concentrated AG wort

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samnorfolk

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Ive only got a 18 litre burco boiler, to boil up my wort in, I have a 45 litre cool box I can mash in. Im wondering if its possible to do a 5 gallon batch, by concentrating the wort then adding water? If so can anyone offer any guidance in amounts etc. Thanks
 
It is called maxi BIAB. I think yes you can certainly do it but "may" be somewhat restricted depending on your volumes and grain bills..

18 liter burco what is the max you can boil in that? 14 liters.. what volume are you looking at getting too?
 
It is called maxi BIAB. I think yes you can certainly do it but "may" be somewhat restricted depending on your volumes and grain bills..

18 liter burco what is the max you can boil in that? 14 liters.. what volume are you looking at getting too?

I would like to aim for 19-21 litres, yes can get about 14 litres I think
 
I would like to aim for 19-21 litres, yes can get about 14 litres I think

MyQul does Maxi I think and has something like a 21 liter pot and boils like 19 liters and tops up to 23.. (I think)..

He may have some advice for you on this.

I might be wrong but I think it may be difficult to make a concentrated wort for 21 liters with only 14 to play with, unless you boil in another pot and throw them in together?

Again I am just doing this in my head but say you wanted to use 5kg of grain at roughly 2.5 lt per kg.. that's 12.5 liters mash and then minus grain absorbtion it only leaves you about 7 liters to sparge with..... Might be do able but you will need to be very efficient.

There are maxi BIAB calculators you could try
 
Can I also suggest possibly consider partial mash.. split your grain bill to the max you think you could do so that might be say 3KG of grain then.. you could top up with say 1KG DME at 21L that will get you roughly a 5% beer.
 
Ok thanks, so I could mash say a 5kg bill, with 12.5 litres of water, then sparge, then put as much as I can into burco and the rest into a pot and boil and then put together?
 
As Cov says I make a concentrated wort and dilute in the FV. I have an 20L pot which I make 17L of concentated wort in and then dilute down to 23L. I can mash about a maximum of 5.5kg of grain
 
Ok thanks, so I could mash say a 5kg bill, with 12.5 litres of water, then sparge, then put as much as I can into burco and the rest into a pot and boil and then put together?

Yes. This would work. Try to split your hop additions as evenly as possible. You don't have to but if you put all your hop addition in say the burco then you need to add a little more bittering charge as hops dont isomerise as well in concentrated wort. I add 5 IBU extra
 
Yes. This would work. Try to split your hop additions as evenly as possible. You don't have to but if you put all your hop addition in say the burco then you need to add a little more bittering charge as hops dont isomerise as well in concentrated wort. I add 5 IBU extra


Ok, so if my grain bill is 5kg, I've mashed in 12.5 litres of water, how many litres do i sparge with?
 
Ok, so if my grain bill is 5kg, I've mashed in 12.5 litres of water, how many litres do i sparge with?

I just do two dunk sparges, one of 6.7L and a second of 3.4L seems to work for me. I have to do two sparges as my mash is also quite concentrated, so I need to do two as the first one the sparge is so saturated with sugars the water can't 'absorb' any more
 
I have been wondering about similar things when producing relatively low ABV beers, I could make a 1064 gravity wort and then dilute with boiled/cooled water to make twice as much 1032 wort - I realise I would need to increase the hops significantly more than twice the amount for a single brew (at least the bittering hops), but what is the limit on how much I can dilute.
An alternative would be to boil the 1st runnings (without sparging) then split into 2 FVs, sparge the grain as 2nd runnings, and boil that before splitting again and adding to the first. This wouldn't save as much time though. Any thoughts?
 
I have been wondering about similar things when producing relatively low ABV beers, I could make a 1064 gravity wort and then dilute with boiled/cooled water to make twice as much 1032 wort - I realise I would need to increase the hops significantly more than twice the amount for a single brew (at least the bittering hops), but what is the limit on how much I can dilute.
An alternative would be to boil the 1st runnings (without sparging) then split into 2 FVs, sparge the grain as 2nd runnings, and boil that before splitting again and adding to the first. This wouldn't save as much time though. Any thoughts?

This is what i have just done, i mashed about 4.5kg of malt in my cool box then sparged and combined the 2 in my FV, I managed to get it all in my Burco, was extremely tight and had to keep a very close eye so it didn't initially overflow. Left it to boil which left me with about 14 litres, the initial OG was about 1062 so i then topped up with water until i reached about 19 litres with OG of 1050.
No idea if this is right but i thought it would be worth a go
 
This is what i have just done, i mashed about 4.5kg of malt in my cool box then sparged and combined the 2 in my FV, I managed to get it all in my Burco, was extremely tight and had to keep a very close eye so it didn't initially overflow. Left it to boil which left me with about 14 litres, the initial OG was about 1062 so i then topped up with water until i reached about 19 litres with OG of 1050.
No idea if this is right but i thought it would be worth a go

Just kegged up this brew, and had a sample, its already tastes like the best brew ive made!!
 
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