KISS'ing ten gallons

Yesterday, I finally got together with a neighbor who's been wanting to learn to brew beer, and we made a ten-gallon batch of beer. It was my first time brewing ten gallons, and I thought I'd share a few things I learned.

The recipe was a big-ish IPA, with 17 lb of 2-row, 5 lb of dark Munich malt, and 3 lb of Crystal 40, with 2 lb of raw sugar to help dry it out. Target OG was 1.070.

I converted a 60 Quart Igloo cooler for mashing the night before, so I was breaking in a new mashtun as well as brewing a large batch. I used a nipple through the bulkhead, fudged it a bit to fit the existing gasket, and built a collection manifold out of PVC CPVC with lots of little holes in the bottom.

IT was a cold morning yesterday, with the outside temperature about 20 degrees when we got underway. The cold meant we had to be aware of a few extra things. First, hoses freeze in cold weather, so hoses have to be unhooked and drained after each use. Second, spills and over-run freezes on cold concrete, so you have to take care not to make an ice slick in your workspace.

At any rate, the kettle and burner, shown here, worked perfectly in the cold. You can also see the end of the new mash tun, and a grain sack with the entire grainbill in it.


Everything went great, and we collected about 13 gallons of preboil runnings, which made for a very full boil kettle.

In the cold, with the boil going as vigorously as possible, we boiled down to about 11.5 gallons. Hop absorption ate up nearly another half gallon, with nearly seven ounces of leaf hops.


Chilling took longer than I wanted, since I was using a 25 foot immersion chiller. We managed to get under 170F in just a few minutes, but it took nearly 45 minutes to get down to pitching temperature. I forsee a new gadget (counterflow chiller) in the KISS rig, if I continue to brew ten gallon batches.

Overall the day went smoothly, and we may have a new brewer in our midst, if my neighbor stays hooked. I was really pleased with the CPVC manifold on the cooler -- I recirculated lass than a half-gallon of runnings before the wort cleared, and it was crystal clear, as in "read the newspaper through the tubing" clear. Beautiful color on the beer, too. Incidentally, the OG into the fermenters was 1.072, for a brewhouse efficiency of about 78 percent, which is very acceptable for a batch sparger like myself.

So, all three of you readers. Fear not the ten gallon brewday. It's not twice as much work as a five gallon brew, but you get twice the beer.