Advice on vessel sizing

[rab53]

Hello everyone, long-time reader but first-time poster. I've been brewing for 10+ years, beginning on stove top with plastic buckets and most recently with gas-powered 3-tier SS system and conicals. However, having recently purchased a home I now have the ability to go electric.

Once going all-grain, I have only ever brewed 5-6 gallon batches. I have a 3 keg capacity keezer, and am usually the only person drinking. I say this only because I have never felt compelled to upsize to 10 gallon batches knowing full well the non-linear gains in product versus time invested.

My last system used RIMS and 10 gallon Blichmann pots for HLT/MT/BK, which worked great. Only shortcoming I had was with high gravity beers. I could fit max 20-22 lbs of grain into the MT (autosparge was partially submerged at that). As far as I see, upsizing to a 15 gallon MT would be best while keeping other vessels at 10 gallons. Per Blichmann boil coil specs, the 10 and 15 gallon pots need a minimum 3 and 4 gallons liquid respectively.

I turn to the collective wisdom to point out anything that I am overlooking. Thanks in advance.

tl;dr
-Does a 10/15/10 gallon hlt/mt/bk make sense to cover all bases for 5-6 gallon batches?

 

[day_trippr]

Greetings, rab53, and welcome to HBT!

That last sentence is confusing so I'm going to ignore it

I believe your idea of going with a 10/15/10 bk/mlt/hlt has a lot of merit and would be the way I'd go if I was doing 5 gallon batches.
There would be no real "down side" to your average gravity 5 gallon batch brewed with the 15g mlt.

fwiw, I do 10 gallon batches using a triplet of 20 gallon kettles and when I do my 1.107 imperial chocolate stout half of the autosparge valve is submerged - and it's mounted as high up as possible. Same situation, scaled

Cheers!

 

[Yesfan]

My setup is a 3 tiered 15/10/15 HLT/MT/BK setup. I have a false bottom for the 15G HLT, so if I need more space to mash for a big batch/beer, then I can always swap the 10g MT for my 15G HLT. I can count on one hand how many times I had to do that, so a 10g tun has been more than enough for my system.

I don't have any issues boiling 5 gallon batches in my 15g boil kettle either.

 

[rab53]

My setup is a 3 tiered 15/10/15 HLT/MT/BK setup. I have a false bottom for the 15G HLT, so if I need more space to mash for a big batch/beer, then I can always swap the 10g MT for my 15G HLT. I can count on one hand how many times I had to do that, so a 10g tun has been more than enough for my system.

I don't have any issues boiling 5 gallon batches in my 15g boil kettle either.

Thanks. I was playing around of Beersmith today, really pushing limits of what I can foresee brewing. 15 gallon MT seems more than adequate. 15 gallon BK couldn't hurt either. At this level of investment, it's a small upcharge.

 

[Bobby_M]

Trim the fat. Build a 15 gallon single vessel eBIAB rig and never look back.