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High OG Stout with Equipment Limits

bobo1898

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Have a friend who is interested in making a high gravity imperial stout with me. But I've noticed that my mash tun may not be able to fit the amount of grain that this beer requires to reach the gravity we're targeting.

My initial thought is swapping out some of the base malt with liquid extract but we're talking upwards of 7 lbs of extract. I imagine with this, we will have a very very long boil with that much extract. The other idea was to add sugar as done in imperial IPA's but that would dry it out--probably not something you'd want in a imperial stout, right?
 
Commercial breweries often do multiple mashes to fill a fermenter. No reason you can't do the same. Most pitch yeast to the first mash and allow it to act as a large starter. No need to repitch when the second mash is added. Pretty simple when you think about it.
 
I do BIAB and have two similar limits: the amount of grain that will fit into my kettle and the weight of wet grain that I can lift (and that my bag can hold without bursting). That limits me to about 13 lbs of grain for a 5 gallon batch. When I want to make something high gravity I add DME and sometimes some sugar if I want a dry finish. I don't understand why you say that adding extract will increase your boil time. It may take longer to reach a boil if you add cold extract, but the length of time that the wort boils can still be 60 minutes for the purpose of hop bitterness.

Bob is right that you can still do it all with grains if you do it in stages. That will take more time, but save on money and give you more flexibility.

--GF
 
Thanks for the responses guys.

GigaFemto said:
I don't understand why you say that adding extract will increase your boil time.

I was thinking the volume of the boil kettle would increase with that large an extract addition. So to reach my batch volume, I'd have to boil longer or more vigorously.

BOB357, the multi mash method is something that crossed my mind but I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. I imagine it would be a hell of a brew day with poor overall efficiency. I suppose I can do 2-3 smaller batches, and as you suggest--use one as a starter. I imagine they would all be the same gravity (my target)?
 
Found an interesting article about using the second runnings as strike water for the second mash:

http://pacificgravity.com/2011/01/how-do-i-do-a-high-gravity-mash/

I may give this a shot.
 
bobo1898 said:
Thanks for the responses guys.

GigaFemto said:
I don't understand why you say that adding extract will increase your boil time.

I was thinking the volume of the boil kettle would increase with that large an extract addition. So to reach my batch volume, I'd have to boil longer or more vigorously.

BOB357, the multi mash method is something that crossed my mind but I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. I imagine it would be a hell of a brew day with poor overall efficiency. I suppose I can do 2-3 smaller batches, and as you suggest--use one as a starter. I imagine they would all be the same gravity (my target)?

Doing a reiterated mash is certainly a viable alternativl. Everything I've read about that method claims that the efficiency doesn't really take too big of a hit. However, you're still talking an additional hour or so for the second mash. Your choice is more time or more money depending on whether you go with all grain or use some extract. If you went with extract I'd recomend DME as it would minimize the increase in boil volume.

Before upgrading to a larger mash tun I just reduced the batch size when brewing high gravity beers. Reducing the batch size just enough to fit in your mash tun is definitely another alternative.
 
bobo1898 said:
I was thinking the volume of the boil kettle would increase with that large an extract addition. So to reach my batch volume, I'd have to boil longer or more vigorously.
The volume of your kettle is fixed. The volume of wort in your kettle can increase as you add extract, but if you plan your volumes properly you can hit your final volume target without increasing the boil time. I estimate 1 liter/kg for DME, 0.5 gallons per 6 lbs of LME. That is a pre-boil volume that will be reduced by your boiloff. You can add extract late in the boil if you wish (you only need to boil it for 10 mins or so to sterilize it) so you don't need to consider as much boiloff.
--GF
 
Thanks again for the responses.

BOB357 said:
Before upgrading to a larger mash tun I just reduced the batch size when brewing high gravity beers. Reducing the batch size just enough to fit in your mash tun is definitely another alternative.

Yeah completely agree with this. But this batch, however, is going into a bourbon barrel so I need the full volume in the wood. Otherwise a smaller batch would absolutely be in the cards. Reiterated mash might be fun if I have the time and seems really interesting.

Thanks for the estimations, GigaFemto. It doesn't sound as bad as I thought. I remember gaining 0.5 gallons from adding 3 lbs of candi sugar for a belgian (which was added at the end of the boil) and when I started to compare that to 7 lbs of LME (probably going in at the beginning), numbers had me worried.

If I go with part extract, I may try DME instead. We'll see how the day looks. I've got a week to figure it out but reiterated mash sure sounds like some fun....
 
Did the reiterated mash yesterday. Efficiency ended up being 3-4% less than my normal brew day. Not bad but LONG LONG DAY.

We used the second runnings from the first mash as the strike water for the second mash. We kept this first sparge volume as if it was a normal brew day. In the future I would change this to match the same volume as my initial strike water because at the end of the day we ended up with more runoff than the boil kettle could handle. Had to do two boils at the same time--full volume boil and a second kettle with remaining wort. Once both kettles got low enough, we combined the two into another large boil.

Ended up boiling 2 hours instead of the 90 minutes.

We'll see how this turns out but the gravity sample was delicious.
 
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