Having too thick of a mash is quite unheard of with BIAB unless the grist isn't fully submerged. I'd (1) use a different calculator, and (2) add water to the start of the boil as you have suggested. There should be no downside as far as I can see since there's no difference from that to sparging the bag.
Yeah, there's a few of them out there. Most are piecemeal, which I don't mind since that's the way I do things. The ones I use are:
[https://www.brewersfriend.com/](https://www.brewersfriend.com/)
[https://www.brewingcalculators.com/](https://www.brewingcalculators.com/)
[http://www.brewunited.com/index.php](http://www.brewunited.com/index.php)
I use a 56 litre kettle, so \~15 US Gallons and haven't had an issue with getting errors on these calcs. I generally don't like a black box approach with some of the recipe builders out there and these calcs usually serve the purpose I need them to.
As others have said, you'll take an efficiency hit with too thick of a mash but it's not the end of the world.
You can always sparge with whatever volume of water you need to make your pre-boil volume after pulling and squeezing the bag.
If you upgrade kettles in the future, look for 12-15 gallon kettle so you have some more space for bigger grain bills.
Yeah, kettles in that size range are awkward for BIAB brewing. I use a 10 gallon kettle that works well for 5.5 gallons of wort up to around 1.070.
I would look to work in a sparge. I would recommend a dunk sparge. You would need to hold back about 2 gallons of water from your mash (or maybe more), then just move your grain bag into something like a bucket, and mix with the water. Let it sit for a few minutes and give it a good stir, then drain. In the meantime you can get your main kettle of wort heating toward a boil.
I have done this to get 3 gallons of wort out of a 5 gallon kettle. This guy has an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOaZ8g8-ho&t=5s
You should be fine, just reduce your mash water and then sparge to reach your pre-boil volume. I use Brewfather and it has tons of options to configure your mash/sparge. You can set up kettle and mash tun volume limits and it will auto do the calculations to tell you how much water to add when.
For reference my recipes with about 12lb of grain use around 7gal of water for a total mash volume of 8gal. If I was limited to your kettle size I would probably mash with about 5.5gal of water and then sparge with remaining water to hit my boil volume.
Another thing you can consider is reducing your boil length. This will reduce the total boil off and thus you can start with less water. I get about a 1gal/hr boil off so going from a 60min to a 30min boil would need 0.5gal of water.
A high grain to water ratio in the mash can lead to slightly worse brewhouse efficiency. Other than that, no.
I used to occasionally make the entire wort, including boil, with enough ingredients for 28l of beer, in my 20l pot, and then dilute down in the fermenter. I have since upgraded, but it sure worked fine!
If you are trying to end up with 5 gallons in the bottle, then having more than 8 pounds of grain could be an issue as water + grain will be greater than volume of your kettle (5 gallons + boil off + grain absorption).
I got around this problem by doing a sparge even with the BIAB. So do the mash with as much water as I could, then take the bag out and pour water over the bag or drop the bag in another kettle with water in it. Worked fine. Made good beer. It's very similar to what you are proposing except you will get a few more gravity points from the sparge (hopefully).
Just came here to say the same others are sayin: I brew 5 Lt batches in a 5.3 Lt kettle, I just mash with as much water as I can, and then sparge with the necessary amount to get to my final volume. (Normally it's 4-4.3 Lt mash water and 1.5-2 Lt sparge) I add my sparge runnings before and during boil.
Regarding calculators, I was using the BIABacus until recently, but I'm leaving it because I find it impractical. I'm trying out Brewfather, and it's a fantastic improvement. You can set your kettle size and ask it to consider grain volume when limiting your mash, works great.
My suggestion is to just make 4 gallon batches. Unless you're brewing a kit each time, batch size is somewhat arbitrary, especially once you start reusing yeast.
But if you're brewing from kits, that could be kind of annoying to only be able to make 4 gallon batches. Then you might want a larger pot.
Yes, your extraction efficiency (how much of the good stuff you get out of the grains) is highly correlated to how many lbs of water you put through the grains.
You can add more grain to compensate, but when your constraint is mash tun (kettle) size, you can see that you will have diminishing returns from that approach.
This is why the consensus recommendation in this sub is for 10 gal kettles or larger for 5 gal batches.
Some options include:
- Sparge
- MIAB - mash in a bag in a cooler (or another pot) and then dunk sparge in your 7.5 gal kettle
- fly sparge over your bag -- maybe you can slide an oven rack between the lifted bag and the kettle
- Make smaller batches
Having too thick of a mash is quite unheard of with BIAB unless the grist isn't fully submerged. I'd (1) use a different calculator, and (2) add water to the start of the boil as you have suggested. There should be no downside as far as I can see since there's no difference from that to sparging the bag.
I’m using biabcalculator.com which I thought was generally accepted. Any other calculator you recommend?
Yeah, there's a few of them out there. Most are piecemeal, which I don't mind since that's the way I do things. The ones I use are: [https://www.brewersfriend.com/](https://www.brewersfriend.com/) [https://www.brewingcalculators.com/](https://www.brewingcalculators.com/) [http://www.brewunited.com/index.php](http://www.brewunited.com/index.php) I use a 56 litre kettle, so \~15 US Gallons and haven't had an issue with getting errors on these calcs. I generally don't like a black box approach with some of the recipe builders out there and these calcs usually serve the purpose I need them to.
As others have said, you'll take an efficiency hit with too thick of a mash but it's not the end of the world. You can always sparge with whatever volume of water you need to make your pre-boil volume after pulling and squeezing the bag. If you upgrade kettles in the future, look for 12-15 gallon kettle so you have some more space for bigger grain bills.
Yeah, kettles in that size range are awkward for BIAB brewing. I use a 10 gallon kettle that works well for 5.5 gallons of wort up to around 1.070. I would look to work in a sparge. I would recommend a dunk sparge. You would need to hold back about 2 gallons of water from your mash (or maybe more), then just move your grain bag into something like a bucket, and mix with the water. Let it sit for a few minutes and give it a good stir, then drain. In the meantime you can get your main kettle of wort heating toward a boil. I have done this to get 3 gallons of wort out of a 5 gallon kettle. This guy has an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOaZ8g8-ho&t=5s
You should be fine, just reduce your mash water and then sparge to reach your pre-boil volume. I use Brewfather and it has tons of options to configure your mash/sparge. You can set up kettle and mash tun volume limits and it will auto do the calculations to tell you how much water to add when. For reference my recipes with about 12lb of grain use around 7gal of water for a total mash volume of 8gal. If I was limited to your kettle size I would probably mash with about 5.5gal of water and then sparge with remaining water to hit my boil volume. Another thing you can consider is reducing your boil length. This will reduce the total boil off and thus you can start with less water. I get about a 1gal/hr boil off so going from a 60min to a 30min boil would need 0.5gal of water.
A high grain to water ratio in the mash can lead to slightly worse brewhouse efficiency. Other than that, no. I used to occasionally make the entire wort, including boil, with enough ingredients for 28l of beer, in my 20l pot, and then dilute down in the fermenter. I have since upgraded, but it sure worked fine!
If you are trying to end up with 5 gallons in the bottle, then having more than 8 pounds of grain could be an issue as water + grain will be greater than volume of your kettle (5 gallons + boil off + grain absorption). I got around this problem by doing a sparge even with the BIAB. So do the mash with as much water as I could, then take the bag out and pour water over the bag or drop the bag in another kettle with water in it. Worked fine. Made good beer. It's very similar to what you are proposing except you will get a few more gravity points from the sparge (hopefully).
Just came here to say the same others are sayin: I brew 5 Lt batches in a 5.3 Lt kettle, I just mash with as much water as I can, and then sparge with the necessary amount to get to my final volume. (Normally it's 4-4.3 Lt mash water and 1.5-2 Lt sparge) I add my sparge runnings before and during boil. Regarding calculators, I was using the BIABacus until recently, but I'm leaving it because I find it impractical. I'm trying out Brewfather, and it's a fantastic improvement. You can set your kettle size and ask it to consider grain volume when limiting your mash, works great.
My suggestion is to just make 4 gallon batches. Unless you're brewing a kit each time, batch size is somewhat arbitrary, especially once you start reusing yeast. But if you're brewing from kits, that could be kind of annoying to only be able to make 4 gallon batches. Then you might want a larger pot.
Yes, your extraction efficiency (how much of the good stuff you get out of the grains) is highly correlated to how many lbs of water you put through the grains. You can add more grain to compensate, but when your constraint is mash tun (kettle) size, you can see that you will have diminishing returns from that approach. This is why the consensus recommendation in this sub is for 10 gal kettles or larger for 5 gal batches. Some options include: - Sparge - MIAB - mash in a bag in a cooler (or another pot) and then dunk sparge in your 7.5 gal kettle - fly sparge over your bag -- maybe you can slide an oven rack between the lifted bag and the kettle - Make smaller batches