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Author Topic: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle  (Read 2191 times)

Offline MrDonde

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5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« on: November 14, 2017, 01:05:20 pm »
Hello,

I am working more and more with all grain brews and I had a couple questions about doing 5 gallon brews on my keggle system. I purchased this system a while back and generally use it for bigger brews but I would like to do 5 gallon brews.

1. My Mash Tun has a false bottom in it. I find that it takes about 3 gallons to fill the keggle to the top of the false bottom. Does this mean that for every recipe I should increase the amount of water for mashing by 3 gallons?
2. Will this extra water negatively affect my brews?
3. Is there a better method/tool for mashing other than a false bottom? I have seen some hose setups, forget the name.

Thanks for any help.
-Donde

Offline denny

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2017, 01:11:53 pm »
take a look at www.dennybrew.com
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Offline Wilbur

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2017, 01:21:52 pm »
You could pop the false bottom out and do brew in  a mash tun, or you could do no sparge/full volume mash batches. You might need to play around with your grind or add more grain to hit your numbers though.

Offline Stevie

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2017, 02:30:43 pm »
Does your tun have a dip tube that draw from below the false bottom? If so, the amount left after draining is the extra or dead space. Hopefully it would be a quart or so.

Offline Kevin

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2017, 12:07:29 pm »
Does your tun have a dip tube that draw from below the false bottom? If so, the amount left after draining is the extra or dead space. Hopefully it would be a quart or so.

This^^^ Fill your mash tun with a measured amount of water and drain it as you would while mashing. Collect that water and measure to determine what the dip tube leaves behind.

I have a three keggle system and do five gallon batches all the time. But earlier this year I started using the BIAB method for these smaller batches and it works quite well.
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Offline hopfenundmalz

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2017, 12:34:17 pm »
My false bottom has about 2.5 gallons under it. For a five gallon batch, mash a little loose, 2 qt/lb should do it. Recirculate during the mash. It should work. The system Gordon Strong used for years was similar, and he often had published making 5 gallon net batches.
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Offline James K

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Re: 5 gallon brew in 15 gallon keggle
« Reply #6 on: November 27, 2017, 02:05:33 am »
I’m not sure what your system looks like but I have a 3 tier with two burners, a cooler for mashing and I make 5 gallon batches all the time.
My hot water tank is a keggel. I typically have about 13 gallons of water to start for 5 gallon batch but I just make sure I have enough, sometimes I boil for longer than 60 minutes.
Depending on what I am making, grain weight wise, I multiply my grain weight by 1.25 to see how much water I need for mashing in the cooler.
I mash 60 minutes and then vorlauf until the mash clears up.  Sometimes I add water while doing this because I don’t want to expose my grain bed to oxygen.
As I fill my boil kettle I rinse the grains with near boiling water.

I’ve never had any issues with this method.
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