Anyone Here Brewed A Big Beer Before?

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

rodabod

Member
Joined
Feb 13, 2015
Messages
778
Reaction score
220
Location
Leytonstone, London (Formerly Edinburgh)
I'm possibly going to have another brew day tomorrow, and this time it's going to be a barley wine.

Shooting for 1105 OG, only from grain.... It's going to be tricky.

Main constraint seems to be mash tun volume. I have a 24L mash tun, and I believe the limit of strike-water/grist ratio is about 2L/Kilo.

So, I reckon I can just about fit 9Kg grain and 18L of water in there, and then only use the first runnings for my wort.

No idea how it might actually tun out though. I've estimated 50% efficiency as it gets harder extract sugars when the water becomes that saturated. Also, it's not that likely I will be sparging unless I really overshoot this target.... Play it by ear, I guess.

Anyone have any advice?
 
If you want to get a good efficiency you could try an over night mash. I've just started to experiment with the method. I've only done one so far though but the signs are good.

Don't know what my grist to water ratio is but I have a 20L pot and I can just about fit about 5KG of grain in there with14-15L of water for a maxi BIAB. I can usually hit 72% efficiency if I do two dunk sparges.

However with the overnight mash (If I did the maths right) I hit 82% efficiency. I was aiming for 23L brewlength and got 26L after my two dunk sparges and diluting down to target OG

My next overnight mash experiment will be to see if I can completely get away without doing any sparges at all seeing as the effiiency was so good

Hope this helps a bit. I don't really know much about big beers as I'm usually going the otherway and wanting to make milds and ordinary bitters
 
I reckon you need a bit more water in the mash for 9kg, like 21-22L. 19L would be the absolute minimum, and would still be unlikely to fit in a 24L tun with 9kg of grain. I think you need to reduce the batch size. How much barley wine do you need? :-)

Perhaps consider making 15L with a total grainbill of 8kg. Mash in 18L of water, which is 2.25L per kg.

Then sparge with 12L of sparge water. A good idea would be to recirculate the wort through the mash, I think. If you can check the gravity of the wort you run off, that would obviously help a lot. Then boil the wort for about 2 hours. A measuring stick for you boiler to keep tabs on wort volume during the boil would be helpful too. End the boil when you hit the volume.

If your OG comes up short you can always add DME. Hitting your target OG won't be easy.
 
I don't think you can do it.

I work on the basis of 2.5-3lts, Thicker mashes I have found to be not as efficient (unless you perhaps leave it overnight like suggested above) I would say 22 is the minimum for 9kg and more ideally 27

I think 9kg and the max water you can fit will look like an enormous flapjack.

Could you split the mash 50/50? and boil the liquor as one?.. or reduce the grain and mash some in a separate pot??
 
:lol:

Or Hobdog

Haha!

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Hadn't considered an overnight mash, or even an extended mash.

There's so much loss to grain and possibly boiling that I want to make as much as possible, and that may only be 10L after losses to hops, etc. I will be adding around 250g of hops, so will lose a lot to that too.... Also, this is a beer that I will be aging for months, and I don't want to wish that I'd made more further down the line.

The suggestion of a split mash has got me thinking though: I originally thought that I couldn't be arsed waiting for a second mash to convert, but I could get the first mash boiling and reducing while the second is converting.

I may waste maybe half a kilo of grain later and see just how stiff it is with 1L of water.
 
I've also realised that someone's math(s) elsewhere doesn't add up when converting to metric. The yanks say that you shouldn't go for less than 1 quart per pound.

That's 1.136L / 0.453Kg = 2.5L/Kg

So, I'll go back to my recipe editor and reduce the grain bill as suggested!
 
I think the biggest I have done was the Crouch Vale Willie Warmer from the first edition Wheeler Book, that was about 7 kilo of malt in a 5 gal batch, if that's any help. it was mashed in a double FV mash tun and insulted with bubble wrap.
 
I think the biggest I have done was the Crouch Vale Willie Warmer from the first edition Wheeler Book, that was about 7 kilo of malt in a 5 gal batch, if that's any help. it was mashed in a double FV mash tun and insulted with bubble wrap.

In another thread people were talking to their airlocks but I've not heard of anyone insulting their fv:-D
 
By way of a digression (!) I did a brewery tour of Tennants (not Tennents) brewery in Sheffield many years ago. Tennants had just become part of Whitbread, however both brewing names have long since gone. Anyway Tennants brewed Tennants Gold Label barley wine which was firm favourite, certainly in the north of England, especially with barley wine drinkers and by many who would top up their pint with a barley wine.
Gold Label came in nips (or 1/3 pint) bottles like most barley wines, and the point of me posting here is that 23 litres of barley wine is equivalent to about 120 nip bottles, which is an awful lot of bottling on bottling day ;-) .
 
Back
Top