Double Density Brewing Insight

[CasselBrewery]

Hi!

We just filled up our first commercial fermenter! 7BBL that is Yep we're a new nano brewery in Casselman ON.

It took 5 batch/24 hours (split in 2 days) from our 2BBL brewhouse to fill the FV. Challenging given a new system always throw some of it in the process and exciting at the same time. It was a lot of fun!

I've been looking for a while on double density brewing, is it just me or there isn't much information about this technique online? Is it something commercial brewer tend to avoid discussing? a dark secret of some sort?

So if I have this right I take my grain bill, double it up (along with the hops) and boil as I would with a single batch and dilute it to the desired OG with water... right?

Anything I'm missing?

I'm the sanitizing freak type at post boil, I know a brewery who dilute their double density brew with straight tap water.... I would not sleep at night. I know its clean water but for me it needs to be boiled.

I can quickly fill the kettle with water from our tankless water heater at 176F, bring it a boil send to the whirlpool tank (a plastic conical) for dilution then proceed onto chilling.

Thanks for your help!

[gitchegumee]

It's called high gravity brewing. Almost exclusively done by adding sterile, pure, deoxygenated and carbonated "rectification" water to the beer just before packaging, not in the fermenter. I'd say that well over 90% of all beer on the planet is made this way. Any decent brewing text will have loads of information on this technique. It's not as simple as you make it out to be. Minerals, pH, ion concentrations, enzymes, efficiencies, utilization, and every sort of brewing parameter is changed. I wouldn't do it. Another thing I will mention is that you do NOT have to boil water to make it fit for adding to your fermenter. Tremendous waste of energy. Use a filter and UV. Same as you should have for chase water and cold liquor. Good luck!

[CasselBrewery]

Thanks for your reply Phillip!

Some have talked here about double density brewing mixed in fermenter, I know one brewery who does it, but I totally agree and realize the major issue with this being the water profile which hasn't gone through mashing, PH will be high among other element missing.

I prefer having to brew an extra batch than sacrificing the quality and stability of our beers.

We'll add an extension to our boil kettle so we can boil a slight bigger volume

Cheers