Mash a bigger beer with my small MT?

Hey all.
So I am planning on brewing an Imperial Black IPA (16pounds of grains).

My problem is my MashTun. I only have a 5gallons mash tun, which is going to be impossible to mash with the usual ratio of 1.5qt/pound. (Would give me a total of 24 quarts, 6 gallons of mash water)

What is my options? Mash with a lower water/grain ratio? Mash longer? Batch sparge?

Please help 

 

My guess is lots o' sparge H20.

 

Plan a smaller beer that fits your equipment? I know that's snarky and doesn't answer your question, but why sacrifice process to work outside of your system's parameters?

 

Design your recipe so that a good portion of the base grain is substituted with extract.

But then you have to ensure your remaining mash has enough diastatic power to fully convert the specialty grains.

If it doesn't have the diastatic power, then you can do a partial mash with extract and steeping of the specialty grains.

-OR -

And not being smart...get a bigger mash tun. The 10 gallon coolers aren't too expensive. It would be a good investment.

 

In the US they are 50$, so yea, they are cheap (but won't ship to Canada)!
But in Canada, the cheapest I found was 120$ ouch!

 

I suppose that was indirectly part of my question.. even if I find a way to brew this beer with my tiny MT, will it sacrifice the quality of the finished product?

 

Let's see... If you are totally against extract you might consider splitting the grain bill and mashing twice. I believe your gravities would match the recipe targets as you go into the BK for both mashes. You extend your brewday by the length of the second mash. Pitfalls to consider: You probably ought to begin heating your BK after the initial mash, keep those baddies at bay. Next pitfall... Don't boil until the second mash is done! And be careful with volumes lost to evaporation. This definitely sounds like fun! While it might work, you might also give up brewing as a result.

Seriously, I would scale down the recipe to fit your equipment. You will be in fine shape with something much closer to the desired result. Differences in volumes will have little impact whereas grist ratios will dramatically alter your product.

 

It might be fun to get a paint strainer bag and mash half the grains in your boil kettle a la BIAB. Not that I've ever done that.

 

Wow! That IS an ouch. I had no idea they would be that expensive.

 

This is what I was going to suggest. You are up against a firm limit on how much grain and water you can put in that mash tun.

If you BIAB in a Boil Kettle and then slowly drain the wort form there into the cooler mash tun you can effectively filter the particulate through the grain bed and get much larger amount of wort.

Of course you will probably have to babysit the kettle to keep temp, but people BIAB in kettles all the time.

 

Another vote for maxing out the mash tun and make up any difference with extract. I did that a while ago with a barley wine and it turned out great.

 

You can just steep any roasted/black or crystal malts in some warm water on the side. Strain with a kitchen sieve and add directly to brew kettle. Might even try cold steeping see if you like the effect.

You didn't post he full recipe but an Imperial IPA could be 10% corn/table sugar - no need to mash that.

Once you have your mash-grain bill down by pulling out the roast and crystal malts calculate how much volume you will have using the calculator over at greenbay rackers club setting your mash thickness to 1.25 qt/lb. Adjust grain down till you are at 5 gallons.

That last adjustment tells you how much extract you need to make up for lost gravity points.

Finally don't expect to hit your normal mash efficiency if you are pushing limits. All things being equal higher gravity can be expected to result in lower efficiency. I think this is simply dilution math. Probably would not happen if you scaled total water used with grain bill but you probably don't want to boil down 14 gallons for a 5 gallon batch.

 

Well well! Thanks to everyone who posted. Some very interesting ideas here!

I think I might just wait a bit before brewing these kinds of beer (this would have been my 4th batch ever)....

I'll concentrate on finding recipes that fits my equipment for now, but will keep an eye out for a 10G cooler.

Thanks fellas!