I'm in the middle of deciding between a 15 gallon or a 20 gallon custom Spike kettle and a custom Utah BioD basket, and it got me thinking about the parameters of my brewing.
The question:
What are your kettle sizes and what's been your biggest batch you've made in regards to either gravity or volume or both? How does it work for you and what hurdles do you jump over to get the biggest batch possible out of your system?
I generally brew 19L (5 gallon) batches into my kegs, probably 9 times out of ten. But I take great joy in brewing mixed fermentation sour beers or other funky aged beers and aging them in bottles. Obviously it behooves me to brew as large a batch as possible so I can drink them semi regularly as they age and still have bottles of them in a couple/few years. Generally I aim for 1.060 to 1.080 gravity on these as it seems they age better when they get over 7% abv, and sometimes I shoot for the stars and brew even higher OG batches. There's not really any incentive to get to an even 38L (10 gallon) batches because everything I keg I don't mind just having one keg, and anything else I just bottle.
So I every time I end up brewing a big batch of wort to sour and bottle condition, I find myself wondering just how much volume I can get into my fermenter, to maybe end up with one more bottle in the closet. I can get a strike volume of 35L and 7.5 kilo of grain in my system, and then finish around 25L at 1.070. I'm mainly limited by my current brew basket which is somewhat smaller than my pot I have considered purchasing a bag to get around that issue. I've never mashed thicker and sparged, which I've considered just doing a cold sparge and bringing up to pre boil volume.
I imagine with the spike 15 gallons and custom basket setup, I'll be able to strike 40-45L of water and add around 12 kilo of grain to it. Which may get me to around 30-35L into fermenter at roughly 1.060 OG? Just estimates.
The question:
What are your kettle sizes and what's been your biggest batch you've made in regards to either gravity or volume or both? How does it work for you and what hurdles do you jump over to get the biggest batch possible out of your system?
I generally brew 19L (5 gallon) batches into my kegs, probably 9 times out of ten. But I take great joy in brewing mixed fermentation sour beers or other funky aged beers and aging them in bottles. Obviously it behooves me to brew as large a batch as possible so I can drink them semi regularly as they age and still have bottles of them in a couple/few years. Generally I aim for 1.060 to 1.080 gravity on these as it seems they age better when they get over 7% abv, and sometimes I shoot for the stars and brew even higher OG batches. There's not really any incentive to get to an even 38L (10 gallon) batches because everything I keg I don't mind just having one keg, and anything else I just bottle.
So I every time I end up brewing a big batch of wort to sour and bottle condition, I find myself wondering just how much volume I can get into my fermenter, to maybe end up with one more bottle in the closet. I can get a strike volume of 35L and 7.5 kilo of grain in my system, and then finish around 25L at 1.070. I'm mainly limited by my current brew basket which is somewhat smaller than my pot I have considered purchasing a bag to get around that issue. I've never mashed thicker and sparged, which I've considered just doing a cold sparge and bringing up to pre boil volume.
I imagine with the spike 15 gallons and custom basket setup, I'll be able to strike 40-45L of water and add around 12 kilo of grain to it. Which may get me to around 30-35L into fermenter at roughly 1.060 OG? Just estimates.