4/1/2014 - I haven't brewed on my 10-gallon all-grain system for a couple years now.  Although it's a nice system, most times I just don't want 10 gallons of the same beer around.  Sure you can mix up yeast strains, add fruit to one, dry hop half, or a variety of other things to get a "different" beer, but it all comes back to basically being the same recipe.  I've also been doing a lot of experimental beers over the last year or two, so I've been mixing up ingredients and playing around with different yeasts.  That being said, sometimes I may want 10 gallons of a blonde ale or another lower alcohol beer for spring and summer parties, but don't necessarily want to haul out the 10 gallon system to do so, especially in colder weather.  So I ended up coming up with a way to brew 10 gallons of beer on my 5-gallon system that doesn't take any extra time.  Here's how I do it....

1. Design a recipe that would be a good candidate for this method of brewing.  This is typically a lower gravity beer (1.030-1.045 SG) like English Bitters & Milds, Cream Ale, Blonde, and other lighter session ales & lagers.  Depending on the size of your brew pot, you will create a recipe that is basically double the gravity of your desired starting gravity.  If you have a larger pot like I do (8.5 gallon), than you can figure on getting slightly higher gravity wort than half based on the larger initial boil size.  You'll also want to factor in hop bitterness, flavor, and the color of the finished beer.  Shoot for roughly double the hops and specialty grains as you would use if you were just brewing 5 gallons.

2. Proceed with your brew day as normal.

3. Once the wort is chilled, pour half into one sanitized fermenter and the other half into a second.  Top up with cold tap water, take a gravity reading of each fermenter for your records, and pitch your yeast.  NOTE:  This is a good opportunity to use one of my Saving & Reusing Yeast methods to pitch different yeast strains you have saved.

4. Check out the example recipes above for some ideas as well as on my Beer Log page. Mostly all my concentrated batches will have (concentrated) after the name.

Full mash tun!	Large boil	Be careful of boilovers!	Chill like normal	2 yeast starters
Divite betwen 2 fermenters	Top up with water	Pitch yeast & wait