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Brewing all grain by undersized pot

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cetwlaa

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I wanna try a 5 gallon all Grain brewing with my present equipment by mean of BIAB. The problem is the largest pot I've got is 5 gallon. From what I've learnt from this forum, biab for 5 gallon batch normally require boiling 7-8 gallon of wort coming from mashing and sparshing. So my question is can I boil the mashing wort and sparshing wort separately ? It is indeed very time consuming to do so , but I could only think of this way out in order to achieve the desired efficiency( except buying new kettle and pot, that I really want to avoid of). Anyone here can share ur thought with me ?


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I do 2.5 to 3.5 gallon BIAB in a 5 gallon kettle. It comes down to how much you can boil. With 0.75 gallon boiloff/hr, the max preboil volume I can have is 4.25 gallons and I still push it as far as boilover goes. You need to boil all of the wort that comes from grain to avoid DMS.

If you want to do five gallons with a five gallon kettle,consider partial mash. Good luck and cheers.
 
Unless you want to do the extra work or buy the extra equipment you should just stick to partial mashes. Partial mashes produce excellent beers.

But I suppose you could mash one bag of grain (2 or 5lbs), pull it out, add a new bag of grain, and repeat until you have the gravity. I just dont know if the water amount will continue to absorb the sugar and it seems like a lot of work regarding time, temps, etc (just think,adding the new bag of grain means adding more hot water to keep temp right). Its probably not worth it.

You can probably make a decent mash tun for under $60 dollars if you are really determined to make the switch. I think my DIY rubbermaid cost me around $85 but I did a few extra things and you really dont need any special equipment.
 
I was doing all grain with my first kettle. You can't do high gravity beers and big volume per pound of grain thats it. But it worked just fine with me when I started my boil with about 4gal. I was adding the missing volume after the boil. You can always try making a simple 4% beer and see how it goes. Good luck!


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Thanks for sharing yours experience and advice. I am living in apartment, at where I really cannot afford expanding my brewing scale furthermore, that's why I need to maintain my current kettle and pot.




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I have done a couple split boils recently with ok results but it requires another hour or two. I mash in my cooler and sparge to get my pre boil volume that will give me 5 gallons in the end. I then split the wort in half and boil as normal with half the volume splitting hops in half as well. I then cool, put in fermentor and then start the second boil.

So many beers... so little time.
 
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