What's the most grain you have done in a batch?

I just got beersmith and was working on a recipe and I'm beginning to think I won't have enough room to make this batch!! It's 6.66# of grain and beersmith says I need 4.62 gallons of water to start with. That when added to the grain gives me 5.14 gallons of space I need. It won't fit!!

Brewsmith is giving me more of a boil off rate than I really have and they have cooling loss so I just need to figure out how to adjust that i think.

Cooling loss will happen. Wort, water...they all expand when heated.

If you find yourself running out of room, you can always use another pot to sparge with.

Or even pour off some of the wort into a smaller pot just to make room, then add some sparge water and heat things back up (stirring constantly). Then, if need be, you boil it in that separate pot. Or, if you have room after pulling your grains, boil all of it in your brew pot.

no sparge on this one, all the water will be there from the start.

i thought cooling loss was if you used a CFC or plate chiller or something.

I guess for any larger batches I could just do a smaller amount of water and do a sparge to get to total volume. That would work.

do you listen to any brewing network podcasts and/or know who Tasty McDole is? well he is a home brew stud, and he admitted to mashing with the EXACT same amount of water no matter what the grain bill was! and I am 99% sure he typically does 10 gallons

and his stuff is LEGIT! some of his recipes have been brewed on the pro level too. his logic: it's home brew! you are seriously going to sweat "being off" a bit with your mash water? hitting 152° instead of 154°?

ever since I heard that, I have been mashing "no sparge" (my call, not his) with 4.25 gallons to end up around 2.8 after the boil, leaving about 2.4 to go into the LBK. I have not noticed any "off" anything, and I consistently hit 70-75% efficiency. so I base my recipes on 72% and leave myself only being a tad disappointed or a bit extra happy.

that being said, I am contemplating a Russian Imperial Stout and an IIPA this brew year...so they would be the biggest by far.

but to actually answer your question I have done just shy of 7 pounds up to this point...I did this twice. 1 clocked in at 70% eff, and the other was actually 80%...and both beers were very good!

interesting natty. I may try just 4.25 gallons on this and see where I get eff and volume wise. thanks!!

I guess I don't know why folks do the BIAB stuff. Building a mash tun is pretty cheap, say $60.

about 1/3 of the way down, there's a "Can I Mash It?" volume calculator... might help figure out capacity...
http://rackers.org/calcs.shtml/

space. the wife and i live in a two bedroom townhouse. no basement. one storage closet in the hallway. needless to say, there's pretty much no space to store anything anywhere... between some of my brewing stuff, her teaching/classroom stuff, craft stuff, clothes... we're full up. no room for the traditional full size all grain set up. i have two mash tuns, actually... both in my parent's basement back in pittsburgh.

yeah, that thing says I can't mash it either lol.

really wondering about my upcoming SMaSHes, both were going to have 7.5# of malt each. I may just do 4 gal of water and see what happens.