Small batch all grain brewing help

[RustayShackelford]

I am wanting to brew my fest all grain brew, and am looking for help/guidance. I have brewed one batch so far with my kit (brew share enjoy) from NB, and used an extract kit.

I want to make a small, say under 3 gallon, recipe kit, with the equipment I have. I found a 2.5 gallon kit that looks promising; just wanting to make sure that with the equipment I have (one 5 gallon kettle and two fermenting buckets) it will work for me. I plan to use the brew in a bag method.

 

[SanPancho]

Its gonna be real tight for mashing. You can make it easier on yourself if you sparge. Either do pour over, or if you can find another pot of like 2-3 gal size you can batch sparge on the side after mash. Or you can lower the anount of base grain and make up the gravity by adding dme to boil.

 

[RustayShackelford]

Its gonna be real tight for mashing. You can make it easier on yourself if you sparge. Either do pour over, or if you can find another pot of like 2-3 gal size you can batch sparge on the side after mash. Or you can lower the anount of base grain and make up the gravity by adding dme to boil.

I do have a second bigger kettle here, so I could do a sparge

 

[Immocles]

I did several of these types of brews with the same equipment. I always did do a small dunk sparge in about half of a gallon of water in a small kettle on the side. Everyones system is going to be different as far as boil off rates, and absorption etc etc. In looking back at my logs from those brews, I was mashing in about 14Qrts of water and dunk sparge the grain bag in another half gallon. That particular brew was with 5.5lbs of grain and my volume was a hair over 2.5G into the fermenter.

 

[Immocles]

Oh, I would add that I had no problems fermenting in the 6.5G buckets with 2.5-3G volume, but I would advise against dry hopping anything with that much headspace. I had very, very poor results.

 

[mashpaddled]

My indoor brewing system is a five gallon pot and I brew a lot of three gallon batches. A five gallong kettle will hold all the wort for a three gallon batch which will be somewhere around four gallons or so preboil for a typical batch. You'll have problems if you intend to do very long boils. I'm not sure you could get all the mash and sparge runnings with the grain in a five gallon kettle unless you are using an extremely small amount of grain.

 

[Leezer]

My usual batch size is 2.5 gal, using a 5gal kettle on my stove. I don’t sparge and mash with typically 14 quarts water. I only have one recipe with a grain bill that’s too tight for the kettle so once strike temp is reached I scoop out some of the water to a small covered kettle while I stir in the grains, then add that water back. My other grain bills fit with no problems.