Partial Mash recipe/ingredients

I'd like to start playing around with the recipes before I brew them. I've got a few questions, though, that google hasn't been able to sufficiently answer so far...

1) How much water does it take to steep or mash a certain amount grain. For instance, if I want to mash 4/6/8/10 lbs of grain can I do that with 3 gallons of water in my kettle?

2) How much grain is equivalent to a certain amount of LME or DME. Is 2 lbs DME equivalent to 2 lbs grain?

As far as I'm concerned the more grain I can use, they better my beer will turn out. Is that an accurate statement?

1. You generally want to mash with 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. You can sparge (rinse) the grain with up to 2 quarts of water per pound of grain, or up to your boil volume.

2. An easy guestimate as to how much extract is equal to grain is this: 1 pound grain= .75 pound LME = .6 pound DME.

Partial mash is great when you want to use extract, but either can't do a full boil or you want to use ingredients that must be mashed (like adjuncts or some malts).

sgillespie said:

As far as I'm concerned the more grain I can use, they better my beer will turn out. Is that an accurate statement?

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Not necessarily. But your batches will cost less and less money the more grain you use. I steadily increased the proportion of grain in my recipes until I stopped using extract altogether for beers less than 13 plato OG (I brew in the kitchen and use a slightly concentrated boil). In my opinion, switching from tap water to RO water with custom mineral additions had a bigger impact on the taste of my beer than going from partial mash to all grain.

YooperGrandma said:

1. You generally want to mash with 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. You can sparge (rinse) the grain with up to 2 quarts of water per pound of grain, or up to your boil volume.

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This is interesting. With a 4 gallons of water I could use up to 4 * 4 = 16qt / 1.5 = 10 lbs of grain. This implies that I could use all grain, and add another gallon to the cooled wort to make a 5g batch.

Is this acceptable? I read somewhere that if you want to go all grain, you have to boil the full 5 gallons...

Green Bay Rackers has some useful calculators. The "Can I Mash It" calculator can probably tell you how much grain you can mash given your kettle size.

sgillespie said:

This is interesting. With a 4 gallons of water I could use up to 4 * 4 = 16qt / 1.5 = 10 lbs of grain. This implies that I could use all grain, and add another gallon to the cooled wort to make a 5g batch.

Is this acceptable? I read somewhere that if you want to go all grain, you have to boil the full 5 gallons...

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I am of the opinion that if you are mashing more than like 4-4.5 lbs of grain, you should really start thinking about getting a mash tun. If you really want to do stovetop partial mash I think that DeathBrewer's tutorial is a must read.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

sgillespie said:

I read somewhere that if you want to go all grain, you have to boil the full 5 gallons...

Click to expand...

You don't have to boil the whole volume. Just keep in mind that you are doing a concentrated boil when doing your calculations