On Ten Gallon Batches

10 gallons batches have opened my eyes to new facts. Obviously, with a mash so large, I have a mash tun large enough to extract at a pretty good rate. (Lautering rates are a direct function of the area of the false bottom.) However, for the continuous sparger like myself, one has to be able to put water in as fast as they take it out. My old phil's lauter-tun system doesn't cut it and my sparge time has shot up to over two hours. Since I've moved to 10 gallon batches because I don't have the time to do 5 gallon batches in quantity, this is pretty unacceptable. If I could get my sparge back to one hour, I could finish a brew session in under six hours.

I've been trying to figure out ways to trim the length of a brew session even more. Currently, my mash-tun and kettle are the same vessel. This increases my session time because, once my sparge is complete, I have to drain and clean my kettle to begin the boil. A further inefficiency in ten gallon boils is the lag from lighting the flame to reaching the boil. It takes about 45 minutes to get 10 gallons to 212 degrees.

I could significantly reduce my brew session time if I had a lauter-tun that wasn't my kettle. First, this would mean that I could light the flame once I'd collected about 75% of the needed wort. The remainder of the runnings will go to the kettle immediately upon collection, but the heating would already have begun. That should save me about 30-40 minutes.

I've been producing beer a little faster than blog entries, but not much. My life has gotten really busy. I have a puppy and a dissertation that demand a lot of my time. The solution, as brewer, has been to increase my batch size to ten gallons. I don't produce in the same volume as before, but this helps to balance the significant reduction in brew days per month.

I have an IPA waiting to go into my cooler, when either my stout or old ale kicks it. That IPA was made form the same wort as the stout. I made one gallon of beer with a half pound of roasted barley, a quarter pound of black pattent, and a pound of light dried malt extract. I dumped some IPA wort on that. It made a stout. I was pleased by those results.

Yesterday I made ten more gallons, all pale ale. The ten gallons of wort were produced with 19 pounds of maris otter malt, half a pound of 40L crystal and half a pound of 120L crystal. The hops schedule was 3 oz. of 6.3%AA Challenger for 90 and 1 oz. same for 30. I split the wort into two fermenters; I pitched White Labs English Ale yeast on one and Safale's American Ale Yeast on the other. For hop aroma, I'm dry hopping with an ounce of Kent Goldings for the english and an ounce of palisade for the american.

Yesterday's mash was 148 for 37 mintues, followed by 20 minutes at 156. That should produce some great fermentability. I have really liked the results of highly fermentable worts paired with low attenuating yeasts like the White Labs English Ale, so that beer should turn out nice.

The safale american ale yeast is good. I've used it a few time lately. It takes longer to clarify than White Labs california ale and the fermentation may be a little less clean, it attenuates similarly, and ultimately makes a good american ale. I've never used palisade hops, but so long as it smells like a hop, I'm sure everything will be fine.

Happy Repeal of Prohibition Day!