Need some help to brew my Cannonball Stout

[silver02ws6]

The problem I have is my brew pot is not big enough to handle this brew. Its a Austin home brew supply kit which calls for 2.5 gallons of water and then after steeping specialty grains calls for 10lbs of LME and I believe 2lbs of DME.

I recently brewed a Ruination IPA Clone which was just 10LBS of LME and it was too close to the top for comfort.

What should I do Can I do a 2 Gallon boil and just ad the extra water once my wort is in the primary?



Also I have read talk of not adding the LME and/or DME untill the last 15 minutes of the boil. Can someone please shed some light on this for me.

Thanks for the help.

Austin

 

[PT Ray]

Are you using a 12 quart pot? One of my best investments was a couple of these 22 quart pots from Wal Mart for $40:

I would employ a late extract addition. If you need to use 2 gallons instead of 2.5 for the steeping grains in order to accommodate the extract I'd do that.

I am somewhat torn when doing a late extract addition if you need to boil it for a few minutes or if it just really needs to be heated to pasteurize it. I haven't done extract in many years but tempted to do couple to draw my own conclusion.

From there add to your bucket or cool and add to your carboy and top off to your final volume.

 

[Austinhomebrew]

Use 2 pots. Steep the grain and then boil the hops in it. In the other pot, heat water to boiling and turn off the heat. Add extract and dissolve. Let set for at least 20 minutes before cooling. Combine the 2 and top off with cold water.

Forrest

 

[silver02ws6]

Use 2 pots. Steep the grain and then boil the hops in it. In the other pot, heat water to boiling and turn off the heat. Add extract and dissolve. Let set for at least 20 minutes before cooling. Combine the 2 and top off with cold water.

Forrest

Thanks for the reply I forgot you guys were on here or I guess I could have asked you directly considering its your kit.

One more question. How should I split the amount of Water?

2.5 gal of water for steeping grains and 60 min boil for hops

2.5 Gal for the LME and DME to disolve into

Sorry I am a newbie.

Austin

 

[DocBrown]

I brewed this at the end of last March, so let me give you a couple suggestions:
1) Make a starter for your yeast! The two vials of WL yeast just couldn't get the gravity down for me. The gravity in mine leveled off at around 1.037 after about 3 weeks. I added some additional yeast and did some other things with it and got it down to 1.031, but that was still way above the predicted FG. If you do a starter you should be able to get by with a single vial. Boil 6oz light dry malt extract in 2Qts of water. Cool it down to 75deg, put it in a large sanitized glass jar or flask of some sort, and pitch your yeast. Cover it loosely with a sanitized piece of aluminum foil and let it sit for 24-48 hours before you brew.
2) Plan to let this thing age for a long time. This will probably be in your primary for 2 months and in your secondary another 2 months. I'd probably give it another 2 months in the bottles before you open one. I brewed mine the end of March and bottled in mid September (I could have done so earlier if I didn't have all the trouble with the gravity, but that's okay.). I opened up an occasional bottle every so often, and it wasn't until around December that it started to get really tasty.
3) Your plan for 2.5gal of water in each pot should be fine, though you might want to do a smaller amount when you dissolve your LME and DME. Make sure there is plenty of water to dissolve all the extracts, but not so much that anything is going to spill over.

Good luck!

 

[silver02ws6]

I brewed this at the end of last March, so let me give you a couple suggestions:
1) Make a starter for your yeast! The two vials of WL yeast just couldn't get the gravity down for me. The gravity in mine leveled off at around 1.037 after about 3 weeks. I added some additional yeast and did some other things with it and got it down to 1.031, but that was still way above the predicted FG. If you do a starter you should be able to get by with a single vial. Boil 6oz light dry malt extract in 2Qts of water. Cool it down to 75deg, put it in a large sanitized glass jar or flask of some sort, and pitch your yeast. Cover it loosely with a sanitized piece of aluminum foil and let it sit for 24-48 hours before you brew.
2) Plan to let this thing age for a long time. This will probably be in your primary for 2 months and in your secondary another 2 months. I'd probably give it another 2 months in the bottles before you open one. I brewed mine the end of March and bottled in mid September (I could have done so earlier if I didn't have all the trouble with the gravity, but that's okay.). I opened up an occasional bottle every so often, and it wasn't until around December that it started to get really tasty.
3) Your plan for 2.5gal of water in each pot should be fine, though you might want to do a smaller amount when you dissolve your LME and DME. Make sure there is plenty of water to dissolve all the extracts, but not so much that anything is going to spill over.

Good luck!

Thanks for the heads up. I had no idea this would take so in the primary and secondary. Knew It would have to settle in the bottles for a while before it would taste decent but 2 months between primary and secondary. Oh well should be an interesting haul.

I was already planning on doing a starter for this one and I will probably pitch the second vail just to be safe. Or is there a posibility of over pitching? Is that even posible?

Im still getting back into the brew scene so still pretty unsure of myself when brew day is close. Thanks for the help guys.

Austin

 

[Austinhomebrew]

2 days after reaching final gravity transfer off of the sediment. You can bulk age it in the secondary as long as you do not have a lot of sediment. Then are a long time in the bottles. You should be able to drink after 6 months from the start. Of course, your last bottle will be ths best.

Forrest

 

[silver02ws6]

2 days after reaching final gravity transfer off of the sediment. You can bulk age it in the secondary as long as you do not have a lot of sediment. Then are a long time in the bottles. You should be able to drink after 6 months from the start. Of course, your last bottle will be ths best.

Forrest

How long do you expect it to take to reach final gravity?

 

[DocBrown]

How long do you expect it to take to reach final gravity?

That will depend on how happy your yeast are! The gravity of mine was stable after 3 weeks. Unfortunately it was stable at 1.038, and I had a heck of a time getting it down just to 1.031 (at which point I decided that if I couldn't do anything to get it lower, it wasn't likely to start fermenting again in the bottles either!).

If you do a nice big starter (2qts minimum) you should be fine (even with just the one vial). If you're worried about it, do a 1gal starter. Let it go until the wort changes from an orange-brown color to a light creamy color. Then chill it in your refrigerator overnight and decant off a good bit of the wort. That way you're not adding an extra gallon of wort to your beer. Let the remaining wort/yeast come back up to room temperature before pitching.

If I was brewing this again, I probably wouldn't even take a gravity reading for a good 2 weeks. After that, I'd wait about 4-5 days and take another reading. If the readings were stable and both were around 1.025 (I don't recall what the predicted FG is for this brew, but I seem to recall that it's in this neighborhood), I'd go ahead and transfer to the secondary and let it sit a good month or two.

 

[silver02ws6]

So 2 qts of water about 10oz of Light DME should yeild 1.04 to 1.05 OG for my starter correct. Then pitch both vails just two be safe and 24 hours later I should have enough yesties to get this monster going?

When I ran this through the tastybrew calculator online it said my OG should be around 1.047

Just want to make sure my newbie calculations are correct :rockin: