10 Gallon batches

double your ingredients, use a yeast calculator, have at least 2-3gal extra in your kettle on top of your preboil volume

 

And you have to drink a lot of the same beer

 

Not quite. I brew 10 gallons at a time. I split the batch between two fermentation buckets. I will usualy pitch two different yeast strains and sometimes I'll dry hop a batch. I especialy like it for Pale Ales pitching an English yeast in one and a Belgian strain in the other.

 

It may be a different beer, but it's still got calories.
I think the biggest difference is cleanup...with a CFC on the 10 gal recirc setup, everything just seems to take longer.
I brew both...10 gal most of the year and 5 gal inside in the winter (yes, I'm a pussy )

 

That's a creativity premierpro style.

 

Nowhere near twice as long, though. And setup and breakdown is the same, either way. Overall, you get twice as much beer for an investment of, maybe, 10% more time and effort.

Same here (except for the pussy part)

 

Many hands make light work.

What I learned from my first 10 gal batch:
I needed a taller brewstand. After cooling, 10 gal is too heavy to pour into fermenters. I have no ball valve and go over the top of my kettle. My stand was really low and racking took FOREVER! Use cinder blocks if you need to get your stand up to a reasonable height for racking later.

If your mash tun is inside like mine, you need to make a few trips out to the kettle with 3 or 4 gal, instead of trying to move 12 gal of wort down steps and to the brewstand in the garage.

I guess what I'm getting at is make sure your workload can be broken up and that you aren't in a position that you need to try to lift 80+ pounds of hot/cold wort.

Hopefully you've sank a little more money into ball valves/brewstands than I have. I usually do 5 gal batches.

 

I have a 15 gallon pot. When I do 5 gallon batches I never worry about boilovers. When I do 10 gallon batches I usually start with about 14 gallons, boilovers are a distinct possibility

This past summer I did a lot of split batches with english yeast and saison yeast using a basic pale ale grain bill and different hops. I really like citrusy hops and 3724

 

As already mentioned, use gravity for dealing with the added weight. This is what I did when I went to 18 gallon batches.



A pump and plate chiller help too. www.brew365.com has a handy water calculator and www.beertools.com is a good site to join for calculating bigger batches.

 

And a nice march pump too

 

I figure in the same amount of boil off on my 10 gallon batches as I do my 5 gallon batches.

 

That's the way to do it. Boil-off is mostly a function of the vigor of the boil and the kettle geometry, not how much wort is underneath.

 

I might not have been very clear, I talking more about extra kettle capacity than wort volumes

 

I think the big difference on 10 gal batches is the ball valve on the kettle and also post-boil hoses (and pumps if you have them)...once you go 10 gal, you MUST have a ball valve and post-boil hoses and then must sanitize them thoroughly...(add out of kettle cooler also...plate or CFC, for most people)...the sanitation just seemed so much easier on 5 gal batches.

 

I start the whirlpool before I turn off the burner. Sanitation is not an issue.

 

Sanitation is ALWAYS an issue...I do the same, but when wort is leaving the kettle in cool down mode there is no burner...which requires me to recirc boiling water after dumping to fermenters (even though I know it will get boiled before the next batch)...haven't had a problem yet with that "best practice". Cheers

 

Good advice above; it's pretty much just doubling the 5 gallon procedure, except you must have a plan for dealing with the extra weight of a bigger batch (can you lift it? Maybe. Should you? Hell No, even with help). The ball valve is what you really want but you can siphon with a little patience and maybe a larger diameter hose.

Something I often do with 10 gallon batches to make things more interesting is to keg 5 gallons and bottle condition the rest. You'd be surprised how different the two can be, or not, depending on the beer.

 

Sorry, I'm not following you. All the hoses are sanitized by the boiling wort. There's no need to sanitize the hoses after the wort is moved to the fermenters.

And, not to pick nits, but "best practice" refers to a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means. Sanitizing hoses after you use them is not 'best practice'; it's irrelevant.