High ABV

[corby_brewer]

Just a quick question.
Everything ive read tells me you cant produce a high gravity beer using a 23ltr mash tun. So why have 2 out of 3 of my last AG brews produced beers of around 8% ABV?

 

[snail59]

Ive got to say I dont understand this :wha:

How can the size of the receptical affect the ABV :wha:

Surely the ABV is dependent on the sugars releaced from the grains :wha:

Ive never done an AG brew and only brewed 2 kits and some wines and TCs but I just cant see the logic in this :wha:

Someone please explain and enlighten me please as im keen to learn :hmm:

 

[corby_brewer]

Snail using a 24L mash tun they tell me you can only produce 5 gallons of beer, which i agree with. but they also say that you can only produce a beer at about 5% ABV, which is what im questioning.

 

[philgc]

surely, its dependant on sugars extracted/sugars added. If u add a load of sugar to your brew surely it will be higher ABV.
sounds like someone is pullin ure chain :wha:

 

[snail59]

I totaly understand what your asking and I cant see how the size of the mash tun can affect the ABV. Its the fermentable sugars present in the beer that determin the ABV isnt it not the quantity of beer produced :wha:

Hang on I might of just got this.

If the Mash tun can only hold 23lts then the amount of liquid present including the grains etc will only be enough to release enough sugars to produce an ABV of 5% ish. Hang on though surley the grains etc should release the same amount of sugars regard less of the amount of liquid present so in theory a smaller volume of liquid should produce a higher ABV as more sugars should be present in a lower volume of liquid :wha: :wha:

My head hurts

 

[Aleman]

A 24L tun will hold 7.5Kg of grain at 2.5L/Kg in theory that should give you 23L of 1.078 wort at 75% brew house efficiency. . . . Obviously you can dilute further for a lower ABV . . . . but that is a brim full tun and it would be incredibly difficult to stir and to sparge. . . . so by saying 5 Gallons of 5% wort is to make things easier for newer brewers . . . as they gain more experience then they can start to push the limits of the tuns

 

[Aleman]

Snail, Grain only provides a certain amount of sugar (~38 Gravity points per Pound of Grain per Gallon) in a mash. Normally you mix 1Kg of grain with 2.5L of water so the volume of the tun directly affects how much grain you can mash and therefore the amount of sugar you can get . . . now you can dilute the wort you get or concentrate it by boiling but the amount of sugar you have got from the grain is constant. . . the more grain you can use the more sugar you get in the wort . . . so a bigger tun will allow you to get more sugar . . . but as a brewer you decide what teh final volume will be and therefore the abv of the beer.

 

[corby_brewer]

Thanks Aleman.. So another question - Would boiling 32ltrs down to 23ltrs also help to increase the ABV.

 

[Aleman]

Yep . . . you are concentrating the sugars, More sugar in then higher ABV.

When we did the Simmonds Bitter/Barleywine brew last summer the first runnings out of the tun were 1.095, which was higher than we were expecting which was around 1.075, but we realised that we had mashed 'thick' hence stronger wort. . . . but that didn't stop us boiling the blazes out of it for two hours to make it stronger . . . I think we ended up with 6 nines at 1.120 . . . and it finished at around 1.030.

The bitter we over sparged and ended up with 16BBL of wort at 1.050 so boiled that until we got 14BBL at around 1.058 (I forget the exact volumes)

 

[snail59]

Think ive got that :wha:

So the tun size dictates the OG (because it has no ABV as it has yet to be fermented but if you were to frment the wort without concentrating it would be 5% ish) of the WORT but the BREWER decides the ABV of the Beer. :thumb:

 

[evanvine]

Snail, for my pennyworth:
I have a 10 litre mash tun which easily holds 3.5 kg of grain and 8.75 ltr of water.
This will sparge (wash the sugars out) to 23ltrs at SG1042.
This will produce beer at 4.4/4.5% ABV
If I had a 20ltr mash tun I could double the grain and water and produce 23ltrs at 9% ABV.
Thought I'd just say my little bit.