don't worry about the volume too much..... you need to boil for 3 to 5 hours anyway (traditionally anyhow) This will evaporate the extra volume, and burst up a bunch of starches to make them fermentable to the "cocktail" of critters in a Lambic... or keep them from messing up a regular beer without all them critters.

I guess I'm just worried about not having enough room in the six gallon pot...

I am thinking of maybe trying a couple simple infusion step mashes. I have only used my mash tun once and have only ever done single infusion mashes.

ceannt said:

I used a similar method back in my early crude partial mash days.... I mashed in a pot... and pushed a strainer into the mash, and siphoned the wort out of the strainer... I also mashed kinda thick... and I had some problems with starches... really, really cloudy beer....

I was also thinking of adapting the turbid mash technique to better fit my system, like a step infusion turbid hybrid thing.

You can do a modified turbid mash ...
Without the boiling water additions ... and calculate out your sparge volumes to hit just about any pre boil volume you want .... but I recommend doing the math yourself ... or you will confuse the shucks out of software ...

Then he sparged twice at mash out temps.

He said you have to mash a few degrees higher ... because of the time involved would convert everything more ...

If you want .... I'll run the numbers for you .... give me your:
Mash tun volume
Pounds of grain
temp you wish to mash at
desired pre boil volume

I can fairly quickly come up with a mash/sparge schedule

Yeah. I have been thinking more and more about this. I think I am going to save the turbid mash for a traditional Lambic/ wild ale or for my session beers.
I think for now I am going to start practicing with step mashes. I feel like step mashes compared to the single infusion mash gives me a little more control over things like body and fermentability. I am a semi-control freak afterall.
Also, after reading farmhouse ales over the last few days, it seems these step infusion mashes are traditional for saison a and biere de garde.
With that being said, I have recalculated the mash rests for my next five brews using the calculation


Wa = (T2 - T1)(0.2G + Wm)/(Tw - T2)
Wa = The amount of infusion water to add
Wm = The total amount of water in the mash
T1 = The initial mash temperature
T2 = The target mash temperature
Tw = the actual temperature of the infusion water
G = The amount of grain in the mash

For the water additions at each rest. I have no idea how accurate this will be, but ill have to wait until it is actually put into practice.

I think once I get step infusions down and working with different consistencies if water/grain I will move on up to the turbid-monster, as with my current mash tun I have done exactly 1 batch, a single infusion at 1.25 qt/lb.

pretty sure that's the same calculation i used to use. worked great for me.

Evan_B said:

I appreciate the input and offer to do all my calculations! I don't mind doing the math, and actually prefer doing it, as I said, I am a bit of a control freak, haha

And I like to know every detail and nuance to my system.

I can understand that! Thats why I don't trust software to do it for me ......

I very rarely do step mashes .... long protein rests are actually detrimental with fully modified malts ... and instead of a mash out I boil my first runnings to stop enzymic activity