Hello I am planning on brewing my first high-gravity beer. Well I am looking at Jamil BCS book an I came across a recipe call Old Monster American Barley wine. I be brewing this all-gain I have a 10gal mash-tun cooler I read in his description of the recipe that with all the base grains the total amount is 23.2lbs of malt an even with 1qt/lb your mash would be 8.5gal in my mash-tun now I know I Might be able to fit all of that in to my mash-tun but I rather replace half of that 23.2lbs malt with light malt extract. Now the other question that I have is mashing the 11.6lbs how would I work that an the other half of the light malt extract into this beer meaning I know I mash the 11.6lbs but how much would I collect when I am sparging I know the recipe say pre-boil vol of 7.00gal?
Would a 2.5 gal batch fit your existing equipment?
Good luck on your adventure… Beer smith has the Potential, or points per pound, for your equation…I didn’t understand that piece of the fermentables when I started a long time ago… Also, your mash-tun is the water cooler? Mine was, and I would have stuck mashes with over 15lbs in that sucker… And yeast… Your going to do a big pitch, or 2 step pitch? 2 step is where you’d add a fresh batch of yeast somewhere about half way through your fermenting cycle… Did I read somewhere that champagne yeast was used in the 2 pitch? Sneezles61
Partial mash is the way to go on big beers like this. I used a calculator, started with a couple of jugs of MO LME, then mashed the remainder to hit my target. LME, luckily, comes in known volume jugs, so I just figured that when calculating sparge volume. That being said, if you overdo it, and have a high volume, just boil longer. It will probably yield a higher efficiency.
