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Topping up with wort? (newbie question)

Foodhead

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Hi!

We're getting ready for our first all grain brewing tomorrow, and are immensely excited about this.

Unfortunately, the 9 gallon pot we've ordered hasn't arrived in time, so we're stuck with the old 5 gallon one. As we wouldn't like to scale down the recipe too much, we've been thinking about getting more wort out than will actually fit in the pot, boiling the excess in a smaller pot on the stove, and using it to top up the main pot as it boils off.

Is this a good or a bad idea? It'll probably give us a more concentrated wort, but we're aiming at a pretty high OG anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem. But how will it affect the bitterness? The effect of the early and late hop additions? (We'll probably just do a bitterness addition at 60 and an aroma addition at 5-ish, perhaps with some more at flameout.) Should we add bitterness hops to the smaller pot as well? Should we perhaps do first wort hopping for bitterness, and just split the whole wort into the two pots after that? Which would be the best way to set up Beersmith for either scenario?

I expect there's already plenty of information about this all over the forum and the net, but we just received the news about our big pot not arriving in time, and will have to adjust our recipe in the last minute. Thanks in advance for any advice you might be able to give us!

Best,

/kalle.
 
I would mash/sparge according to the Beersmith calculation and then divide the wort into the two kettles.  I see nothing seriously wrong in what you are forced to do... it's certainly not optimal.  I would add bittering hops to the small kettle too and use late addition hops for the large kettle.  Hop utilization is going to be lower no matter when you add the hops because of the smaller boil volume of the one pot. Good luck with this one.
 
I'm curious about how this turned out for you.  I just did my first AG and had to split as well.  Since I'm not overly particular, as long as it turns into decent beer I'll always be happy!  ;D
 
As it turns out, the sparge was really slow and after getting 5 gallons of wort out at 1065, we decided that would have to do. We left the mash tun dripping, and when the 5 gallons finally reached a boil, another gallon had come out (1054), which we used to top up the kettle during the boil. We ended up with 4 gallons in the fermentation bucket, which we topped up with cold water to 5.3 gallons to reach a decent OG of 1065. We hopped generously with Nelson Sauvin and achieved one of the best double ipa:s I've ever had, actually. :)

The recipe and the whole process in detail is on our blog, albeit in Swedish. The recipe should be quite easily deciphered even for non-Swedes, though. :)

http://foodheadbrewery.blogspot.se/2012/07/helmaltspremiar.html?m=1

Otherwise, it's in the Beersmith cloud: http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/19162?&doid=506491d35116d

Next time, we'll up the hops a bit and reduce the darker malts, as it turned out quite dark for an ipa.

Best,

/kalle.
 
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