Versatile brewing rig - thinking outside the box

I've been building my brewery slowly over the last 2+ years. I'm at the point where I'm just about finished. I'm currently going electric (just waiting for my boil coils and rims rocket to show up) and I'll be building a BCS control panel.

I plan on building a 50amp control panel, so I can do back to back brewing; However, this sparked an idea.

This setup allows me to brew 5-15 gal batches. But I was thinking with the 20gal MLT, I can make a lot more wort than that.

With a 50a controller, I could use both my HLT and BK as a BK at the same time and brew much larger batches. Or I can split the same base and use different hop additions and ferment with different yeast. Or I can cold steep dark grains and produce different beers. (Like an IPA and Black IPA for example)

I figure if I'm brewing the same beer in two batches to get a larger volume, I can hook the pumps up and circulate them between each other to blend them and assure they're the same.

I doubt I'd do this often (but I'll probably get married here soon and I have a buddy getting married soon, so this would be great for brewing for large groups)

So bottom line is this idea would give me flexibility to brew 5 gal up to 25 gallon batches. Or make a high gravity and low gravity beer at the same time. Or simply experiment with hops and other additions...

Has anyone tried or thought about this?

 

Has anyone tried or thought about this?
Yes. It's called partigyle. You'll get tons of good ideas for future batches if you search the threads related to it.

 

Thanks for the reply... I know about partigyle. It's basically the process of creating a low gravity beer from second runnings of a much higher gravity beer. This yields more beer and better efficency.

I've seen threads where people make a barley wine, then make a lesser strength session beer from the rest.

I'm more so asking if anyone uses both their HLT and BK to create two different beers (different hops, or an IPA and Black IPA by adding cold steeped dark grains in one, or a milk stout for one and an espresso in the other...etc), or simply making larger batches of the same beer from the same mash at the same time.

Like I can do 15 gal in my 20gal BK and 10 in my 15gal HLT. My mash tun is 20gal, so I can use a lot of grain. So by splitting the batch between the two kettles and boiling in both pots yields 25 gallons.

 

BYO or Zymurgy mentioned a similar thing. Partigyle doesn't just mean big beer/small beer, though. The two batches can be combined to same or middle gravities, and you can top off/cap the second mash with more/different malt, hop each batch differently, etc.
Good luck.

 

I see... Guess I should look more into it. I always thought it was simply a large beer generally with no sparge. Then you sparge a smaller beer with about half the gravity.

Anyway, thanks for the input... I'll look into it.

 

I hope it turns out well. It's great when you come across something new to try/experiment with, isn't it. Even better when you end up with more variety and more beer with a single (slightly longer, perhaps) brew day.