How much can be brewed with 42 gallon mashtun

[emersonc]

I have a friend that tried to open a nanobrewery but ended up not working out. His equipment is now available to me. I now has a 42 gallon mashtun and a 75 gallon boil kettle. I am wondering what final batch size can be made with a 42 gallon mashtun? It would be great to have a final 1-1.5 bbl of beer but can that easily be accomplished with this 42 gallon mash tun?

 

[Likefully]

I am subbing because I want to see the responses - But my experience with from testing different mash profiles is you can easily get to your boil volume with that mashtun and make most (perhaps any) style of beer.

You can split mash (which takes time). Or (I think) mash in "twice" before the sparge: mash with 30 gallons for 45 minutes, drain and repeat, then sparge to reach your boil volume.

 

[yeahfairly]

Copied from a Sticky by Bobby M in the Equipment / Sanitation section on HBT:

Awwwww..... Screwed the pooch on that one.... See below!

 

[yeahfairly]

Link below:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/

 

[wilserbrewer]

Using the rackers calculator, you can mash 125 lbs of grain at 1 qt/lb for a mash volume of 41.25 gallons. Of course you will have to fly sparge to collect the kettle volume your after. A double batch sparge is another approach to the slightly undersized tun.

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

125 pounds of grain should get you 1B of very high gravity, or 2B of 1.050 gravity 5% abv.

 

[emersonc]

some great links here guys, thanks!

 

[Yooper]

Using the rackers calculator, you can mash 125 lbs of grain at 1 qt/lb for a mash volume of 41.25 gallons. Of course you will have to fly sparge to collect the kettle volume your after. A double batch sparge is another approach to the slightly undersized tun.

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

125 pounds of grain should get you 1B of very high gravity, or 2B of 1.050 gravity 5% abv.

Or, for a "regular" 1.25 quart/pound, you could mash 100 pounds of grain.

I think the limit would be the 75 gallon boil kettle- you'd need some headspace to avoid a boilover so I'd say it'd be at most a 60 gallon batch in a 75 gallon kettle, but it depends on the shape of the kettle.