How do you move water around from one vessel to another if you are doing a 10 or a 20 G batch?

[Beer Viking]

I just did my first all grain batch and I did a 5.5 G batch. Due to the amount of work involved I'd love to start doing 10 G batches but I won't be able to lift the boil kettle above the mashtun and pour water into it if it's full of 13 Gs of water. How do you guys do it?

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

Pumps my friend, pumps are wonderful.. a few companies make pumps just for us fine homebrewing folk. Option 2 would be having a helping hand, a friend to hold 1 side of the kettle while hold the other and dump simultaneously..

As you continue with the hobby you will find the pumps useful for a lot of tasks throughout the brewing process.

 

[Agent]

I do BIAB in a bottom draining keggle, so my biggest effort is filling with RO water stored in corny kegs. For that, I stand on the countertop. And again when I hoist the grain bag out of the keggle. Few worries, as I don't usually have too many beers in me by this point.

Otherwise, the wort gravity drains to my fermenters.

 

[Bobby_M]

A two liter pitcher is one way. A pump is another.

 

[Ninoid]

I've been making 10 gallons of beer using the BIAB method for about half a year now, making mash with double the amount of grain, boiling it, and then distributing it in two 5-gallon fermenters. Before pitching the yeast, I add the same amount of water to each fermenter. That way, I brew 5 gallons, and get two 5-gallons. The only difficulty in the process is lifting the bag with double the amount of grain, but I save a lot of time, energy, and time cooling the wort. I haven't noticed any difference in quality.

 

[marc1]

I BIAB as well. I mash in the boil kettle, the use a pulley to move the grain bag to another vessel next to it that has the sparge water (~5+ gallons) in it. I then use the pulley to raise/drain the grain, then I manually dump the sparge wort into the boil kettle. If it was a larger volume I'd use a pump. (Maybe I'll do that anyway some day). After the boil, I use a pump to transfer from the boil kettle out the ball valve and through my counterflow chiller into my fermenter. Once the fermenter is sealed up (in a 13.2 gallon kegmenter) I can manhandle it over to the fermentation fridge pretty easily.

 

[pvpeacock]

When I had a 3 vessel system, I did exactly what Ninoid described -- If I wanted 10 gallons, I brewed a high gravity 5-6 gallon batch and then split it between two fermenters and added top-off water to each. After a while I got tired of even lifting 5-6 gallons of water/wort, so I switched to an All-In-One Electric brewing set up with a Grainfather G40 which has its own built in pump. I use a hoist to lift the brew basket up when bewing 10 gallon batches and use a long hose to pump the wort into two conical fermenters. No more lifting heavy objects for me.

 

[BeerNsteadofH2O]

I'm with the pump crowd, I've got several, and back ups for all of them, not only are they labor savers, the can bail you out of a frustrating brew day.

 

[Willy]

I use the bucket method mostly. I brew outside and I do most of my fermenting in 5 g SS brew buckets. I also have a CF-10 that is in the garage - that gets filled with multiple bucket dumps. For me, it's not all in one place and the hose runs don't make sense - 50 yards away is a little far.

I do use a pump to package the beer from the fermenter to the corny. Also have a pump in the Brewzilla - pumps are the bomb. Love em and use them when I can.

 

[Deadalus]

Some brew stands are tiered to use gravity.

I use 2 pumps.

 

[MaxStout]

I do BIAB in a bottom draining keggle, so my biggest effort is filling with RO water stored in corny kegs. For that, I stand on the countertop. And again when I hoist the grain bag out of the keggle. Few worries, as I don't usually have too many beers in me by this point.

Otherwise, the wort gravity drains to my fermenters.

Same kind of thing for me. I have a 20 gallon BK with a drain valve for BIAB. I just fill it with RO water from 5 gallon jugs. After the boil, just drain into two 7 gallon Brew Buckets and set them in the ferm chamber. The heaviest I have to lift is a little over 40 lbs. I use a ratchet hoist to lift out the wet grain bag and let it drain over the kettle.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

My system is four vessels, one pump, a Spike Flow plus tubing does all the work.

HLT to MT is gravity fed.