First Official 10 Gallon Batch, A Mild Ale

I recently made the decision to step up to 10 gallon batches for brewing beer.  The benefit justifies the additional equipment costs.  I can make twice as much brew in basically the same amount of time.  I have friends here in NWA who enjoy my brews and I enjoy sharing.  I made a Belgian Witbier a few weeks back that was gone within 24 hours of being tapped (it was taken to a party).  I decided in order to share my brews while still having my share to consume over a few weeks, I'd need to double my batch sizes.  And yes there will be instances where there won't be a party to attend or a friend to take the keg, but who ever complained about having too much beer?  I've also figured I can do yeast experiments on the same 10 gallon batch with two different yeast strains each fermenting 5 gallons.  Or maybe even 4 yeast strains fermenting 2.5gallons...you get the idea.

But I've put my foot in the '10-gallon brewing system' water.  I haven't dived completely in.  I've kept some equipment from my 5 gallon set-up in the rotation.  All I've really bought is a bigger boil kettle, a pump, and bigger burner, and a bigger immersion chiller.

I decided my first 10 gallon batch should be pretty straightforward with not too many hops and also not too many malts.  I decided an English Mild would be a good session beer for the summer.  I took the recipe directly from Jamil's 'Brewing Classic Styles' (stepped up for 10 gallons of course):

14# British Pale Malt
1# Crystal 60L
0.75# Crystal 120L
0.5# Pale Chocolate
0.25# Black Patent

1.7 oz of 5%AA East Kent Goldings Hops at 60 minutes (I actually used 2 oz of 5.8% but more on that later)

Mash at 154F for 60 minutes

Original Gravity: 1.036 (this is what the recipe predicts, I did much better more on that soon)

WLP002 English Ale Yeast with a 2L starter

Yeah so like I was saying I somehow got an OG of 1.048 which works out to like 95% efficiency.  I'm not sure that is even possible so my only logical explanation is that I had more grain in there than I realized (I ordered from my LHBS and picked-up after hours so they put the grains together for me and may have given me too much).  Anyways, with the increased gravity I decided to increase the hops too to keep things in balance).

Brew day went pretty well.  The main consideration with 10 gallon batches is that, unless you are beast of a man, you aren't going to be picking up and moving around vessels once they are full.  So I boiled and cooled my batch all on the burner stand and then drained straight into a fermenter from the burner stand as well.  OK, enjoy the pics....and we will see how this batch turns out!

Night before brewday, making sure the new burner is working....it is!

On the way to a boil, 13 gallons in a 15 gallon pot is a bit of a push but I  didn't have any boil overs!

Still using the same old mash tun.  Here's a shot post-mash.

My cooling set-up ain't so janky anymore.  JZ style immersion chiller.  Hose water runs through coil as normal, March Pump pumps worts from bottom of kettle up to immersion chiller fitting which runs tangentially in on the coil wall to create a little whirlpool action.

The only big hiccup during the brewing session is that my ground water at the house was coming in at 75F.  So the coldest my wort would get was about 76F.  I had to transfer to my fermenters and put them in the house for a few hours to cool off more before pitching the yeast.

For fermentation I am trying something new.  I don't really like glass carboys.  They are hard to move around when full, they are hazardous glass bombs whilst carrying (should you slip and drop one), and they are hard to clean...though my oxi-clean revelation has really helped with that.

I have been reading lately that a lot of breweries still use open fermentation vessels which are typically shallower and wider than the mainstream stainless cylindroconical fermentors that most craft brewers employ.  I decided to repurpose my old 10 gallon Volrath Stainless pot as fermentor.  I scrubbed it down real good and sanitized it before putting wort in it.  I have half the batch in a glass carboy and the other half in this Volrath pot with a loose fitting plastic lid (just to keep stuff from falling into it).  We will see if there are any differences in the two final beers!

That's not puke on the top....its krausen!