Need More Water, Not Enough Kettle!

[Brewer #131445]

Hello All,

Normally I brew small 4gal batches (BIAB) in my 8gal kettle - because of the smaller batch size, I can comfortably fill enough water in my kettle + grain bill without it all overflowing for the mash.

Tomorrow, I want to aim for my first 5gal batch and after running the calculations, I'm going to need 7.63gal mash water, but the total mash volume will be 8.66gal! Not enough space.

So how do you experts do it?

Is this as simple as mashing with less water in the kettle at the beginning (if so, how much?)...raise the bag with grain....then add more water? Do I just need to heat up the additional water to the mash temperature, before adding to the kettle?

Thanks - I just need a little reassurance and wisdom.

 

[ChicoBrewer]

Do two mashes. Or get a bigger tun. Ten gallons works well.

 

[philjohnwilliams]

yes, you can mash with less water. Try removing .25qt/pound and see how that changes your volume. I have done mashes (non BIAB) with as low as 1.25qt/pound and had good results, you may be able to get away with even less.

 

[J A]

Lift the bag out of the pot and sparge through it or do a dunk sparge in a different vessel and combine with the original wort. Should be no problem doing 5 in an 8 BIAB but you will have problem doing full-volume.

 

[Nosybear]

Brew a concentrated beer then dilute it in the fermentor. A lot of us started that way.

 

[Ward Chillington]

Brew a concentrated beer then dilute it in the fermentor. A lot of us started that way.

??? Tell me more! What kind of ratio's are we talking about?

 

[J A]

I've one a ton of 5+gallon batches of beer in an 8 gallon kettle. You just have to change from full-volume BIAB.

 

[Nosybear]

You can do a mash-boil to get all your sugars into a three gallon boil, then dilute the wort with water once the boil is done. You'd end up mashing thicker, maybe replacing some of your grains with sugars. And I misread your initial post - the problem isn't the boil, it's the mash tun size. But you hit the answer already: Mash with less water. Then, as JA says, do some kind of a sparge step to make up the remaining volume. I don't BIAB so I can't help much there but find a way to soak or pour water through your grains to rinse out sugars and to make up for the volume you need.

 

[J A]

I don't BIAB so I can't help much there but find a way to soak or pour water through your grains to rinse out sugars and to make up for the volume you need.

Simply mashing up to 2 qts/lb in the boil pot and then using a dunk sparge in a bucket with the remaining liquor volume will do it. With a proper set-up, sparigng through may be more efficient but most guys get quite good efficiency with a dunk sparge.