Need some kettle/tun size advice
- Thread starter goaticus
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15 gal tun will pretty much max out for a higher gravity 15 gal batch, but will be fine for anything under 1.055-1.060. A 15 gal liquor tank for 15 gallon batches means you're going to have to do some dancing to have enough hot liquor to complete a batch. I'd double the size of the HLT.
I have a Brutus setup with three 15 gallon kettles. I built it thinking I'd do 10 gallon batches.
Turns out that the HLT, I could've used a 10 gallon no problem.
The mash tun, I've made up to 1.100 OG x 10 gallon batches, but that one I had higher than expected efficiency because I did a large decoction. Ordinarily, mid 80's OG beers I can pull off, but going higher than 90 is challenging with my system. Perhaps I am not sparging enough given the previous comments/replies. I do not often make such high gravity beers though, so for most brewing, I find the 15 gallon to be generous.
The boil kettle is where I think you may have an issue. I cannot maintain a sufficiently intense boil without boilovers, even when using fermcap in the boil kettle to reduce surface tension. I need to upsize to a twenty gallon boil kettle for 10 gallon batches. I'd suspect that you would be faced with a similar problem, and even more so if you want to conduct a 90 minute full wort boil without using top off water, because your starting volume will be greater. This is problematic especially if you're brewing any lagers or high pils malt containing beer. I'd pick a boil kettle that is double the batch size that you want to brew. I have tried to avoid the need to update my kettle, by boiling at a lower intensity, and it results in inferior beer: not as bitter as expected, DMS creamed corn aroma, etc.
TD
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Turns out that the HLT, I could've used a 10 gallon no problem.
The mash tun, I've made up to 1.100 OG x 10 gallon batches, but that one I had higher than expected efficiency because I did a large decoction. Ordinarily, mid 80's OG beers I can pull off, but going higher than 90 is challenging with my system. Perhaps I am not sparging enough given the previous comments/replies. I do not often make such high gravity beers though, so for most brewing, I find the 15 gallon to be generous.
The boil kettle is where I think you may have an issue. I cannot maintain a sufficiently intense boil without boilovers, even when using fermcap in the boil kettle to reduce surface tension. I need to upsize to a twenty gallon boil kettle for 10 gallon batches. I'd suspect that you would be faced with a similar problem, and even more so if you want to conduct a 90 minute full wort boil without using top off water, because your starting volume will be greater. This is problematic especially if you're brewing any lagers or high pils malt containing beer. I'd pick a boil kettle that is double the batch size that you want to brew. I have tried to avoid the need to update my kettle, by boiling at a lower intensity, and it results in inferior beer: not as bitter as expected, DMS creamed corn aroma, etc.
TD
Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
I do recirculating mash and heat the strike water right in my mash tun, and mash in the full volume of strike water in the mash tun.
Sometimes I have a helper that can stir the mash when adding the grain, but most times no. I know that most references I've read say to have a small amount of water to cover the false bottom and then slowly sprinkle the water over top, etc. I find that I get good results with just dumping it all in at once. Other than dough balls, I don't really see what the practical disadvantage of doing this is. I generally stop the recirculation about 20 minutes into the mash and stir everything up really well. This helps me to break up any small dough balls that might still be in there. I usually also will do the same when doing step temperature mashes during heating, so there are many opportunities to break up any small dough balls that might form.
In this way, I am able to not require a larger HLT. Another advantage is that my water mineral additions, which tend to be a little different for mash and sparge water, can go directly into the respective vessel without having to make additional changes that might be needed after mashing in.
TD
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LandoLincoln
Well-Known Member
There are mash tun size calculators out there, but if you want to do the calculations yourself...
Grain occupies about .08 gallons per pound of space when mixed with water.
Let's say you're mashing 12 pounds of grain.
12*.08 = .96 gallons of space for the grain.
And let's say you're mashing at 1.25 quarts per pound of grain.
12 pounds of grain * 1.25 quarts per pound = 15 quarts of water.
Divide that number by 4 to get gallons (4 quarts in a gallon), so you'd have 3.75 gallons of water.
.96 gallons of grain + 3.75 gallons of water = about 4.75 gallons needed for your mash tun (not including dead space and about 2% expansion due to heating the mash from room temp to typical mashing temps).
At 1.25 quarts per gallon, 38 pounds of grain would take up 14.92 gallons.
At 1.5 quarts per gallon, 32.5 pounds of grain would take up 14.79 gallons.
That's a lot of grain for a homebrewed batch of beer.
But in a more direct answer to your question:
Let's say you want 15 gallons of beer in kegs.
You lose about .5 gallons per carboy, so you need 16.5 gallons of wort per batch.
Let's say you can realistically use up to 36 pounds of grain in your mash tun. At 1.25 quarts per pound, that would take up about 14.13 gallons, which would give you some extra room for deadspace, water expansion due to heating the water up to about 150°, and some room for stirring without making an incredible mess of your brew stand.
36 pounds of pale malt 2-row at 75% brewhouse efficiency for a 16.5 gallon batch of beer should give you a beer around 1.061 OG (I'm not even gonna lay out the math for THAT one).
So yeah, you could make 15 gallons of moderately-high OG beer with a 15 gallon MLT, if you have a decent brewhouse efficiency. If you want to brew big beers, then you're probably going to have to stick to 10 gallon batches.
