RichBrewer

Recipes 

Thanks. It is fixed.

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Rich

Jester369

Recipes 

Thanks, Rich et al,

I am doing the AG boogie for the first time as soon as my grain mill arrives. I have a pretty good handle on the numbers I am shooting for based on reading this site for the last few months, as well as howtobrew.com, but it's nice to have a simple, concise plan.

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mcaustin

Recipes 

What about for sparging? Your post currently says 1/2 gallon per pound of grain, should that be in quarts too?

Austin

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In the shoot: Mcaustin's Stout
On Tap: Warm AK Nights Barleywine

Posted Recipes: Mocha Stout, Bosco's Dry Hopped Black IPA

RichBrewer

Recipes 

No. What I stated is correct. You want to use about 1/2 gallon per pound of grain for sparging. If you have a big brew, say 16 pounds of grain, you will be looking at 8 gallons of sparge water. With a brew that big you will be looking at roughly 10 gallons of wort in the brew kettle which equates to LOTS of boiling to get it down to a 5 1/2 gallon batch.

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Rich

mcaustin

Recipes 

Ok, thanks for the quick answer!

I'm a bit confused now though, because I entered the recipe for Vanilla Bourbon Porter into Beersmith the other night (to brew this weekend) and it has a 17 lb grain bill. The water calculations that it shows include the proper 1.25 qt/lb for mashing, but then says that my sparge is like 4 gal... I have it entered as a single infusion, batch sparge, with equal batch sparge sizes option box checked.

Any idea?

Thanks!

Austin

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Stubby Muzzle Brewing Pic Gallery


In the shoot: Mcaustin's Stout
On Tap: Warm AK Nights Barleywine

Posted Recipes: Mocha Stout, Bosco's Dry Hopped Black IPA

Drunkensatyr

Recipes 

What helped me back when I started All Grain was to pre measure out all the hops, and moss and seal them in numbered zip bags and wrote the minutes to set my timer to for the next add. I remember the 1st few batches were a mental drain and it was nice to be able to sit back and enjoy the boil without having to think about what I was doing.

FlyingHorse

Recipes 

I suspect (don't know) that BeerSmith sets the sparge volume by how much you say you want to boil, not by how much you need to max efficiency. I do the same thing (and I think many others on this board do as well) because I don't want to try to boil 10 gallons down to 5.5. I just figure I'm going to get lower efficiency on big grain bills, boost the grain accordingly, and shoot for my desired kettle volume of 6.5-7.0 gallons.

Shoot for desired kettle volume and spend a couple dollars worth of grain, or shoot to maximize efficiency and spend a couple extra hours of boil time (and propane). It's up to you; there's not really a right answer.

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mcaustin

Recipes 

Gotcha. Thanks for the insight!

Austin

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Stubby Muzzle Brewing Pic Gallery


In the shoot: Mcaustin's Stout
On Tap: Warm AK Nights Barleywine

Posted Recipes: Mocha Stout, Bosco's Dry Hopped Black IPA

RichBrewer

Recipes 

I agree. I will probably do just that and use extra grain next time I brew a big beer but I wanted to explain it so someone who is just getting started will understand mash efficiency better.
I''m not familiar with BrewSmith so I don't know how the program calculates sparge volume. I use ProMash and it pretty much lets me tell it how much water to use.

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Rich

Beerrific

Recipes 

This is a great thread. I am going to be doing my first all grain soon, I am trying to read as much as possible to make it go smoothly and successfully. Thanks to everyone that has offered help.

I do have one point that I would like to offer (or ask for) clarification on concerning batch sparging.

In John Palmer's book he says that for batch sparging to be successful the first and second runnings should be equal. This has been modeled and shown mathematically somewhere (can't find link; it involved derivatives ). I know RichBrewer is a big advocate of sparging with more water (see #1 in the first post). This leaves the two runnings not equal. I think the way that I understand this contradiction is that in Palmer's book this is done with the end result a factor to increase the amount of grain you use where as RichBrewer is saying use the same amount of grain increase the sparge.

So (correct me if I am wrong) the way I see it is that the whole thing comes down to whether you have a max capacity you can boil (my boat). In that case you should set the runnings equal and increase the amount of grain (per Plamer). If you can boil however much you want, increase the sparge volume (per RichBrewer).

Does this sound reasonable? Is this very obvious and only confusing to me?