Can I brew an 8 or 9 gallon batch?

Craigerrr

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Looking for some advice from the Pros..
I have:
1 @ 10.5 gallon kettle
2 @ 6.5 gallon glass carboys
My method is BIAB
I am loking at the Zombie Dust Clone recipe by skeezerteezer, and woud like to brew a bigger batch than normal, my last few batches have been right around 5 gallons bottled
I am brewing this batch to keg for a party, but would like to have a few wxtra gallons to bottle for myself. Also with being so busy, and away a lot in the summer it is hard to find time to brew. Adjusting the recipe for the volume is easy enough, but is my kettle big enough? Is there a way to cheat and even end up with 10 gallons to package?
I am still pretty green, I did my first batch in February , and have just 7 brews under my belt.
Thanks in advance!
 
with brew in a bag you typically need twice the kettle to the finished batch size of beer so 10 gallons of beer needs a 20 gallon pot but you can do a partial or concentrated mash and don't boil part of your water, so what you would do is add ice cold water to each carboy with a campden tablet added then do your concentrated mash and double the hops because of the extra water you won't get as much bittering or flavor
 
Interesting, so if I scale the recipe, and the total hops come out to 11.68oz for the various additions, are you saying that I should use 23.36oz of hops and double the amount of each addition?
The recipe is for a 6 gallon batch, 14.38 lbs of grain, 8.75oz hops.
I scaled it to 8 gallons, 19.18 lbs of grain, 11.68oz hops.
What should I use for a grain/water ratio?
 
your going to have a very thick mash, as much as you can fit and possibly 1 inch wort above the grain, the efficiency will go down but when you boil it will be twice the gravity so if you scale the recipe to a finished 10 gallon batch just use that amount of hops in the boil
 
Not 100% clear on what you are suggesting for the hops, the recipe scaled to 8 gallons cals for the following Citra additions
1oz - first wort
1.67 - 15
1.67 - 10
1.67 - 5
1.67 - 1
4 - dry hop 7 days
Would I stick with this or should I increase the first wort, or boil additions?
Thank you for your input, I really appreciate it.
 
just use 2 ounces for all the main boil and you'll be fine
 
Thank you very much!
 
I use an 11 gallon kettle for 6 gallon batches. So if your plan is to boil full volume in a 10.5 gallon kettle, it won't work. But here's how it can: Remember when as a newbie you did concentrated, three gallon boils to do 5 gallons of beer? Same principle. Keep your boil size down to about 7.5 gallons at higher gravity, then dilute when you're running it into the carboys! The brilliant part about the calculators on this site is they allow that kind of brewing.
 
also when you boil keep a strainer spoon handy and when the white foam appears just scoop it off and you wont have a boil over
 
Like Nosy says, brew a higher-gravity beer and dilute to proper volume. If the difference between final boil volume and desired fermenter volume is not drastic, Just computing full batch size with the highest pre-boil volume you can manage will get you close enough for IBUs. In other words you want 8 gallons batch size and normally that would be somewhere around 10.5 gallons of pre-boil. Just set your pre-boil volume to 8.5 which should fit comfortably. When you get down to the end of the boil, you'll have around 6 gallons. You know you'll need to add 2 gallons of water somewhere. Depending on the beer you can just finish the boil and add clean water after. If you're worried about late hop utilization, add 2 gallons before your 15 minute addition and you're back to where you would be. Early hop utilization is different but I've found that in most cases it's not enough difference to change the bitterness perceptibly.
Mash tun volume is where you'll hit a wall. You have to make substantially higher-gravity wort. If you're stuck with lower-gravity wort, you can just do a late addition of Liquid Malt Extract.
Even though technically, the concentration at different points of the boil will throw off IBU calculations, it's not as drastic as you might think. Don't stress about it. Just make a clean beer and plenty of it and everybody will be very happy. :)
 
Like Nosy says, brew a higher-gravity beer and dilute to proper volume. If the difference between final boil volume and desired fermenter volume is not drastic, Just computing full batch size with the highest pre-boil volume you can manage will get you close enough for IBUs. In other words you want 8 gallons batch size and normally that would be somewhere around 10.5 gallons of pre-boil. Just set your pre-boil volume to 8.5 which should fit comfortably. When you get down to the end of the boil, you'll have around 6 gallons. You know you'll need to add 2 gallons of water somewhere. Depending on the beer you can just finish the boil and add clean water after. If you're worried about late hop utilization, add 2 gallons before your 15 minute addition and you're back to where you would be. Early hop utilization is different but I've found that in most cases it's not enough difference to change the bitterness perceptibly.
Mash tun volume is where you'll hit a wall. You have to make substantially higher-gravity wort. If you're stuck with lower-gravity wort, you can just do a late addition of Liquid Malt Extract.
Even though technically, the concentration at different points of the boil will throw off IBU calculations, it's not as drastic as you might think. Don't stress about it. Just make a clean beer and plenty of it and everybody will be very happy. :)
Well said!
I was going to suggest after hot break, to just continue adding water, keeping the BK just below the boil over threshold.
Keep in mind that most bigger breweries make a concentrated wort, ferment it and add water just prior to packaging. This saves on BK and fermentor size.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
Cheers,
Brian
 
Thanks guys, really appreciate all of the help on this.
Here is my water calculation idea/plan, along with grain and hops bills.
Undecided on yeast at this point, possibly S-04, or a british ale yeast.
Do my water calcs make sense?
Would you do anything differently.
I've gotta tell you, if this goes well, I forsee doing 8 gallon batches regularly, essentially the same amount of work, and an addition 22 or 23 pints...

8G Zombie Dust Clone.JPG
 
I've done 5 gallon batches in a 4 gallon pot using 20% late addition LME and topping up. You'd be surprised how good a beer can be just using that simple methodology. I've done 7 gallon all-grain batches with a 7.5 gallon boil pot a number of times.
It'll work.
;)
PS...Chico yeast probably works best with Citra. US-05 is a good way to go for a beer like this, IMO.
 
Well, I'm all set to go, going to brew this Friday after work. Thanks to all for the input here and in other posts.
Just need to go to the water place and get the RO water. This will be my first batch using RO and adding to it to get to a target water profile.
When I was buying the ingredients I was telling my guy what I was brewing, and that I was kegging 4 gallons, and bottling the other 4 gallons. He cautioned me that a NEIPA is sensitive to oxygen, that I should load up the bottling bucket with CO2 before racking. Never heard of that, does that make sense?

Also, one more question, I will have room to add the extra water to the kettle after the boil is done. I am thinking that there will be less risk of infection if I add the (pre boiled) water to the kettle as opposed to cooling it and adding it to the fermenter.

Thanks in advance as always
Craigerrr
 
Yep...it's my understanding that NEIPAs don't bottle condition well. And it fades fast. I brewed one that I kegged at 7 days and it peaked at 2-3 weeks after brewing. It was still good at 4 weeks or so but definitely fading by then.
 
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I am getting organized so that I can come home after work tomorrow, light the burner, and brew.
Houston, we have a problem. I planned for 9.18 gallons of strike water, and I have 19.14 pounds of grain. I have a 10.5 gallon kettle, which is 13.5" in diameter, but it is 10.5 at the rim, 9.19 gallons is maybe about 2" from the top. My water to grain ratio calculation was 1.92 quarts per pound. Is 1.5 to one an acceptable ratio? This gives me plenty of room for grain. I will just add more water to the fermenters.
TIA
 
When I say 10.5 at the rim I mean gallons. It is a 10.5 gallon kettle, that is when it is full to the rim.
 
Not enough room according to https://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml , a calculator I use all the time.
Your 19.14 lbs at 1.92 qts/lb needs 10.72 gallons of space. A ratio of 1.5 qts/lb needs 8.71 gallons of space.
 
Thanks for the link, I will mash at 1.5 quarts per pound, that will give me enough room in the kettle.
 
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