how do you measure water and wort?

I've done 3 all grain batches so far and they've turned out great (with my ghetto rigged cooler even), but I'm trying to refine my water amounts since all 3 batches have missed my target 5.5 gallon batch size and thus changed up the gravity of the beers.

One thing I'm curious about is how everyone measures their losses and totals. When you drain into your boil kettle, how do you know how much liquid is in there? When you're done boiling, how do you measure how much is left? The only way I've found is to use a quart size measuring pitcher I have, but that takes forever.

And how does everyone measure out their mash water amount? I've been using a gallon spring water jug to measure the amounts, but that's still somewhat of a pain to do and I don't always have jugs around...

I have a guage that I made for my kettle, which is a piece of wood marked at 1/2 gallon intervals. I made it by adding a 1/2 gal at a time and mrking the level on the stick.

Of course, sight guages are the easy way to do this.

I use a 5-gallon bucket marked w/ gallons for measuring strike water, etc.

pour a gallon of water into kettle and either draw a line on it with a marker or put in a plastic rod/brewing spoon and mark where it comes to on that, put the second gallon and remark, repeat the process and so on and so on till your hearts content. You should end up with a graduated marked kettle/brewing spoon (works for me).

I tried marking my mash paddle but it lasted about 1 brew before it wore off (a little sharpie ink in the brew can't hurt...). A wooden stick sounds good, that shouldn't wear off so much. I figured marking the inside of the kettle would wear off, and marking the outside would be too hard to guage what's inside...

Use a cold chisel or a center punch to lightly make marks in your kettle at every 1/2 gallon or gallon level. Deep enough to be able to see it, but not so deep that it goes through the wall!

I use a steal yardstick. Stick it in my sanitization bucket then put it into the kettel/MLT and do the math. For my kettles, multiply the gallons x 1.4 and that gives me the number of inches to hit. Or divide the inches by 1.4 and that gives me what is in the kettle/mlt. Not super accurate, but close enough for home brew.

Mash water i just buy, today im mashing with 5 g's (2x 2.5 g deerpark), then run-off I use a spoon with marks (1 at 7 g and anothr at 5.5), if you do your calculations correct you should end up with 7 g's wort and after 60 min boil 5.5 g's. The only variable for me is that if I leave the lid on even partially I end up with too much wort.

After a few times you'll know what works.

Ive done so many batches now, I can just eyeball and add before the boil starts. I end up with damn close to 5.5 gallons everytime.

Dipsticks, marks on the kettle, sightglasses etc etc help until you get to that point

I use a half gallon measuring pitcher when adding my strike water to my mash tun. I batch sparge and when I do my first runnings, I drain it into a bucket that has the volume marks (I calibrated with measured amounts of water at mash temperatures). This allows me to see the exact amount of water I need to add back to the mash tun to get the preboil volume I want.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company

I use a 30 quart pot with built-in calibration marks to measure water, but my boil kettle's handle welds are right at 6 gallons, so that leaves me with 5.25-5.5 allowing for shrinkage from cooling & hops.

good question and feedback, was wondering the same thing. I kind of just winged it with my first AG batch but agree some sort of measurement would help since I only got less than 5 gallons out of an 11 gallon recipe!

cweston said:

I have a guage that I made for my kettle, which is a piece of wood marked at 1/2 gallon intervals. I made it by adding a 1/2 gal at a time and mrking the level on the stick.

I use a 5-gallon bucket marked w/ gallons for measuring strike water, etc.

Click to expand...

This.
But I bought square dowels at Home Depot. Used a sharpie and ink pen. I have one for each of my different kettles.

Also use the ale pail for mash and sparge water.

For mash water I use a combo of a gallon pitcher and Nalgenes. To measure the run offs I just use a tape measure and math with a cubic inches to gallons converter pulled up on my laptop. For my keggle I have a yard stick that I marked off up to 14 gallons.

I measured the area and volume of my kettle and was able to figure out the gallons per inch. Then I just drop a measuring stick in, multiply by (.7gal/in in my case), and I know what I have.

I did the "add a half gallon of water to the kettle at a time, and measure distance from the top" thing. I then made a chart. Works.