Five gallon batch, thirty gallon pot?

[pfooti]

Hey y'all.

I'm experimenting with recipes again, and it's been pointed out to me that I could always just brew small batches instead of big ones, thus reducing the risk inherent in having something turn out bad.

Anyway, my brew setup right now is a set of 30 gallon blichmann boilermakers. I've brewed batches between 12 and 24 gallons in size (I ferment in regular plastic buckets, which tend to be about 5.75 gallons each filled, so I think in terms of multiples of 6), and as an aside, the blichmann setup I have seems optimal for 18 gallon / three-bucket batches, and I'm happy to chat about the setup offline if people are looking for reviews.

The problem is that I sold my 7.5 gal turkeyfryer pot to another brewer when I upsized, and now I'm looking at my big pots and am unsure a 6gal batch would even work. I'm pretty sure 6 gallons would require me to tilt the kettle just to get the uptake tube covered with fluid, and I'm not wild about a long boil with that much exposed surface area. I will just have to adjust my boiloff calcs, I guess.

Anyway; anyone out there with similar issues have any advice? At this point, I might just end up brewing 12 gallons so I can avoid having to deal with boiloff issues. Especially with the low-gravity recipe I'm looking at, it's really only just a few more dollars worth of grain anyway.

 

[Brewsit]

Although I'm only a 10 gallon brewer, I find I dislike doing 5 gallon batches for two reasons, mainly; the boiloff rate does seem to be extremely high in a 15 gallon pot with an 18" diameter, and I find it difficult to effectively sparge in such a large/wide container. It seems that when the mash is wider than it is deep, I have problems with effeciency, heat retention, etc. More surface area to lose things in, I guess.

I would think that with your setup, the problems might be even more amplified.

 

[Markd27]

I can see why mashing a small batch in a huge pot could be a problem, but I don't see why your boil off would be any different for a small batch versus a large one in the same pot?

Maybe I am missing something but would your boil off not be the same when boiling 7 gallons versus 20, both in a pot with the same diameter?

 

[Brewsit]

Water will boil off a lot quicker when a larger surface area is exposed. An extreme example would be boiling the same amount of water in a large flat pan and in an appropriate sized pot. The pan has more area exposed to the heat element, and a larger area to release steam.