5 gallon batch in 16 gallon kettle?

I just ordered a Bayou brew kettle. I meant to order the 10 gallon, but accidentally ordered the 16 gallon (Only a $15 USD difference).

I only have a couple all-grain/partial mash brew under my belt, so I am sticking to the 5 gallon batches for now. So should I send this one back and get a 10 gal, or would I be fine with the 16?

The false bottom will sit at the 2.5 gallon mark. This might hold my grains above my water level. Maybe I could remove the false bottom, and just use the bazooka filter? Or mash with my entire boil volume, and just recycle my wert?

Topic batch-size brewpot homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

I have 15.5gl "keggles" as my HLT and BK. I think I've only done one 5gl batch in it, but yours should work fine as a boil kettle. Though you might have some non-trivial deadspace to work around, just adjust your volumes to compensate or look into a dip tube to minimize deadspace.

While that false bottom seems to sit very high for mashing a 5gl batch, I'm not sure that it would not work. I used a bazooka screen in my rectangular cooler mashtun just fine for a few years, so I'm fairly confident that would work too. A bazooka screen would probably also help with filtering any hop or other kettle additions, but on the other hand might interfere with having a dip tube to deal with kettle deadspace.

Given the kettle size for 5gl batches, you could probably get away with a biab style full-volume mash as well.

It's hard to say, honestly. I'd experiment and iterate using it, and see what works best for you.

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