CDA and trying something new

I want to brew an all grain Cascadian Dark Ale. I’ve made a few Black IPA’s, but they always seem too sweet to me and I guess it’s because they were all either extract kits or partial mashes. Anyway, I’m a BIAB’er and I usually mash in one pot and a quick sparge in a second. Due to one pot being only 5 gallons I’ve been limited to 13lbs of grain or less. Because I need a lot of grain for this recipe I’m gonna try and do just a mash with no sparge in my larger 30qt pot. Anyway here’s the recipe. Whatcha think?

5 gallons
OG 1.065
FG 1.014
SRM 31
IBU 88

11lbs 2-Row
2lbs Munich 10L
10oz Midnight Wheat (Using this in place of Carafa for color. I believe it has a lot of the same characteristics.)
8oz C40
4oz Special Roast

Mash 7gal at 151F for 60min. No sparge.

1.25oz Magnum 60min
1oz Cascade 15min
1oz Centennial 15min
1oz Cascade 5min
1oz Citra 5min
1oz Cascade Dry Hop 14days
1oz Centennial Dry Hop 14days
1oz Citra Dry Hop 14days

Wyeast Belgian Stout 1581 - 1.25L starter

Sounds yummy! I might try that one myself

If I BIAB with the full volume of water in one pot and just dunk the grain sack a few times at the end of the mash, would that have the same effect as mashing with 1/2 the water in one pot then dunking the grain sack in another pot with the other 1/2 of the water? Seems like I’d get the same results/efficiency. No?

No, it’ll decrease your efficiency a little since the wort in the grain will be at a higher gravity than it would have been if you dunked it in a pot with half the water.

Ok, but are we talking a significant decrease? I can live with a few points, but if I’m gonna lose like 10points or more, I may rethink my plans here. I could just scale the batch down to 4gallons or maybe add a little candi sugar to get the OG up.

You probably want to boost your mash to 8 gallons since you’ll lose about 1.75 gallons to the grain, putting 6.25 gallons in the kettle pre-boil. Then simple ROT for no-sparge is that the maximum efficiency you can get is the wort in the kettle divided by the total wort in the MT, so 6.25/8 = 78%.

What about adding some sugar to help dry it out a bit? I love CDA but find that many are too roasty or like you said to sweet (I have had plenty commercial examples that were to sweet). I add about 1 lb of sugar to mine. I also cold soak my dark grains, not everyone likes to do that because of the extra effort and expense (I double my dark grain amounts) but I works very well me. I just put mine on tap and really love it!

Good luck!