Brewed the Maharaja clone on Saturday. What a brew day.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/maharaja-clone-93250/
Since I was brewing 10 gallons at OG 1.090, I was mashing a whopping 42# of grain; 38# of 2-row and 4# of specialty grains. I ended up encountering a few challenges and doing a little seat of the pants engineering to get through this brew day!
Challenge #1: How to heat 13 gallons of strike water in less than a year.
Solution: Dough in half the grain, then heat the other half of the strike water. Use a big burner. Borrow Soperbrew's brew kettle. Melt the plastic off of the valve handle of Soperbrew's kettle. Oops.
Heating sparge water for the second half of the mash while the first mash works its magic:
Challenge #2: Realize all the grain won't fit into your mash tun, which is a measly 17.5 gallons in capacity. DO'oh!
Solution: Mash half the grains in a 48qt cooler. After sparging the first half of the mash, transfer spent grain into a kettle (will get to that later), and then sparge the second mash in the MLT. This added about a half hour to the brew day but otherwise wasn't complicated at all. In fact, it was so simple, I think I will try to brew a double batch sometime using this method!
Doughing in the second mash:
View attachment 9305
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/maharaja-clone-93250/
Since I was brewing 10 gallons at OG 1.090, I was mashing a whopping 42# of grain; 38# of 2-row and 4# of specialty grains. I ended up encountering a few challenges and doing a little seat of the pants engineering to get through this brew day!
Challenge #1: How to heat 13 gallons of strike water in less than a year.
Solution: Dough in half the grain, then heat the other half of the strike water. Use a big burner. Borrow Soperbrew's brew kettle. Melt the plastic off of the valve handle of Soperbrew's kettle. Oops.
Heating sparge water for the second half of the mash while the first mash works its magic:
Challenge #2: Realize all the grain won't fit into your mash tun, which is a measly 17.5 gallons in capacity. DO'oh!
Solution: Mash half the grains in a 48qt cooler. After sparging the first half of the mash, transfer spent grain into a kettle (will get to that later), and then sparge the second mash in the MLT. This added about a half hour to the brew day but otherwise wasn't complicated at all. In fact, it was so simple, I think I will try to brew a double batch sometime using this method!
Doughing in the second mash:
View attachment 9305