Increasing batch size w/All Grain

[jhutch31]

Hello everyone,
I'm new to the forum, just got a membership today. Once I get my paypal setup, I'm going to become a premium member. So excited. Sooo, here goes my first thread, hopefully i'm not beating a dead horse here.

I recently purchased a Sabco brewmagic and I want to brew full 1/2 BBL batches so that I can fully fill a 1/2 BBL keg with each batch. The maximum size batch I can get out of the system is between 12 and 13 gallons. Is there a way that I can tweak my mash and boil so as to yield a wort that requires a few gallons of water in order to still make the same recipe that a 12 gallon recipe would make? I hope that makes sense, but i'm not really sure how else to expain it. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. So excited to be a part of this forum

Thanks!

John

 

[huge1s]

it sounds like you want to over shoot your gravity numbers to the point that it would require a couple gallons of top up water to hit your planned gravity.

 

[Dan]

Sounds like you're jumping in big time! Might as well spend a few dollars on some brew software. I have BeerSmith II, there are others out there even free stuff online. I think BSII goes for around $22. It can help you accurately answer the question you just asked plus many more. I wish I could remember the names to some of the free ones but somebody will probably chime in.

You might need to brew a few batches first to get your equipment "calibrated". A little time tailoring the software to your system will help in the long run.

Welcome to HBT!

 

[H-ost]

Brew Target is free.

 

[jhutch31]

I'll check that out. Thanks for the speedy responses

 

[Yooper]

Probably a silly question, but if you want to put 15.5 gallons in the fermenter, why not get a 20 gallon (or 25 gallon) boil kettle?

 

[Teromous]

Congrats on the sabco and welcome to the forums. I hope there will be pics and videos to follow. BeerSmith has a dilution tool that you can use to see what the end gravity will be. Just running some numbers here:

1.064 @ 12 gal. + 3.5 gal. water = 1.050

 

[jhutch31]

Probably a silly question, but if you want to put 15.5 gallons in the fermenter, why not get a 20 gallon (or 25 gallon) boil kettle?

The fermenter isn't an issue. I'm purchasing a 42 gallon fermenter from Blichman engineering so I can ferment larger batches. The boil kettle is the limiting factor. The boil kettle that comes with my sabco is sized for the burner. A larger boil kettle would have to keep the same diameter, but increase the height. I was thinking of maybe seeing about having one made. Any thoughts? I would have to mimic the sabco fittings and such so that it would hook up just like the factory one.
My overall goal is to make two 15 gallon batches and ferment 30 gals at a time. Any thoughts on this or whether this is a bad idea would be greatly appreciated. Saves me starting another thread,)

 

[jhutch31]

Congrats on the sabco and welcome to the forums. I hope there will be pics and videos to follow. BeerSmith has a dilution tool that you can use to see what the end gravity will be. Just running some numbers here:

1.064 @ 12 gal. + 3.5 gal. water = 1.050

I will definately post pics and vids. Sure I'm going to have a ton of questions. Probably a lot of videos of what not to do

Thanks!

John

 

[Yooper]

The fermenter isn't an issue. I'm purchasing a 42 gallon fermenter from Blichman engineering so I can ferment larger batches. The boil kettle is the limiting factor. The boil kettle that comes with my sabco is sized for the burner. A larger boil kettle would have to keep the same diameter, but increase the height. I was thinking of maybe seeing about having one made. Any thoughts? I would have to mimic the sabco fittings and such so that it would hook up just like the factory one.
My overall goal is to make two 15 gallon batches and ferment 30 gals at a time. Any thoughts on this or whether this is a bad idea would be greatly appreciated. Saves me starting another thread,)

I guess you could add water to your wort post boil, but it'd limit you a bit on making things with high IBUs like IPAs. If you're going to ferment 30 gallons, but send only 24 to the fermenter as wort, that's topping up with 6 gallons of water. You could probably calculate it out, and it would be the easier way to get by with the BK you have. But that is a lot of water to add, about 25%.

It might work for now, and then you can keep an eye out for the right sized BK for your batch size.

 

[jhutch31]

Thank you very much for the insite. I agree. I think overtime, I probably need to just upgrade my setup to brew larger batches. I have a lot to learn on the system as is. My main concern with having a larger boil kettle constructed is that I worry it's going to become top heavy because it will be tall and skinny. I really need to run some calcs and draw it out to scale so that I can see how big of a difference it would make. I would think that adding that much water would make it hard to get the beer consistent. Not sure though, because I have never done it. I will give it a try and see how the results are.

Also, I checked out some of the brewing software last night that was recommened. Big thank you for that. Brewtarget looks awesome plus it's free and even the ones you have to pay for are relatively cheap and look very powerful. Thanks again for that piece of info.

John

 

[user 22118]

You know, if you are going to plan on doing more than your kettle can afford, don't add water. Sparge off an additional amount to be boiled in a separate pot while your main amount is cruising along. You could even hop it the same. If you just add water then you will be watering your wort down, by sparging a little bit more at least you will be adding back super low gravity wort. Even better you could always sparge off the first four gallons into another pot, then do the rest into the main pot and then circulate between the two pots to get a homogenous gravity to be boiled down. You have a pump right? Then do hop additions based on the two separate amounts to get a mostly similar beer that could then be added to the fermenter as a cohesive 16 gallons that could then be racked into your 15.5gal serving keg.

Voila!

 

[jhutch31]

I like it! So I fully understand you, i'm going to recap. I have a second boil system that I have been using for boiling my wort when doing extract beers. It's a turkey friar, but it works great. So I can just unhook the supply hose that goes to my brew kettle and sparge some extra water through my grain bed at the end and drain that into my turkey friar kettle. Then boil that and add hop additions with the the proper ratios for that boil size. Then drain the total volume of my BM brew kettle and turkey friar into my larger fermenter.

Do you think adding a little more grain to my mash would help not having such low gravity wort at the end when I sparge the extra water through the grain bed? Thanks for the great tip!

John

 

[bschot]

If you could run your full batch pre-boil volume into a container and then divy up the amounts into your boil keggle and turkey fryer, then you could boil for your allotted time and then recombine without any calculations, as long as you boil to desired volume.

Otherwise if you just put the last runnings into your turkey fryer you'll have to calculate the numbers you want. Maybe you can do it easily with Beersmith but I haven't looked, nor have had the need to.

Anyway, I hope that's not too confusing.

Cheers

 

[jhutch31]

That makes sense. All good info. Thanks! I'll keep you guys posted as to how it works out. Thanks Again!

-John

 

[onthekeg]

Another thing would be to make 3 10 gallon batches which would be more time, but more repeatable in the long run.

 

[jhutch31]

Another thing would be to make 3 10 gallon batches which would be more time, but more repeatable in the long run.

That was the original plan, but I was hoping I could save some time. More than likely, if I can't find a good reproduceable method than that is what I will have to do.

 

[m1k3]

I know you put this in the all grain forum and in the post title too..... but there is no shame in keeping some light DME on standby when you do this. Tasty McDole said he does that. I have a refractometer to take a quick reading and add some DME in the last 10-15 minutes, if needed.