5 gallon MLT, going AG, now what?

Soulive21 said:

Does anyone know how big of a beer I can make in the 5 gallon cooler? This would assume my efficiency is about 70%...

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• Do two mashes and use the 1st runnings of each for your big beer and the 2nd/3rd runnings for a smaller beer (parti-gyle brewing)
• Do a double mash and use the wort from the first batch as the strike & sparge water for the second mash, creating a huge beer
• Make a standard 1.058-1.060 wort and boil it down to 4 gallons rather than 5
• Add a little DME/LME when no one is looking (you'll never notice any extract flavors in a beer that big anyway)
• Cap the mash by scooping out some of the spent grain and replacing it with fresh grain for the 3rd runnings
• Use honey, treacle, corn syrup or sugars to add to the fermentables

Chad said:

Twelve pounds of grain is about the practical limit for a 5 gallon MLT, which puts the maximum OG about 1.058-1.060. If you need to go bigger you can:

• Do two mashes and use the 1st runnings of each for your big beer and the 2nd/3rd runnings for a smaller beer (parti-gyle brewing)
• Do a double mash and use the wort from the first batch as the strike & sparge water for the second mash, creating a huge beer
• Add a little DME/LME when no one is looking (and you'll never notice any extract flavors in a beer that big anyway)
• Cap the mash by adding scooping out some of the spent grain and replacing it with fresh grain for the 3rd runnings
• Use honey, treacle, corn syrup or sugars to add to the fermentables

Chad

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