brew hoperator

Recipes 

My brewsmith recipe calls for a 7 gal pre-boil volume and after I mashed and double batch sparged I only got 6.25ish of pre boil wort. I double checked my water measurements and everything was right. Let me go into how how sparged:

after the mash, I vorlaufed, and drained. I then added the split amounts of batch sparges volume at 180F each and let it settle for 5 minutes and then drained at a very slow rate. I did this process the same for both batch sparges.

By letting it settle and drain for a longer time, would this be the reason for the low pre-boil amount?

Beerrific

Recipes 

The settling and slow drain should not effect anything.

There are two reasons for losing volume that I can think of:
1. Water absorption by grain.
2. Loss to dead space in the MLT.

You could post all your volumes (amount in mash, sparge, and in the kettle) and something might stick out.

Yooper

Recipes 

No, the length of time wouldn't change the absorption rate of the grain. I am betting that when you set up Beersmith for your system, you didn't have the correct amount of water for grain absorption.

When I sparge, I check the volume of my first runnings. If I have, say, 2.5 gallons, I can see that I need 4 gallons of sparge water to hit my target of 6.5 gallons (absorption only happens the first time). That's a cheap recheck of volume for me.

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Broken Leg Brewery
Giving beer a leg to stand on since 2006

brew hoperator

Recipes 

My double checking was double wrong. I did not mash with enough water, missed it by .75 gallon! Which is what I was missing in the kettle.

Is there anything I can do after the boil to help this batch? Should I top off with some water?

Thanks!

Yooper

Recipes 

You can if you need to- but I'd check my OG first, and see what my IBU/SG ratio is. If your efficiency was poor, you'd be "watering down" your beer. If your efficiency is great, you'd probably want the extra volume.

What is your intended OG and your actual OG, and what is your volume in the fermenter?

__________________
Broken Leg Brewery
Giving beer a leg to stand on since 2006

Beerrific

Recipes 

Do you still have the grain in the MLT?

I would heat up about a gallon of water and sparge again with that. You could also add the water direct to the kettle but that will drop you gravity. I would check your SG to see if adding the water to the kettle will throw you too far off.

brew hoperator

Recipes 

I did a mash efficiency calc. and got 74% efficiency.

I am in the middle of the boil now and don't have any volume in the fermeneter
My intended OG is 1.050, my pre-boil SG was 1.044.