First Time Going Big

[Frogger42]

Hey all, gonna do my first large batch next week. Accustomed to brewing 5 gallon batches and this will be my first time jumping up to a 1/2 barrel batch.

I’m curious, what advice can you give me of things to watch out for or lessons learned?

 

[MrPowers]

Just be prepared for everything to take a little bit longer (ie. Be patient). Heating water takes longer. If you're step mashing, heating the mash takes longer (it's easier to overshoot your temperatures, and harder to bring them back down). Runoff and sparging will take a little bit longer. Bringing the wort to a boil takes longer. Chilling will take longer. Also, be very vigilant for boilovers since the boil kettle is generally fuller. The time difference isn't drastic, especially if you have correctly sized equipment.

Boiloff rates and efficiency may change. This depends mostly on the equipment.

Overall, there really isn't much difference, but it does greatly depend on the equipment. From what I've seen, generally homebrewers doing 1/2bbl batches are closer to maxing out their kettles (less headspace) and ability of their chiller (slightly undersized). That is where this advice is coming from.

 

[Frogger42]

Thanks!!

 

[Genuine]

Your boil off percentage rate changes with more volume( becomes less for same amount boiled off). Be sure to calculate that correctly with whatever software you're using. Also, when you go to sparge, take your time with the first runnings. You'll be dealing with more weight and water...you don't want to compact the grain bed.