Most of what I brew is between 5-6% ABV. Also, I don’t brew a lot of IPAs although I tend to drink a lot of them when I’m out and buy a lot of them off the shelf. So I’ve been wanting to brew a big IPA, around 10% but past attempts to stuff my 10 gallon Igloo cooler mashtun with more than about 15 lbs of grain have resulted in a precipitous drop in efficiency.
But I read an article somewhere a few months ago about brewing high gravity beers by splitting your grain bill and essentially mashing the same wort twice and I kind of adapted this concept to my usual process: I aim for ~6.75 gallons in the BK split evenly from first runnings and batch sparge.
Today, I did mash #1 with 10 lbs of grain (starting with 5.75 gallons of strike water to account for absorption for the full 19 lbs grist). Drew off first runnings. Separately collected the batch sparge.
Mashed the first runnings again with the remaining 9 lbs of grain and then batch sparged again with what I’d collected from the first sparge.
Ended up with 7 gallons in the BK which was fine because I was doing a 90 minute boil.
OG at pitch was 1.094, a little less efficient than I get on a normal brew day but very acceptable!
This ended up adding about 2 hours to the process but I don’t mind that if it will help me brew the occasional RIS or doppelbock (although I’m going to stick mostly with those 5-6% ABV brews).
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That’s an interesting method. Sounds handy and as you say I think the extra time would be okay on occasion.
It’s always fun to do that every once in a while!