I REALLY like Dark Horse’s Double Crooked Tree IPA. I would like to make a batch. According to the brewery, to make Double Crooked Tree, they take their Crooked Tree IPA recipe and doubled all of the ingredients, except the water. I have found a recipe for Crooked Tree. It calls for 13.5 pounds of grain. I understand the doubling concept, but am not sure about the execution.
I do batch sparging (thanks, Denny, for the great article). I usually try to collect 5.5 to 6 gallons of pre-boil wort for a 5 gallon batch, half in the first running and half in the second. Here we are talking about 27 pounds of grain for a 5 gallon batch. If I only use 1 quart of water per pound of grain for the mash (a thicker mash than I typically work with), and taking into account my system’s absorption rate of about 1 gallon per 10 pounds of grain, I would end up with with more than 4 gallons of wort after the first running. Is that ok? Do I simply make up the difference in the second running, even if the two running are not equal? Is there a better approach? Is fly sparging better for this kind of recipe?
