gwapogorilla

Recipes 

Hey guys, I am reading up on all grain as I plan on making the move in a few months. Upon playing around with beersmith and some different recipes(high gravity) it is showing like 9 gallons of H2O for preboil (after absorption).

Really? Are you guys boiling off 2 gallons of water (more or less) to do all grain?

brettg20

Recipes 

I boil off a good 1.5 gallons per 60 min. On average I mash with 3.5-4 gallon (depending on the beer), and sparge with around 5 so 9 gallons sounds about right. You just need to figure out your boil off % and the only way you can figure that out is by brewing and taking notes.

runningweird

Recipes 

when I start a boil on a 5 gallon end beer batch I want to have around 6.8-7 gallons of wort preboil.

about 1.2 gallons of boiloff per hour and loss to the hops in the hop spider. I also want to end up with 5.5 gallons of wort to account for trub loss.

you must also look at the amount of water you will need to mash - about 1.25 quarts per pound of grain to be mashed plus water to sparge with- if you are sparging


Example: tomorrow I am going to brew a double batch of something with 20 pounds of grain. I will need a bit under 6 gallons for the mash, from which I might collect 3-4 gallons of wort*the grain absorbs the rest) then I have to sparge with an additional 8-9 gallons of water to get my preboil volume of around 12.5 gallons

yes, lots of water.

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meltroha

Recipes 

I'm at 1.25 / hour, 6.5 gall total Gabe me exactly 5 gallons in secondary after a 1l starter and 8oz bourbon ( and 1oz of oak chips, of course)

brettg20

Recipes 

Sounds like you brewed a Blonde haha....sounds good what is your ABV?

Varmintman

Recipes 

It is good you are reading and trying to understand what is going on before you jump into it. I kind of wish I had done that when I started

Yes you do boil off a bit of water in the boil. Just something you will need to learn about your system and take into account when you are warming up your strike water and mash water. Everyone is a little bit different but if it helps last night in a hour boil I was just short of two gallons boiled off.

brettg20

Recipes 

Just curious, which burner do you use?

FloridaSon

Recipes 

The boil rate for me is about 2 gallons over 90 minutes. I didn't think it was that high until I actually measured it.

meltroha

Recipes 

Its a sort of black English ipa. 7.8%, it is 8 days in the secondary, I'll be bottling next Thursday or Friday

Varmintman

Recipes 

I really do not know the brand. It is a very old one my Dad had that he used to bring 55 gallon drums of water to boil when we would pluck chickens as kids. Got some oomph to it and it does not help that my brew pot is short and wide. Just a slow rolling boil will boil off 1 3/4 gallons in a hour