Beer Forum

Moving from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches. Are the recipe conversions as simple as doubling the 5 gallon recipe? I see some software on the horizon, but for now can I just double it?

Pretty much... your losses to your equipment and trub are constant so going bigger means 2x as much beer with only a small addition to the length of the brew day, so go for it!

The other thing to think about when crossing the 10 gallon mark is that you must be able to do everything in place. You will not be able to lift 12 gallons of boiling wort or 30 lbs of grain soaked in 9 gallons of mash water like you could with the old igloo cooler. Pumps become much more important.

HTH-

Oktoberfest wrote:Moving from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches. Are the recipe conversions as simple as doubling the 5 gallon recipe? I see some software on the horizon, but for now can I just double it?

For the most part the recipe conversions are straight forward but you are doing this on a completely different system. Larger boil kettle changes the dynamics of hop utilization, different mash tun will result in different efficiency. The best thing to do is brew a beer you are comfortable with and you know the outcome. If the beer turns out hoppier you know you are increasing hop utilization. Your gravities will tell you how to adjust your grain bill.

In my case I am 5% more efficient with my 10 gallon system and its about the same with ibu contribution. I had to back the grain down and lower the bittering addition a smudge to create the same beer. Yes the software is very helpful with this.

You will make the same beer by doubling everything, side by side, old vs new, they may or may not be cloned.

Oktoberfest wrote:Moving from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches. Are the recipe conversions as simple as doubling the 5 gallon recipe? I see some software on the horizon, but for now can I just double it?

the simple answer is:

"no"

you can not just double the recipe, as evaporation would not be double, and left behind trub amounts should be constant as well and should not change as you step up. However, once you have figured out the the amounts for these type of items you can calculate fairly easily your new recipes and apply them to all your recipes.

To keep it simple just double the recipe. You can adjust for differences in mashing and boiling in later batches.
Good luck!

Step 1: Download the free 21 day trial of Beersmith.

Step 2: Input your recipe for 5 gallon batch.

Step 3: Convert to 10 gallon batch.

Step 4: Brew the beer.

Step 5: Evaluate results.

Wouldn't hurt to boil some water for an hour and determine your boil off rate, since you are changing equipment.

BDawg wrote:The other thing to think about when crossing the 10 gallon mark is that you must be able to do everything in place. You will not be able to lift 12 gallons of boiling wort or 30 lbs of grain soaked in 9 gallons of mash water like you could with the old igloo cooler. Pumps become much more important.

HTH-

If you have (or get) a couple extra buckets you can move your liquids & other heavy stuff 3-4 gallons at a time. My $0.02 -CH