Considering going All Grain... various questions

[bassballboy]

Hey all, I've been reading up on going AG since that seems to be the way to go for serious home brewers, and it scales much better and opens new possibilities.

I found this site to be good thus far, not sure if anyone else agrees with his thoughts:

http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/all_grain_how_to.htm


My questions:

1. Since I don't have a large enough brewpot yet, could I do a 10 gallon batch by doing everything as a 5 gallon batch, then diluting it to 10 gallons at the last step? Much like the way extract brewing works.

2. What size cooler is recommended? I'm considering getting one of the very large ones just because it might be cheaper in the long run (the ones that are I think ~100 qts).

3. What size brewpot is recommended for a 10 gallon batch?

Thanks in advance!

 

[worstbrewing]

1. No, it's not quite the same. You could do partial mash and use extract to get your gravity where you want until you get a bigger pot, though.
2. This all depends on what kinds of beers you plan to produce. If you mostly make lower-alcohol ones, the standard 10-gallon round cooler should be fine for a lot of cases but higher gravity and you may want to look into either a bigger cooler or a HERMS/RIMS system with a keggle/kettle
3. You want at least 15 gallons so you have room to boil down to 10 gallons but if you can get your hands on a cheap 20 gallon kettle it might not hurt either (that's what I did)

 

[bassballboy]

1. No, it's not quite the same. You could do partial mash and use extract to get your gravity where you want until you get a bigger pot, though.
2. This all depends on what kinds of beers you plan to produce. If you mostly make lower-alcohol ones, the standard 10-gallon round cooler should be fine for a lot of cases but higher gravity and you may want to look into either a bigger cooler or a HERMS/RIMS system with a keggle/kettle
3. You want at least 15 gallons so you have room to boil down to 10 gallons but if you can get your hands on a cheap 20 gallon kettle it might not hurt either (that's what I did)

There's a strong chance I'll make a IIPA with the set-up at some point, so what would be the minimum size cooler you're recommend for that in a 10 gallon batch?

 

[40watt]

There's a strong chance I'll make a IIPA with the set-up at some point, so what would be the minimum size cooler you're recommend for that in a 10 gallon batch?

I'd look at the Coleman Extreme coolers at Walmart. I think the one I got was 52qts. Cheap too.

 

[worstbrewing]

Yeah, the Coleman Extreme is one I hear a lot of folks use, and another one I was considering is the Igloo Ice Cube though the difficulty with any of the ones like this with wheels is if they come with a drain, it tends to be raised above the bump inside where the wheels are, so a manifold is generally your only easy option (compared to just a bazooka screen or similar). It really depends whether you plan to fly or batch sparge. I had every intention of fly sparging but to be honest I get great efficiency (85-90%) batch sparging so I haven't bothered.

 

[Revvy]

Actually if you really wanted to you CAN do 10 gallon batches with a 5 gallon high grav wort dilluted to 10 gallons. I do it all the time making 5 gallon AG batches on my stovetop with a 2.5 gallon pre-boil volume, dilluted to 5 gallons.

I've posted this several times.

Although some folks with flat out say it can't be done, it screws with your efficiency, it makes crappy beer, I do top off ag batches all time. I often do 5 gallon batches dilluting 2.5 gallons of wort with 2.5 gallons of water.

And I've won awards for some of them...

I've been doing quite a lot of them in the winters in the last couple of years.

I do it a lot in the winter when I can't brew outside. I use a pre-boil gravity of 3.5 gallons boiled down to 2.5 and topped off with 2.5 gallons of water, and I've never had an issue with efficiency whatsoever, or hop utilization problems either.

I use beersmith to calculate everything then use their "dillute with water" calculator and hit my numbers all the time. A recipe calculated in a program like beersmith that takes into account for boil size will tell you how much grain you need to achieve whatever your set efficiency is. Basically you are still making a high grav wort, like your extract extract actually is, and then using the calculator dilluting it down.

The only thing I account for is hop efficiency. And I simply up my hopbill by about 18% to overcompensate for poor hop utilization. And I bet you with a better understanding of the formuals and such, you could nail the amount you need to overcompensate more precisely that I do, but 18% more seems to work for me.

I've done everything from IPA's to really light lagers this way and have had some great beers come out of it. My Wit and my Vienna Lager made this way have both placed in comps. And another one, my chocolate mole porter picked up a bronze.

I still do a lot of half sized Ag batches, because there is no extra math involved, but over the last two years I've found that the "you can only do full sized all grain batches, and can't dillute with water," isn't exactly true....it just takes a little finegaling with the maths.

I think the idea that you "can't" is just one of those common wisdom things that folks repeat because they've heard it, and never really give it much thought, or worse yet, just repeat the premise verbatum...

Funny thing is I've discussed this with brewers who own 2 different LHBS's (and have decades more experience than me) and they've been doing the same thing for years. I first thought about it, when I overboiled a 5 gallon batch on my turkey fryer by a gallon, and sat down and played with the dillution ration to top off with water, and it returned to the gravity had I not missed my post boil volume...I started to wonder what if....and it's been fun. Especially finding out that it works for many different styles, from really hoppy to not subtle brews.

Someone asked me once for a detailed overview of the process-

Honestly it's any typical 5 gallon recipe. Nothing really special in the grain bill. It's all in playing with the numbers in BS.

I can try to explain it off the top of my head, but forgive me if I miss a few details. Though it's not difficult.

1) Basically you create a 5 gallon recipe in beersmith.
2) Make note of the og and ibus.
3) Figure out what 18% more of your ibus are, then using the ibu's tab in beersmith let the software recalculate the hopping amount to account for it, or do it yourself.
4) Change the Batch Size to whatever you want to be able to boil on your stove. If it's 4 make it 4- I tend to do 2.5 with a 3.5 pre-boil volume-make sure you adjust BS to the pre-boil volume to reflect your boil off rate.
5) After you change your batch size your og is now going to be quite a bit higher than it was when it was a 5 gallon. Obviously- a thicker wort is going to have a higher gravity. Make a note of this higher gravity.
6 Click on the dillution ratio calculator in your software, beersmith's looks like this-

7) Enter the starting Wort volume (which is your final volume from step 4 above, mine would be 2.5).
8) Enter the specific gravity of the thicker wort.
9) Click on the "dilute with" drop down and select water.
10) Enter the top off amount of water you need to get to your 5 gallons (Volume to add) and you should see that "magically" the calculated "final specific gravity" will be what it would have been if you had done a normal 5 gallon final volume boil. In other words it should match the Og you made note of in step 2.

Now what I do on brew day to take it out of the theory of recipe creation and into the practice of what really happens on brew day is that I mash and sparge into a bucket with graduated measurements so I know exactly what my preboil volume is. Then I take a refractometer reading to see what my real preboil gravity is, then I re run steps 6-10 to see what the real numbers will be.

Or I do it after I cool my wort and before I top it off with water- I just rack my cooled concentrated wort into my bucket or marked carboy to see how much I have post boil, then run steps 6-10.

Then I top off with water, aerate the wort and pitch yeast as normal.

Hope this helps. I think I remembered all the steps.

Now obviously you CAN just wing it. Just take your recipe only mash and sparge enough to get your small batch preboil volume, boil your wort and top off. Whether you actually run the numbers or not really is irrevelant the gravity of the wort is going to be exactly higher by exactly what the missing amount of water would lower to when you dillute it by the right amount. If that makes any sense to you.

Quite a few folks on here do it.

 

[helibrewer]

You can get an idea of what size tun you will need based on grainbill. Figure 1.5 qts per gallon to give you some fudge factor, then .08 times the number of pounds of grain to figure out how much space the grains will take in gallon measurements. So for 20 pounds of grain you would need a tun with:

7.5 gallons of strike water plus 1.6 gallons for grain space = 9.1 gallon total capacity