what my real preboil gravity is, then I re run steps 6-10 to see what the real numbers will be.

Or I do it after I cool my wort and before I top it off with water- I just rack my cooled concentrated wort into my bucket or marked carboy to see how much I have post boil, then run steps 6-10.

Then I top off with water, aerate the wort and pitch yeast as normal.

Hope this helps. I think I remembered all the steps.

Now obviously you CAN just wing it. Just take your recipe only mash and sparge enough to get your small batch preboil volume, boil your wort and top off. Whether you actually run the numbers or not really is irrevelant the gravity of the wort is going to be exactly higher by exactly what the missing amount of water would lower to when you dillute it by the right amount. If that makes any sense to you.

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I was thinking about doing a 15 gallon 9% Old Ale and then taking just 5 gallons of that and diluting it with 5 gallons of water after cooling has occurred just like a regular extract recipe to yield a total of 20 gallons. 10g of Old Ale and then 10g of something like a best bitter or dark mild. I haven't seen anyone try this exact method yet for those styles but by switching the style profile from Old Ale to Best Bitters in beersmith, it takes me to all middle green arrows for the style. If it sucks I'll let you guys know but I'm thinking why not right? I'll probably ferment the best bitter with a different yeast strain as well to really separate the two and make them both unique beers from out of the exact same wort. I'll have a chugger and a sipper for christmas. Just hoping the bitter turns out.

I have to agree with revvy. my partial mash, partial boil biab beers are winding up with some big mashes. My latest was an IIPA with a mash using 8.75lbs of grains in 2 1/2 gallons of spring water. Sparged with 1 1/2 gallons, topped off with cold spring water to 5 gallons recipe volume. Still got a 1.082 against BS2's estimate of 1.087. And that was only because the 4G kettle needed for batch sparge went MIA, so I had to pour-over sparge.

I brew 5 gallon batches with a five gallon pot like so:
-Heat up strike water for mash.
-Do BIAB mash in 5 gallon pot. Can`t mash a HUGE amount of grain but works fine with standard beers. Use standard grain:water ratio.
-While mashing in 5 gallon pot heat up sparge water in two soup pots.
-Finish up mash, squeeze wort out of bag. Curse as hands get hurt by heat.
-Put sparge water and bag of grains in bottling bucket. Dunk sparge in bottling bucket.
-Squeeze out bag.
-Pour wort into 5 gallon pot and biggest soup pot.
-Boil wort for an hour with hops. Between the two of them the 5 gallon pot and the soup pot hold enough to have 5 gallons AFTER boiling off a good bit of water.
-Cool pots in bath tub.
-Pour wort into fermentor.
-Pitch yeast.

Works fine.

Just do 2.5 gallon BIAB. More opportunity to brew and experiment and super easy.

Revvy said:

Although some folks with flat out say it can't be done, it screws with your efficiency, it makes crappy beer, I do top off ag batches all time. I often do 5 gallon batches dilluting 2.5 gallons of wort with 2.5 gallons of water.

And I've won awards for some of them...

I've been doing quite a lot of them in the winters in the last couple of years.

I do it a lot in the winter when I can't brew outside. I use a pre-boil gravity of 3.5 gallons boiled down to 2.5 and topped off with 2.5 gallons of water, and I've never had an issue with efficiency whatsoever, or hop utilization problems either.

I use beersmith to calculate everything then use their "dillute with water" calculator and hit my numbers all the time. A recipe calculated in a program like beersmith that takes into account for boil size will tell you how much grain you need to achieve whatever your set efficiency is. Basically you are still making a high grav wort, like your extract extract actually is, and then using the calculator dilluting it down.

The only thing I account for is hop efficiency. And I simply up my hopbill by about 18% to overcompensate for poor hop utilization. And I bet you with a better understanding of the formuals and such, you could nail the amount you need to overcompensate more precisely that I do, but 18% more seems to work for me.

I've done everything from IPA's to really light lagers this way and have had some great beers come out of it. My Wit and my Vienna Lager made this way have both placed in comps. And another one, my chocolate mole porter picked up a bronze.

I still do a lot of half sized Ag batches, because there is no extra math involved, but over the last two years I've found that the "you can only do full sized all grain batches, and can't dillute with water," isn't exactly true....it just takes a little finegaling with the maths.

I think the idea that you "can't" is just one of those common wisdom things that folks repeat because they've heard it, and never really give it much thought, or worse yet, just repeat the premise verbatum...

Funny thing is I've discussed this with brewers who own 2 different LHBS's (and have decades more experience than me) and they've been doing the same thing for years. I first thought about it, when I overboiled a 5 gallon batch on my turkey fryer by a gallon, and sat down and played with the dillution ration to top off with water, and it returned to the gravity had I not missed my post boil volume...I started to wonder what if....and it's been fun. Especially finding out that it works for many different styles, from really hoppy to not subtle brews.

Someone asked me once for a detailed overview of the process-

Click to expand...

Great information thanks so much!

astrolic said:

Just do 2.5 gallon BIAB. More opportunity to brew and experiment and super easy.

Click to expand...

I was thinking about doing this too, then I can really try everything and not use as much money if I don’t like it or doesn’t turn out.