After a few years of brewing I finally got the courage (or I've gone insane) and decided to try the recipe for barley wine in the Brewing Classic Styles book. I've enjoyed the recipes in this book and this one has intrigued me and scared me for years.
The grain bill is around 25.5 lbs and hops are about 6.5 oz. This is well over the largest grain bill I've attempted. I threw the recipe into BeerSmith2 just to record all the stats, then I went to the Priceless calculator. I was going to try a sparge step but with this amount of grains I'm looking at an insanely think mash ratio. If I sparge with 3g of water the mash thickness is about .98. My MT is a square 12g Igloo cooler that should be up to the size along with my new Wilser bag. If I sparge I would drain, squeeze, sparge, stir, let rest 10 min, then drain/squeeze as needed.
Any tips? Should I forget the sparge and do full volume and then squeeze? Other things to consider?
The grain bill is around 25.5 lbs and hops are about 6.5 oz. This is well over the largest grain bill I've attempted. I threw the recipe into BeerSmith2 just to record all the stats, then I went to the Priceless calculator. I was going to try a sparge step but with this amount of grains I'm looking at an insanely think mash ratio. If I sparge with 3g of water the mash thickness is about .98. My MT is a square 12g Igloo cooler that should be up to the size along with my new Wilser bag. If I sparge I would drain, squeeze, sparge, stir, let rest 10 min, then drain/squeeze as needed.
Any tips? Should I forget the sparge and do full volume and then squeeze? Other things to consider?