Grain absorbtion
 

Hi a newbie here to all grain ..Eg if you have 4 Quarts grain absorbtion in your mash do you add 4 quarts to your mash water to counter the absorbtion?
Cheers Daza

Add the 4 quarts of water after your mash is complete. Are you batch or fly sparging?
Jeff

Hi Jeff

im batch sparging...So you add 4Q of taste less water.... is it not better to add it to the mash....

Grain absorption is calculated into the water required. What you are wanting to do is to extract most of the sugars from the mash. You don't want the adjusted gravity to drop below 1.010 or so so the sparge is stopped before that. For beginners, using 1 quart per pound of grain for the mash and 1/2 gallon water per pound for the sparge works just fine. You don't need to worry about water absorption by the grain. The object is to boil the wort down to the volume you want in the fermenter. Once the wort is in the fermenter, if you are short on the volume, you can top off with cool pre-boiled water to the desired level.

You don't want to increase the amount of water in the mash as it will dilute the enzymes needed for starch conversion. You should start with about 1-1.3 quarts per pound and add water at 170F as necessary to hold the mash temperature, but not more than 2 quarts per pound total.

Thanks for your help guys
I guess adding water at the end is not the best Practice???
Or am i wrong in saying this..
Daza

At the end is fine, but try not to add too much during the mash. Save it for the sparge.

Here's a good page that explains Batch Sparging:

http://www.bayareamashers.org/content/maindocs/BatchSparging.htm

"One important thing to note is that extraction efficiency will be optimized if the two runoff volumes are equal. For example, if you are going to runoff a total of 11 gallons, then the first runoff volume will be 5.5 gallons, which will also be equal to the second runoff volume. This makes it easy to calculate the total amount of water to add for each of the two runoff phases. The total amount of water added to the mash tun for the first phase will be greater than the second phase because you need to account for water retained by the grains.

The mashing process starts out the same as it does for a continuous sparge batch. That is, enough hot water is infused with grain to achieve the desired mash thickness for the particular recipe. The difference comes when initiating the sparge. At that point, an additional volume of hot water is infused into the mash tun in order to bring the total volume to ½ of the total expected runoff, plus additional water to compensate for what is retained by the grain. The mash is then thoroughly mixed to dissolve as much extract as possible and uniformly distribute it. The runoff is recirculated until clear and then allowed to drain into the kettle. Once the first runnings are completely drained, the second volume of water is infused into the tun and the mash stirred again. The runoff is then recirculated until clear and then run into the kettle"

So there ya go ;)

HTH,
:mug:
mikey