tcw5028

Recipes 

I'm doing a bunch of research on partial mash brewing, with the hopes of evolving out of extract brewing into partial mash. I was looking at recipes on beertools.com and this is probably a dumb question but I was wondering, is the batch size the same as the amount of water that I should have in my pot when the grains/extract is added? Like if I'm aiming for a 5 gal batch does that mean I need 5 (or more due to some boiling off) in the pot off the bat or can I do it like an extract recipe kit where the boil is at about 3 gal and I add 2 gal of water to the fermenter?

bobbrews

Recipes 

Batch size is the amount wort that goes into your primary.

Example:

10.0 gallon capacity kettle
7.00 gallons at 60 min. (boil start)
6.00 gallons (post-boil volume)
5.50 gallons after transferring to primary (batch size)
5.00 gallons (bottled)

There are certainly benefits to not making a concentrated wort and then topping it off with several gallons of plain water. I would recommend getting into the habit of full volume boils. For a full volume boil, you have to know how much boiloff your particular system yields, take into account how much wort is absorbed by the hops and the grain, and also how much is lost to trub after transferring.

1.2 - 1.5 liters of water per lb. of grain is the typical average mashing ratio when using unconverted grains. So if you are mashing 3 lbs. of grain, then you want to use 3.6 - 4.5 liters of water for the mash.

Partial Mash is easy. PM me with questions. I've brewed over 100 partial mash recipes.

tcw5028

Recipes 

Thanks Bob I will message you if any other questions come up. As far as calculating the boil off and stuff like that I'm sure that I can find a calculator and if not I just graduated with an ME degree focusing on the thermal fluid field so I'm sure I can figure it out haha. For now I have to deal with the just out of school budget but when that's resolved I can start really focusing on full volume boils and the bigger equipment I will need.