Want to move to 5 Gallon Batches

[dchalladay]

Hey Everyone!

I am still fairly new to the whole beer making scene. My first few 1 gallon batches turned out very well and now I feel as if I am ready to move to the 5 gallon batches. One of the main reasons is because I will get more bang for my buck and I have found a few recipes that I love and want to do larger batches of.

Here is my dilemma. I have no idea how to move forward with this. I have been making my beer on an electric range in a 5 gallon (i think) pot. My brother who brews cider said I will likely need to move to a gas burner to get this really moving along. I don't really know anything in regards to what type of hardware I need to get this going. Does anyone have any recommendations as to what I need to buy/should buy/etc. I would like to try to stay under $300 ish if at all possible. Saving up for a wedding!

 

[Double_D]

I used a bayou classic burner for years. It will definitely get your started as far as that goes. Do you have a local homebrew store? They'll have a larger pot. Generally if you're boiling you'll want like 30% extra space. In other words, 8ish gallon pot to boil a 5 gallon batch.---that's kind of a minimum because you're going to have over 6 at the start of the boil.

You could do partial boil in what you have but that's a whole other set of stuff to think about. The other thing is cooling the wort.

Are you doing all grain or extract? BIAB? All these methods change what you absolutely need. Have you decided on which method you will be moving forward with?

 

[LKABrewer]

You can do partial-boil 5 gallon batches on your stove in the same pot, and all you need is two 6.5gal buckets. If you want to move up to full-boil, you would need a larger pot, burner, and wort chiller. Most of the extract ingredient kits you purchase are set up to do partial boils.

 

[Aristotelian]

I also started with 1 gallon and thought about making the move to 5 gallons. The problem is, I do not want to make a big equipment investment and also don't want to brew outside. I found an easy way to split the difference is to go up to 2 gallons. The only additional equipment you need is another 1 gallon jug. Everything else pretty much stays the same. $7 for the jug and you've doubled your capacity.

 

[Jwin]

Read all you can and only buy a piece of equipment once. If you think you may *ever* want to go to 10g batches, buy the correct stuff now. I would recommend going with a 10g pot for 5g batches as you'll want 5.5-6 in the fermenter to end with 5 in bottles after trub loss. A 10g pot would also allow decent gravity BIAB batches.

 

[Gibberoni]

I agree with Jwin. I made the move from 1 gallon to 5/6 gallon batches years ago. Well now I have a few hundred bucks in all grain equipment for 5/6 gallon batches... but I want to start brewing 10 gallons.

If you think you are going to keep moving up in size, it is worth it to go ahead and the right equipment. However, you could also get a cheap 8-10 gallon pot and a darkstar burner (cheap, and will turn the bottom of your kettle black, I used one for 3 years). That will get you going for 5 gallon batches.

You will want an immersion coil to help cool the brews. A cheap 25 footer can be found for under $50 on Midwest/Northern brewer/brew hardware, etc.

Everything else you can buy as you want to upgrade!

 

[PADave]

I second getting at least a 10 gallon pot. Same situation, started by brewing 1 gallon batches. Then found out how much work it was for only 9 beers. So I'm now doing 5 gallon BIAB, but also got equipment for 2.5-3 gallon batches. Keep it simple with BIAB, get a kettle, a fermenter, a wilserbrewer bag, you can make a wort chiller pretty easily and brew.

 

[vNmd]

When I started I had no idea what I was doing and I listened to the people here and got a 10 gal pot. Previously i did everything on the stove. When I got the pot I couldn't believe how big it was and wondered how would I ever use something that big, but it was the perfect size for my 5ish gal BIAB batches. I bought it online. Make sure it has the thicker bottom to spread the heat evenly. I also went with the bayou classic burner from Amazon. I live within a couple blocks of several places to get the propane refilled so I only have a single tank of propane and am not too worried about running out during a brewday. When I started I didn't have a propane tank to swap for a filled tank so I hit craigs list. Every now and then you see people selling empty propane tanks for 5 - 10 $. This beats the 40 - 50 for buying a new tank just to swap it out.

 

[LBF]

I did partial boil 5-gallon batches on an electric range for over a year. I started with extract kits and later moved to partial mash BIAB in the 5-gallon kettle on the stove. Partial mash allowed for more flexibility with recipes and in my opinion, better beer than just the extract kits. I also started boiling as much as I could in the kettle, most of the time I was trying to boil 4 gallons in it and my brew days got excessively long and complicated. I had been considering moving my brewing to an outdoor burner for awhile, but kept trying to think it through as I only wanted to spend the money once if I could. When my brother got me an Edelmetall Bru Burner for Christmas, well, it was time to step things up, so I got a Spike Brewing 15 gallon kettle, a copper counterflow chiller and built a mash tun and hot water tank. It was a bit of coin to get everything set up, and I could still use a pump, but it works. I can brew a full boil 5-gallon batch or a full boil 10 gallon batch in the same amount of time (about 5 hours including clean up). It's really given me room to move forward with my brewing and being able to punch out what amounts to a double batch has allowed me to build up a nice supply of brew to enjoy. The only problem I'm encountering now is the lack of enough bottles.

 

[unionrdr]

When I started, I used a dutch oven to boil the water for Cooper's kit-n-kilo brews. After that first batch, I found a nested set of 4 stainless Steel stock pots from about 1.5 gallon up to 5 gallon (20 quart) polished with lids & steamer trays included. This allows for different size boils/mashes/sparges. I kept the 5 gallon for myself, giving SWMBO the rest. I just " borrow" the others as needed. Like the 3 or 4 gallon for dunk or " batch" sparging.
BIAB has allowed me to progress out of all extract, to extract with steeping grains to partial boil, partial mash BIAB beers. They've gotten to the point where they're mostly mashes. some 8.5 pounds of grains with about 2.4lbs of extract added @ flame out. All mashed in that same 5 gallon kettle I started with. Here's an Irish red mash in the 5G of about 8.3lbs in some 2.5 gallons of spring water;

As can be seen, that's about max for the 5 gallon kettle to make 5-6 gallon batches of PM. I still do extract or extract with steeping grains occasionally. so this BIAB method leaves a lot of possibilities for minimal investment. That Irish red batch was sparged in a 4 gallon kettle. You could even buy another 5 gallon kettle for batch sparging in, with a couple nylon grain bags to fit for the least investment & do fine. This has allowed for a lot more styles of brew. Like German dampfbier, kottbusser, English bitters, etc. That's the cool part of partial mash. You can use all kinds of different grains in many different amounts with varying amounts of extract added from 6 pounds down to about 2lbs, as in my example.
I do this on a 3,600 watt electric stove we got not too long ago. Comes to a boil fairly quickly for an induction smoothtop. Our old stove had less power, but aftermarket heating elements from Amazon that got it to a boil in about 18 minutes before it went south.

 

[dbillingsby]

You could save a little money building some stuff yourself as well. Build your own mash tun, immersion chiller, stuff like that. You might be able to save a few dollars and it's also fun. There are a ton of posts on here about how to build this stuff on your own.

 

[unionrdr]

True. You can start by having a look at the " DIY Projects" forum below...