Boiling down wort

[N_Bolton]

I've created my first all grain recipe, and I've gone out and bought all the grains and hops for it, I am having a problem with batch size though. The recipe has around 20 pounds of grain, so I need around 40l of water for the mash. I'm wondering if there are going to be any ill effects of boiling the wort down to 23l, as that is the size of fermenter that we have, and how long that would most likely take?

[Bum]

I brew batches that are 32L pre-boil and routinely end up with 21/22L in the fermenter after losses to gear, trub and evaporation so I don't think you're going to be overshooting the mark too much here. [EDIT: not meaning to present this as the best possible outcome - just presenting a realworld example and I'm sure I have room for improvements myself.] What is more important than getting your volume right is hitting your targets. If you hit your desired OG and you've got "too much" wort then that's not going to be the end of the world - just ferment the amount you can and either tip the rest or possibly even put it aside for future starters (obviously hopping can be a big issue here as can hygiene but that's not really what you're asking about so we'll ignore that for now).

Having said that, 40L for a bit over 9kg of grain seems a bit more than entirely necessary to me (assuming a high grav brew) and I'm sure you have your reasons but you could look at scaling it back some. Post your full recipe and your desired targets and someone will have more specific advice in no time.

[warra48]

Wow, 20 lbs of grains, that equates to approximately 9 kg.

I normally mash in the range of 2.5 to 3 litres per kg. In your case that would equate to a range of 22½ to 27 litres, or 25 litres avarage..
Assuming you'll batch sparge, you'll only drain about 16 litres of that initially, allowing 1 litre per kg absorption by the grains.
You can then add your sparge water to take you to whatever boil volume you desire. For a 23 litre batch you need around 30 to 32 litres pre-boil, which is my usual range. I lose about 5 litres to evaporation over 60 to 90 minutes, 1 litre to cooling shrinkage, and some to trub, giving me 23 litres into the fermenter.

If you BIAB, then you wouldn't need to use 40 litres necessarily, but I'm no expert on that. Others may be able to guide you better on that.

To me, boiling 40 litres down to 23 litres does not look like good practice.

BeerSmith with efficiency set at 80%, predicts an OG of 1.090 for a 23 litre batch with your 20 lbs of grains.
Do you really wish to brew something with a potential ABV of around 9%?

Maybe you can post your recipe, and give us some idea of your equipment in your system, so we can have a better look at it.

[Bum]

BeerSmith with efficiency set at 80%, predicts an OG of 1.090 for a 23 litre batch with your 20 lbs of grains.
Do you really wish to brew something with a potential ABV of around 9%?

Only commenting on this by way of explaining why I said something that is somewhat the opposite of this in my post - I'd be very impressed to see a beginner brewer get 80% efficiency on a grainbill this large (except by boiling it down by nearly half - which as you say is probably not advisable). Your point is valid and I don't think mine necessarily conflicts with it despite looking to be saying the exact opposite thing, I'm basing my thinking on an efficiency much closer to 65% (making the beer low 1070s/7.x%)

[billybushcook]

Simple answer....

split your grain in half & do 2 x 20L batches.(Most normal 23L brews should be around 5Kg grain bill)

Use 13 - 14L to mash & about 18-19L to sparge! (these volumes will depend a little on your equipment)

Oh, & welcome to the forum.

Mick.

[warra48]

Wasn't trying to contradict you, Bum. We're coming at the question from different directions, but it's all good!
I set BeerSmith at 80 or 85% for my system, and I was looking at seeing what 9 kgs of grain would deliver for a 23 litre batch in my system.

I totally agree that with this sort of grain bill you are very unlikely to get that sort of efficiency, especially for your first AG batch. 60 to 65% looks like a more realistic setting. Even with this it predicts an OG of 1.070. That's great if he is trying to achieve that, which is why we've asked for the recipe.

As it happens, my last two batches have OGs of 1.068 and 1.083 ! However, I used only 6.5 and 7 kg of grains respectively. I don't think my arms could take hand milling 9 kg of grains in one go!

[billybushcook]

I've created my first all grain recipe,

Being a first time Masher, I'm assuming that he is wanting a fairly normal, straight forward type beer, not rocket fuel & some thing has gone a miss with his recipe formulation?

Mick.

[Bum]

Wasn't trying to contradict you, Bum.

I know I just wanted to explain why I was saying the pre-boil volume could possibly be smaller while you were saying the gravity might already be too high. As you say, same question from different perspectives but I feel that when a novice (myself) contradicts a more experienced brewer (you) he's got some explaining to do.

As it happens, my last two batches have OGs of 1.068 and 1.083 ! However, I used only 6.5 and 7 kg of grains respectively. I don't think my arms could take hand milling 9 kg of grains in one go!

One of my most recent was an 11kg nightmare. Nearly filled my tun dry. I learned a lot that day!

[speedie]

nearly xmas
it still makes me wonder
smart or dumb

[N_Bolton]

Thanks a lot for all the advice. It turns out I did a calculation wrong and forgot to convert my lbs to kg when I was calculating the water i would need. Here is the recipe, it is for an IPA.
I used Beersmith at a 68% efficiency.

17.96lbs Pale Malt (2 row)
2.3 lbs Munich 10L
2.23 lbs Wheat, Torrified
3 oz. Cascade (3 day dry hopped)
1 oz Cascade (aroma steep, last 20 mins)
4 oz. Simcoe(boiling)

[warra48]

That's still a big load of grains, 10 kg.

Set at 68% efficiency, BeerSmith predicts an OG of 1.090.
That's well above the normal style limit for an AIPA of 1.075.

If that's what you want to do, you'll need about 25 litres of water to mash in.
You should be able to drain about 15 litres, so to get to a preboil volume of say 31 litres, you'll need to add a further 16 litres of sparge water.

Post boil, you should have about 23 litres.

Good luck. Personally, I'd look at mashing with no more than about 7 kg of grains. Just reduce all the malts by 30%, and you will find the process potentially a lot easier. It should get you in the ball park style wise for the beer you want to make.

[Bum]

Yeah, assuming a 33l-ish esky tun like I use, my own beginner's experience reflects Warra's advice entirely. My own higher OG brewdays have gone much more smoothly below 1070.

But...BIAB in a keggle? Maybe you'd get away with the larger grainbill a bit more easily (provided you can lift the wet bag out without busting your onions - and the bag!). What you can hope to achieve depends, to a certain extent, on your process.

[N_Bolton]

The brew is actually supposed to be based on a West coast IPA, and from what I have read it should be around 1.090 at the upper limit. Thanks for all the advice, my buddy and I are just doing the whole thing today, and all of this helped a lot. I'll let you guys know how it all turns out.

[Bum]

If you haven't started yet just be aware of one thing (that I wasn't aware of until I went to do it myself) - once milled the 11kg grainbill I mentioned above took up approximately 20L worth of space in my tun. Yes, it does absorb water so you'll still get your mash volume in the tun but it'll be tight and I had the problem of the lower water/grain ratio making it difficult to hit my temp easily. It really was difficult and if I hadn't had a handful of brews on that system under my belt already I'm not entirely sure I would have been able to work out a fix (and even then I don't think what I worked out was the best solution, in retropsect).

Best of luck and let us know how it goes.

[speedie]

use either imperial or si units
they overlap into wtf

[Bum]

Are you kidding? No one can understand a word you type but you're telling someone else how to be better understood?

[N_Bolton]

So we made the beer about a week ago when I last posted onto a yeast cake from my friends previous porter batch. Thought it would be an interesting idea, and the beer is still burbling furiously in the primary on last inspection yesterday. I'm pretty sure it just means we had a bit too much yeast for the start but I'm not sure if this will seriously hurt the quality of the beer. We had the beer around 1.080 at the initial test into the primary.

[N_Bolton]

We just tried the beer last night and it worked out really well. My friend forgot to take the final gravity so I'm not too sure about the fg, but the hop level is a really god kick. The only thing I am going to change in the future is the amount of Munich, a little too much malt sweetness coming through. All in all I thought it worked out really well.

[Bum]

Awesome news.

So what did you end up going with in terms of your volumes?

[N_Bolton]

We did a 20l steap, with a 23l sparge. Our starting volume was around 25l and we boiled it down to just under 23l, and due to a little over active fermentation, we lost a little in the primary, so we ended up with just under 19l in the keg at the end of the day.

Thanks for all the help