Mashing question

[befuddledbrews]

Hello! I'm brand new to this forum thing, and also a pretty green brewer as well, so please go easy

I am trying a west coast IPA clone recipe that has the following -

6.5 lb American - Pale 2-Row
6.5 lb American - Pilsner
0.5 lb American - Munich - Light 10L
0.5 lb American - Caramel / Crystal 60L
1 lb Corn Sugar - Dextrose
15 lb Total

Entire recipe can be found here - http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/r ... -coast-ipa

I am going to be mashing in a square cooler, but the big question is, I only have an 8 gallon kettle, and the recipe calls for 8 gallon pre-boil amount. Would it be bad to knock that amount down to 6.5 gallons pre-boil, and if so, how will this affect my mashing, and overall?

Thanks in advance! Cheers!

[BDawg]

Welcome-

You probably want to get a bigger pot. Having enough headroom is crucial to proper AG batches.
The bigger the pot you can get, the better off you'll be. You need to draw at least 6 and a half gallons just so that you boil down to 5.5.

In the meantime, you probably want to brew smaller batches, or you can get away doing extract or partial mash batches where you can do things like top up in the fermenter.

HTH-

[NateBrews]

This is non ideal, but you have to do something until you finally get that 20 gallon 3 vessel system

You could run out 7 gallons into your pot and then (being very careful about boil over since you won't have much room to work with) boil that and either adjust your flame to not boil off too fast or gradually feed it a little water to keep the effective boil off rate where it needs to be. Basically, as your boiling you know that you started with 7 and want to end with 5.5 or 6 and you'll need to know where you are.

Do you have a way of knowing how much is in the kettle? Some kettles have marks down the inside to tell you. If you don't have that, you can just take a piece of wood and then mark it every 0.5 gallons so you can stick it in the kettle and know where you are (I measure down from the top of the pot to the surface of the liquid, not sticking it in the wort).

Also, you will have a higher preboil gravity because you are going from 7 to 6 gallons instead of 8 to 6 gallons. The higher preboil gravity will probably also effect your hop utilization somewhat for the bittering. I don't know if it will effect the late hops, but the bitterness might come in a touch lower than expected. I probably wouldn't try to compensate for that until you know what this is going to give you.

[imahokie]

Not ideal either, but you think back in the non-full boil extract days and adjust your pre-boil gravity (aim higher), gather 6g, boil down to 4 or 5 g, then top off with water to get to 5.5g in fermenter

[brewinhard]

I think you would be fine if you collect 7 gallons of wort (pre-boil) into your kettle. Just keep your eye on the kettle and as the boil begins, keep the flame under control to eliminate any boil-over. You may also want to skim the hot break (foam) that begins to form prior to the boil so you can keep the boil under better control. It will be close to the top so be wary.

Boil down to 5.5 gallons post boil. You should hit a pretty good OG with that.

Keep us posted and let us know what you decide upon doing and how it goes. Take good notes for your next brew too.

Oh yeah - WELCOME TO THE FORUM!!

Cheers -
Brewinhard

[befuddledbrews]

Thanks all! I appreciate the comments! I will let you all know how it comes out, as I have decided on going with 7 gallons pre, and boil down to 5.5. I'll record my readings and update you all! Cheers!

[bazookazilla]

WELCOME!!!

[Ozwald]

The other thing to remember is that it's perfectly fine if your final volume isn't 5 gallons. My first brew kettle was only big enough to have ~4 gallons going into bottles. I'd much rather have a little less beer done right than topping off post-boil, not boiling hard enough, or doing a concentrated boil.