thinking of brewing two 2.5 gallon batches consecutively? any thoughts

[relicdog]

What are your guys thoughts or experiences with brewing 2 wort batches consecutively and dumping them into the same carboy?

 

[Weezy]

You can and I have cuz I'm setup for brewing 2-3 gallon batches and I have to when I want a 5 gallon batch. Theres no problems doing so.

BUT that's about the only reason to choose to do that... because you have to. It's double the time to do the same thing.

 

[sputnam]

similar or different beers?

what's your goal?

why not just one 5 gallon?

 

[myndflyte]

I'm assuming they are going to be the same recipe? If so, yeah you could do that. It's a little bit extra work but in the end you'll get beer.

 

[metanoia]

It should work, but is there any reason for doing two half-sized batches if you're aiming for 5 gallons? If you're doing extract, you can boil only a few gallons and then top off with pre-boiled water in the fermenter. You should be able to find a 4 gallon stockpot for under $20, I think I got one at Big Lots a few years ago for like $15, still use it for heating strike and sparge water!

If you're doing all-grain, you could always locate a 8-10 gallon stockpot for $30-40 and brew in a bag.

Combining them will work, but it's so much more hassle having to do the same thing twice when there are easy was to only have to do it once.

 

[Doctor_M]

Big commercial breweries do it all the time.

 

[DaNewf]

Are you able to a split boil? I used to do 5 gallon BIAB all grain batches using a 5 and 3 gallon pot on my electric stovetop.

I'd mash and batch sparge in the 5 gallon pot using the 3 gallon pot to heat sparge water. All runnings would be collected into my fermenter. After I got the required pre-boil volume of wort in the fermenter I gave the wort a stir and drained it into the two pots (both would be close to full). All kettle additions (hops, irish moss etc.) would be split proportionaly between the two pots during the boil. After the boil the wort in both pots would be chilled and then recombined back in to the (by now clean and sanitised) fermeter and the yeast pitched.

This did extend my brew night a little over making 3.5 gallon batches doing a single boil but not as much as doing 2 batches back to back. For a little while the extra 1.5 gallons seemed to be worth the extra effort.

Eventually I went back to doing the smaller single boil batches just to make my brew night faster and less complicated. If my stock o' beer starts getting stretched thin I'll just do a five or six gallon partial mash brew to beef it up.