What's the thickest mash you ever did?

And how did things turn out? Did brewhouse efficiency suffer? Was it manageable? Would you do it again?

 

So thick it collapsed a domed false bottom.

Horrible, Yes, No, No.

 

Wow, was it less than 1 qt. of water per pound of grain?

 

1 quart water per lb of grain for a barleywine that was close to maxing out my mash tun. I looked back at my recipe and I got 70% efficiency with a batch sparge, so I guess you could say it went ok.

 

I made Edwort's Robust porter in a 5gal mash tun and could only add enough water to get to .98qts/lb. I broke my hydrometer so I didn't get the original gravity. Beer was great though.

 

0.8 qt/lb. Turned out great. Efficiency was great because I did a double sparge. The thickness isn't bad, the grains are still all moist enough. Yep, I'd do it again. It's a great technique for huge beers where you want to sparge a lot to improve efficiency and boil a longer time, maybe 2-3 hours. Using this method I can brew an all-grain 1.115 beer. I've done this more than once.

 

We have a 55 gallon drum set up and made a big beer in Saturday.
136 lbs of grain into 39 gallons of water, which is under 1.2 qts per lb. but
there's 3.5 gallons under false bottom which made the mash thickness 1.08 per lb. Big sparge and long boil, ended up with 32 gallons at 1.115
72% efficiency compared to the normal 82% but thats just 'cause it was such a big beer.