No Sparge High Gravity 5 Gallon Mash Tun

Hi,

I am new to this, and after reading exhaustively about All Grain brewing, I have one question (well many but this is the first).

I am going to buy a 5 gallon mash tun, and there seems to be a lot of confusion on these forums about creating high gravity beers with a 5 gallon mash tun.

He is my thinking, and please correct me!

There must be a way round it if:-

1. I use a no sparge technique
2. I do a sparge, but I use low volumes of water, thus increasing the OG.
3. I intend on only making about 2 gallons of beer at the end, surely I could use a normal sparging technique and just do it in a 5 gallon mash tun?

 

1. You can do that, but you will leave behind a lot of sugars. Look up parti gyle. Make two batches of beer (a high OG beer and a low OG beer) from one batch of grain.

2. Actually sparging "more" (relative term depending on the size of your equipment) will get more of the sugars out, and boil longer. Split your total sparge volume into two or three additions (I do this) if it will not all fit in the tun.

3. See 2. ^^^^

I brew 2-4gl batches, most of the time 2gl... I can get about 12lb of grain in my 5 gal tun, thats using about 1.1 qt/lb ratio. I split my sparge into two or three additions, and I boil longer for huge beers. I feel that sparging more and boiling longer helps your efficiency. But, thats just my opinion and others might have a method that works for them.

Do you use beersmith or any software to help you calculate your volumes and temperatures?

Check out this table. I know most of the info is for 5 and 10 gl baches but it tells you what your max volumes are for water and grain in a specific size tun. Look at the info to the left.

 

I think you'll be able to make most any beer you want if you're only doing 2 gallon batches. It's not uncommon even for an "all-grain" batch to use some dme when going for especially high gravities.

 

Thanks peeps!

Basically for the next year I want to make batches weekly, so to be honest I don't want to make 5 gallon batches! I love my beer but I also need to work sober....

Any ideas what the highest OG I could get if I only wanted to make a 2 gallon batch?

What do you mean by splitting your sparge into 2-3 additions?

I imagine boiling is a good way, does this affect the beer negatively if you boil too long?

I want to use beersmith, but am pretty new to this game so still trying to get my head round all the acronyms.

 

You can mash about 14.5 pounds of grain. If it were all 2-row, and you didn't sparge (boil could get too large), at 62% (which isn't great) efficiency you'd have an OG of 1.166, sufficient for 20%+ abv. Basically, you can get any gravity you want, because 1.166 is way too high imo.

 

Thanks skunkfunk, I'll just go for the 5 gallon mash tun then.

What did you mean by the "boil could get too large"?

 

I'm just saying that if you try for maximum efficiency with that much grain, you're going to have a hell of a lot of water to try and boil off to get down to your 2 gallons.

 

What you want to do is completely doable. I use a 5 gallon cooler as my mash tun and I brew smaller batches (3.5ish gallons). For only 2 gallon batches, you won't have any problem...and if you do, you can always add 1/2 a pound of extract (you'll never know it was there except by the increased gravity).

 

I don't like the idea of extract, it must have some negative effects on the beer taste, otherwise you could just use extract all the way! (Or have I missed the point....)

 

You probably won't need any extract for a 2 gallon batch with a mash tun that big.

A half pound of pale DME would have little to no effect on your beer taste.

 

Splitting your sparge into two additions... Just an example... your recipe calls for 5 gallons of sparge water, obviously 5 gallons will not fit all at once with the grain in there... split it into two 2.5gallon sparges. heat up 5gl of water, take half of that and sparge, drain... take the remaining 2.5, sparge and drain. Those volumes are an example but you should get the idea.

 

Ok, cheers got all the help! This forum is awesome!

 

For higher gravity beers, a little bit of extract will be such a small % of the brew that it will be completely unnoticeable - and that's assuming the extract isn't fresh, high quality stuff. With good extract and proper process, you wouldn't notice anything wrong with 100% extract.