water vs grain weight

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UnkleKunkle

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i just started doing all grain batches of beer. what is a good way to decide how much water to start with when putting the grains in the mash tun? my first batch had 11 pounds of grains. i have a 5 gallon mash tun. i used 3.5 gallons of water initially. brought it to 165 and stirred in my grains. brought it back up to 160 and put it in the tun. i used 2.25 gallons of water at 170 in the hlt to do a continuous sparge. did i use enough water in the beggining? i ended up using just over seven gallons of water to bring my batch volume up to five gallons in my primary fermenter. og was 1.049 when it should have been 1.059.

:ban:
 
i tried it but i dont think it works. it kept telling me that my strike temp should be five degrees higher. no matter what i put
 
I normally use 1-1.5 quarts per pound of grains though this will vary depending on the style I am brewing. As far as your gravity calculation, did you adjust for temp?
 
Here's a handy calculator for temperature correction. (1.049 @ 70F = 1.050)

Your volumes look pretty good. I also like to mash between 1 and 1.5 qts/# of grain depending on the beer. The higher the gravity the closer to 1qt/#, in order to give me more water to sparge with.

The recipe probably assumed a brewhouse efficiency of ~75%. Sounds like you got closer to 63%, which is pretty common for your first time brewing all grain. Every brewer has different equipment and a different process and gets different efficiency, so you'll have to brew a few more all grain batches before you get your system dialed in. After that, you can adjust the grain amounts from a given recipe to account for your anticipated efficiency, and nail your gravity every time.
 
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