Anvil Foundry question

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

mtlangst

Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2019
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
so I am new to the home brew thing and haven’t even done anything yet. I want to brew stouts and the like but think a lot of the recipes will be too big for the foundry having a 16lbs grain limit. I am sure there is a way to Brew beers that are over the 16lbs grain limit but am pretty clueless right now. So how does one do that the easiest way?
 
Many ways to work around the published limit. First, it has a generous safety factor as demonstrated by users on the facebook group who have pushed the grain bill up to 21 or 22 lbs. You can also plan on adding a little DME or LME to top off the gravity or cold steeping the dark or roasted malts and adding that liquid to the kettle once you have mashed the base malts.

Much depends upon how high an OG you want to get and how efficient you are with extracting the sugars
 
Since you haven't brewed yet, how do you know what 16 lbs of grain will produce in terms of starting gravity on your system? If I create a stout recipe with 16 lb of grain and a 5 gallon packaging target on my brewing calculator, I come up with about 1.072 OG which should produce a beer in the 7-8% ABV range. Is that not good enough? (I mean, it might not be, but...)

Stout is a very wide ranging style, with sub-categories having anywhere from 4% ABV on up. So it really depends on your expectations and preferences.

And as @NewJersey says, if you are planning to bottle the beer, just make a smaller batch size and there will be no problem at all cranking up the grain bill and the ABV.

You might feel paralyzed into following 5 gallon recipes at the very beginning so the idea of making a different volume sounds confusing, but that's a limitation that lasts a very short time, so it shouldn't be used to restrict your gear buying choices.
 
Since you haven't brewed yet, how do you know what 16 lbs of grain will produce in terms of starting gravity on your system? If I create a stout recipe with 16 lb of grain and a 5 gallon packaging target on my brewing calculator, I come up with about 1.072 OG which should produce a beer in the 7-8% ABV range. Is that not good enough? (I mean, it might not be, but...)

Stout is a very wide ranging style, with sub-categories having anywhere from 4% ABV on up. So it really depends on your expectations and preferences.

And as @NewJersey says, if you are planning to bottle the beer, just make a smaller batch size and there will be no problem at all cranking up the grain bill and the ABV.

You might feel paralyzed into following 5 gallon recipes at the very beginning so the idea of making a different volume sounds confusing, but that's a limitation that lasts a very short time, so it shouldn't be used to restrict your gear buying choices.

Thanks for the responses. I just didn’t want to spend the money on something and be limited, but it seems like there are workarounds. I like breakfast stout by founders and I believe it is around 8% abv. So it appears the foundry should work.
 
Many ways to work around the published limit. First, it has a generous safety factor as demonstrated by users on the facebook group who have pushed the grain bill up to 21 or 22 lbs. You can also plan on adding a little DME or LME to top off the gravity or cold steeping the dark or roasted malts and adding that liquid to the kettle once you have mashed the base malts.

Much depends upon how high an OG you want to get and how efficient you are with extracting the sugars
While I have not yet tried to push the limits >16lbs of the foundry 10.5 gallon version, I am interested in knowing what the qt/lb ratio was for these uber high 21/22lb brews. I imagine they were down to 1.25/1.5 wish and had a good bit of water for the sparge. I don't have a facebook acct so any info you can lend me on this would be great and thanks. I typically have done 15.25lbs of grain with 0.75lb of rice hulls while I am trying to dial in my system processes.
 
I hate to be another newbie asking a foundry question, but I have been going back and forth between getting a custom spike kettle and this foundry for almost a year and finally just bit the bullet and got the 10.5 foundry.

The main reason being, I have a newborn on the way and figured this would be the easiest and most efficient way to keep brewing. My concern, though, is related to this thread and gravity. I want to stick with beers in the 7-9% range. My question is, can 5 gallons of 7-9% beer be achieved with this foundry WITHOUT adding LME or DME?

Also, I see on the brew bag website they have a version for the foundry to use with malt pipe and a version to use without the malt pipe. Has anyone tried the one without and will it work in the malt pipe if needed? I guess I should ask, has anyone brewed without the malt pipe (using something to elevate the bag off the bottom) to get higher gravity brews or are they managing with the malt pipe?

The unit will be here tomorrow and am just trying to get this figured out in case I need to return it and go another route. With a newborn, though, it would be really convenient to stick with the foundry.
 
I hate to be another newbie asking a foundry question, but I have been going back and forth between getting a custom spike kettle and this foundry for almost a year and finally just bit the bullet and got the 10.5 foundry.

The main reason being, I have a newborn on the way and figured this would be the easiest and most efficient way to keep brewing. My concern, though, is related to this thread and gravity. I want to stick with beers in the 7-9% range. My question is, can 5 gallons of 7-9% beer be achieved with this foundry WITHOUT adding LME or DME?

Also, I see on the brew bag website they have a version for the foundry to use with malt pipe and a version to use without the malt pipe. Has anyone tried the one without and will it work in the malt pipe if needed? I guess I should ask, has anyone brewed without the malt pipe (using something to elevate the bag off the bottom) to get higher gravity brews or are they managing with the malt pipe?

The unit will be here tomorrow and am just trying to get this figured out in case I need to return it and go another route. With a newborn, though, it would be really convenient to stick with the foundry.

I think it is feasible to hit the 7-9% abv range with 16 lbs of grain and decent efficiency. I am 2 brews in on the Foundry. The first one was an IPA with 13.5 lbs of grain. 1.065 OG and 1.015 FG landing around 6.6% according to Brewers Friend. I got 79% efficiency on the mash and 76% attenuation on the ferment. The second one is still in secondary but i got a 1.066 OG on a stout with 12.25 lbs of grain.
 
Thanks for the response. That puts me at ease. Were you throwing all the foundry tricks at it (bag, fine crush, recirculate)? Or did you use the base setup with recirculation and a dialed in crush?
 
Thanks for the response. That puts me at ease. Were you throwing all the foundry tricks at it (bag, fine crush, recirculate)? Or did you use the base setup with recirculation and a dialed in crush?

No bag in the mash. I got the grains crushed from Northern Brewer. They seem to do a great job crushing. I think that has something to do with great efficiency. I pretty much followed the guidelines. Mash in, let it settle for about 10 minutes and then start recirculation. Stir the mash every 15 minutes. After an hour set the temp to mash out at 170F for 10 minutes. I also have hot water ready at 170F to do a sparge.
 
Sounds like I made the right decision in buying it, then. Also sounds like I might be overthinking it all. I really appreciate your responses. Money and time is about to be tight so this is super helpful.
 
I use a bag in the malt pipe, makes it easy to lift a little every once and a while to improve circulation. Also my worst is much cleaner, lots of trub when I did not use it.
 
If you use a bag, you can raise it up, squeeze the bag for maximum extraction, Next use a second vessel with sparge water and dunk the bag in that second vessel. Lift the bag, squeeze the bag, and fill up the Foundry with your mash bag squeezings.

How much water do you need in your sparge vessel? How much are you short in the Foundry?

Out side of a traditional fly sparge, I expect this is the highest efficiency sparge method available.

Seems to me this will also give you the best process to push the Foundeu y grain bill limit. All your grains are in the bag.

Or you could convert the Foundry into a two vessel system. Then the challenge is buying enough grain to compensate for the lower efficiency.
 
Back
Top