Brewers Delema - easy, or just asking for trouble

[Mark Kessell]

hi guys.
while waiting for my barley flakes to arrive, so i can brew my stout, i'm thinking of putting one of my IIPA's down this sunday.

problem i have is this. it's about 10KG of grain, which means mashing in about 25L of water.
my tun isn't physically big enough. so the plan is to break the malt into 2 mash tuns (another same size as mine), and have both mashing half the malt each.

so, each mash tun would hold 5KG of grains, and each would be mashing in about 12.5L of water.
which obviously means, 1) joining both mash worts into same boil kettle, and 2) both sparging from the same sparge pot for a total of about another 18 - 19L (so about 9 - 9.5L per tun).

in theory, it seems like a simple co-ordination problem that can be over come.
but i dont know what effect there will be on the beer in brewing this way.

is it as easy as splitting everything in half?
and, will 2 combined worts result in a OG of the estimated 1.100 - 1.110?

[Mike Neilson]

Yeah just split it accross 2 mash tuns or mashes I have done it before or go by a glass fermenter and turn your old brewcraft fermenter into a mash tun by taking out your braided hose and tap and installing it to the fermenter! all problems will be solved.

[denimglen]

Or mash the most you can and top up with good quality extract.

That's what I'm going to do on my upcoming barleywine.

[warra48]

Go for it. You know you want to. You wouldn't have posted this unless you wanted us to back you up.
Gotta love the idea of doing a UNPARTIGYLE brew!
Why not, it should work out just fine!