Help Size First All Grain System

[bwible]

Equipment is the most expensive part of brewing. My advice is always: decide what the largest beer you want to brew is and size your equipment between 1.5x and 2x larger.

Thats all well and good until you go to brew your “regular” beer and find the mash tun is entirely too large and you have no depth of grain for your lauter.

I have an Anvil Foundry 6.5 which has an 8 lb grain capacity. I normally brew 3 gallon batches. Yes that it is a problem when I go to brew an Imperial Stout or a barleywine. But I can always supplement those mashes with extract.

It’s a bigger problem when I go to brew a Scottish 70 with an og of 1.040 and find out for 3 gallons I only need 3.5 pounds of grain. Like I said, no depth of grain bed for the lauter and the wort never runs clear. I have to go up to a 5 gallon batch just to get enough grain for the wort to run clear. Not that its a terrible issue but I don’t usually brew 5 gallons because I don’t want to clean 50 bottles, sanitize 50 bottles, fill 50 bottles, and cap 50 bottles and then have 50 bottles on hand.

Bigger is not always better.

 

[AkTom]

I got the Anvil 10.5. It does 5 gallon batches fine. Sometimes I like doing 10 gallon batches. For them I have to fire up my old propane setup. It has a 15 gallon keggle. That’s barely big enough.
I wish now I would have waited for the Anvil 18… oh well, I make it work.
Cheers

 

[hottpeper13]

i have a friend with the Spike 3 vessel system and he has 15 gal HLT and BK with a 20 gal MLT so he can make high gravity barrel beers.
I have all 15 gal vessels and had that no depth of filter bed when doing 1.050 - 5 gal brews. I installed a pulley system and went BIAB for 5 gal and do MIAB for 10 and 15 gal batches.

 

[Beernik]

Thats all well and good until you go to brew your “regular” beer and find the mash tun is entirely too large and you have no depth of grain for your lauter.

I have an Anvil Foundry 6.5 which has an 8 lb grain capacity. I normally brew 3 gallon batches. Yes that it is a problem when I go to brew an Imperial Stout or a barleywine. But I can always supplement those mashes with extract.

It’s a bigger problem when I go to brew a Scottish 70 with an og of 1.040 and find out for 3 gallons I only need 3.5 pounds of grain. Like I said, no depth of grain bed for the lauter and the wort never runs clear. I have to go up to a 5 gallon batch just to get enough grain for the wort to run clear. Not that its a terrible issue but I don’t usually brew 5 gallons because I don’t want to clean 50 bottles, sanitize 50 bottles, fill 50 bottles, and cap 50 bottles and then have 50 bottles on hand.

Bigger is not always better.

I will admit, I am unfamiliar with the problems of small batch brewing or all-in-one systems. The smallest I’ve ever brewed is 4 gallons & I’ve always piecemealed my system.

I’ve had 5, 7, 10, & 15 gallon BKs and various sized BIAB bags and MLT coolers.

I finally settled on a 15 gallon keggle & 15 gallon BIAB bag. Now I can brew anything I want between 4 & 9 gallons. I can get to 10 gallon brews if I don’t full volume mash & keep the grain bill under 22lbs.

 

[AkTom]

 

[Bobby_M]

If I could go back to 2007, I would tell myself to brew BIAB from the start.

 

[deuc224]

Its what i did. I got the brewtools b80(was gonna get a b40 at first) and can go from 5.5 gallon batches to 15 gallon batches, grain bill maxes out at 44lbs. Just did a BDS and kinda overcooked it so it came out at 1.102 but I have a big yeast starter and used some yeast nutrient and oxygenated the wort for 8 minutes at 1/4 lpm of pure o2. Hoping it pushes thru any pitfalls this beer has like stalls.

 

[dotf]

I bought the cooler system from Northern Brewer for $300 and it works great. Comes with a HLT and a Mash Tun. You’ll need your own kettle and burner. The only down side is there’s no temperature control in the Mash Tun so if you miss your strike water temperature you’ll end up scrambling and throwing another gallon of boiling water in.