BeerBorg

so now that i have two lbks i was wondering if i could make a concentrated wort in 2 gallons of water then using water to top off lbks so i can make like 4-5 gallons at a time instead of like 2 gallons just dont wanna buy a bigger brew kettle to do bigger boil

Your LBKs will allow you to do a 5 gallon batch, or smaller. With a 5 gallon pot, you can boil 2.5 gallons of water, add LME and hops, then pour into LBKs that each have a gallon of water in them, then top off, ending up with a 5 gallon batch. I have one fermenting right now - White House Honey Porter. Slight overflow when it was at it's peak, contained by the Rubbermaid containers.

You could also scale a recipe down to 4 gallons if needed. What you need to determine is the largest volume that your pot can safely handle and work from there. My 5 gallon pot could easily do 4 gallons of liquid.

A lot of folks on here do this. Especially when MR.B was the only one out there. If you buy 2 LBCs they can do the same and are designed for 2 1/2 gallon batches each, JMHO.

I'm kind of hung up on the "concentrated" word. How big is your current pot? And when you are talking about your wort, are you using HME's or UME and boiling your hops?

You can definitely split your wort into 2 LBKs, and top them off. That's how I made a 5 gallon extract kit from NB, but my pot supported the full volume boil. I thought there was some "calculation" (for lack of a better word) concerning the utilization of hops during the boil. I know to little SG is bad, don't know if to much is just as bad.

If the SG of the wort is too high, hops won't be utilized as well. The recipes that I've done in my 5 gallon pot start with 2.5 gallons of water, and end with just under 3 gallons of liquid when I'm done. Since the recipe tells me to add the wort all at once, I figure they determined utilization ahead of time and I'm fine. If not, then I get less hops impact which given my malty preference is fine. The 3 batches I've made this way have all seemed good.

The way to counter the SG issue with hops in an extract, steep, or Partial Mash is to reserve a goodly bit of your extract to be added in the last 10 minutes of the boil. You want to get a 1.03 to 1.04ish wort for the boil to get the best hop utilization (for IBUs). Then toss all the rest in right before the end.

This works great, I do it whenever I brew 5 gallon batches because my pot/stove is only able to do 3 gallon full volume boils (with any room for sanity left at least).

RickBeer wrote:Your LBKs will allow you to do a 5 gallon batch, or smaller. With a 5 gallon pot, you can boil 2.5 gallons of water, add LME and hops, then pour into LBKs that each have a gallon of water in them, then top off, ending up with a 5 gallon batch. I have one fermenting right now - White House Honey Porter. Slight overflow when it was at it's peak, contained by the Rubbermaid containers.

You could also scale a recipe down to 4 gallons if needed. What you need to determine is the largest volume that your pot can safely handle and work from there. My 5 gallon pot could easily do 4 gallons of liquid.

my pot is only like 2and1/2 gallons so only can do like a 2 gallon boil

Bluejaye wrote:I'm kind of hung up on the "concentrated" word. How big is your current pot? And when you are talking about your wort, are you using HME's or UME and boiling your hops?

You can definitely split your wort into 2 LBKs, and top them off. That's how I made a 5 gallon extract kit from NB, but my pot supported the full volume boil. I thought there was some "calculation" (for lack of a better word) concerning the utilization of hops during the boil. I know to little SG is bad, don't know if to much is just as bad.

current pot is 2 gallons actually using dme and adding hops for flavor and bitterness

I just ordered a second LBK and eventually thought I could do a 5 gallon kit and split it. not sure if I can split the yeast between two fermenters or not. I have a while before I try anyways as I have some Mr Beer kits that I got on sale and will be experimenting with them a bit.

i actually did that myself with my current batch. I split a packet of safale 05 (i used a digital scale to split it as close as i could) so far it sat in fermenter for 3 weeks and have been in bottles for 2 weeks i just tasted a bottle and it wasnt bad at all just needed more carb time which i knew it would i just wanted an idea on the flavor that was goin on

Yep, I do it all the time, only on a smaller scale. I boil 1 gal of water with 1 lb of extract for the hop boil. I only boil 10-20 minutes depending on the hops (because I like a less bitter beer) then after that, I turn off the heat, add the rest of the malt and/or sugars, then pour a gallon of water in the lbk, and add the *cooled* concentrated wort and top off to 9 quarts (2.25 gal). So you could do the same with a 2 gal boil for 2 lbks.

Monty

I split the packet of yeast based on sight, I dump it onto the inside of a coffee filter (rip it in half, use the two halves).

I've had issues doing 2.5 gallon batches in the LBC which is supposed to handle it. The fermentation always goes crazy and pushes up through my airlock. Do you guys have issues of the same sort splitting between LBKs?

nope .....last time had enough head space for the krausen...but have heard of this happening

blaxbear wrote:I've had issues doing 2.5 gallon batches in the LBC which is supposed to handle it. The fermentation always goes crazy and pushes up through my airlock. Do you guys have issues of the same sort splitting between LBKs?

When I push the LBK to 2.5 gallons, most of them alteast touch the lid, some blows out. That amount is pushing the limits of the LBK, but it will do it. I try to use low OG batches when filling that full. I found the Brew Demon conical handles 2.5 gallons easily. I used to split 5 gallon batches between LBKs, but found that a Pale Ale is cheap and handles it all at once, one vessel to ferment, one to clean.