Do I Understand All Grain Brewing?

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Julohan

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For a 5 gallon batch, I heat up the water in the HLT to the desired temp. Then I put the water in the MLT. Add grains. Mash for an hour. Transfer mash to kettle. Then sparge water into the MLT to get the remaining sugars. Again, transfer sparge water to the kettle. Bring wort to boil. Add hops at different times during the hour boil. Cool wort down to 70 degrees. Pour wort into fermenter. Aerate. Pitch yeast.

How much water do I mash with for a 5 gallon batch?
How much Sparge water?
If I am short in pouring into the fermenter. Is it okay to add water (water that was boiled) to get to the 5 gallon line?
 
For a 5 gallon batch, I heat up the water in the HLT to the desired temp. Then I put the water in the MLT. Add grains. Mash for an hour. Transfer mash to kettle. Then sparge water into the MLT to get the remaining sugars. Again, transfer sparge water to the kettle. Bring wort to boil. Add hops at different times during the hour boil. Cool wort down to 70 degrees. Pour wort into fermenter. Aerate. Pitch yeast.

How much water do I mash with for a 5 gallon batch?
How much Sparge water?
If I am short in pouring into the fermenter. Is it okay to add water (water that was boiled) to get to the 5 gallon line?
 
Pretty much, but you want to put your water in your MLT above strike temp because the MLT will absorb some heat. Beersmith has a good calculator for this.

1) It depends on your grainbill and grain/water ratio. There are several on-line calcuators or you can use Beersmith.
2) Depends on above, but roughly it's target boil volume - first runnings = sparge volume.
3) It's okay, but it's better to overshoot than undershoot. That meaning I'd use extra water to sparge with so you never come up short.
 
You basically have it.

How much water to mash? Between 1qt and 2qts per pound of grain. I like 1.25 or 1.5qts per pound.

Measure how much wort you get from the first run off and subtract that amount from your desired preboil volume (probably 6.5 gallons) to get your sparge volume.

You really don't want to top up your fermenter with pure water. It's better to sparge enough and boil down or efficiency suffers.

This is a copy/paste out of my all grain primer:

The Single Kettle/Burner Method with a simple picnic cooler MLT:

First you're going to figure out based on your grain bill, how much water you'll need to make the ratio 1.25qts/lb. Example, if you have 12lb of grain 12 x 1.25 = 15 quarts or 3.75 gallons of "STRIKE" water.

Heat strike water in your kettle to ABOUT 185F and dump it into your cooler, then close the lid. Wow, doesn't that seem a bit hot? Your cooler is going to absorb quite a bit of heat in the first 5 minutes. Leave it alone with the cover closed to let it warm up. After 5 minutes, open it up and stir the water, then test the temp. You're going to want it to cool to about 168F. Remember, software will help you figure out exactly what temp to use. Once you reach your ideal strike temp, dough in (mix the crushed grains in thoroughly) then close the lid.

After 5 minutes, open the cooler, stir once more and check the temperature in various places. Again, you want it to settle to ABOUT 152F. If it's a degree or two high or low, it's OK. If it's off by more, you might want to compensate with a little cold or boiling water. Once you're satisfied, close the lid and wait 60 minutes.

After about 20 minutes, you'll want to start heating your sparge water in the kettle. You'll need ABOUT the same volume as your intended finished batch. If it's a 5 gallon batch, heat up 5 gallons of sparge water to 180F.

After the full 60 minute mash, open the drain valve on the MLT and collect 2 quarts of wort into a pitcher. Carefully return this back on top of the mash (this is vorlaufing), then drain the entire MLT into a bucket. If the bucket has graduation marks, take note how much wort you collected. You're going to find that you lost a good percentage of liquid to grain absorption. In our example, it's likely that you only got out 2.5 gallons from the 3.75 strike volume. Here's where you have to decide ultimately how much wort you want in the kettle to start with. You will boil off about 1.25 gallons in 60 minutes of vigorous boil so you'll want at least 6.5gallons to start with. To figure out how much to sparge with, take this pre boil figure (6.5) and subtract it from how much wort you collected out of the MLT for first runnings (say 2.5). This leaves you with 4 gallons. This is exactly how much you'll need to sparge with.

Assuming you got the sparge water up to 180F, pour about HALF of the required sparge volume into the MLT (in the example it will be 2 gallons. Stir it well for a couple minutes, vorlauf 2 quarts again, then collect it in the same bucket the first runnings are in.

Repeat step 6 again with the remaining sparge volume. At this point, you should have about 6.25 gallons in the bucket. You can also split this amount between two buckets to make handling them easier.

Remove any excess water from the kettle and carefully transfer all your wort from the buckets into the kettle. Stir this wort up and draw off a bit to measure your pre-boil gravity and take note of it. You'll also need an accurate measurement of how much volume you collected. Once you have these two numbers you can figure out your mash/lauter efficiency as explained earlier on this page.

Proceed as you normally would for an extract batch. You've just made your own wort without "instant beer".
 
mash is 1.3 liters / lb of grain I think?
and sparge is the remaining to get your total wort up to 6 or 6.5 gallons which will boil down to 5 or 5.5 gallons.

your technique is good. one more thing that most AG'ers do is pour some boiling water into your MT to warm it up, then dump and start your mash as you mention above. this reduces heat loss as you try to hit your mash temp.
 
With the sparge water, do I just let the water run through the MLT to the kettle right away? Or do I hold the water in the MLT for a little bit?
 
mash is 1.3 liters / lb of grain I think?
and sparge is the remaining to get your total wort up to 6 or 6.5 gallons which will boil down to 5 or 5.5 gallons.

your technique is good. one more thing that most AG'ers do is pour some boiling water into your MT to warm it up, then dump and start your mash as you mention above. this reduces heat loss as you try to hit your mash temp.

you can mash anywhere from 1qt/lb of grain to 3qts/lb, but I think people tend to shoot for between 1.25qt and 2qt per lb. I usually have a little better efficiency if I use atleast 1.5 qt per lb myself.
 
Yup. Those are the basics. If the numbers are a problem for you (Like they were for me) Then you could do worse than downloading the trial version of Beersmith a few days before your first AG brewday. You would need a few days to peek around the program and get all your twiddling done beforehand. Then you get to print out a brewsheet that you can keep handy on cherry popping day.

A program like this is not necessary to brew, but it's a great help for anxious virgins.
 
With the sparge water, do I just let the water run through the MLT to the kettle right away? Or do I hold the water in the MLT for a little bit?

Assuming a batch sparge process, you'll add the sparge water, stir it with the grain really well and then run it off. From what I pasted above:

Assuming you got the sparge water up to 180F, pour about HALF of the required sparge volume into the MLT (in the example it will be 2 gallons. Stir it well for a couple minutes, vorlauf 2 quarts again, then collect it in the same bucket the first runnings are in.

NOTE: you currently have two threads going with the same exact question.
 
Yeah. Sorry. I put it in Beginner section. Right after I posted it. I thought I should of posted it in this section.
 
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