All Grain Process

So I am attempting to hone in on my All Grain brewing. The first batch I brewed was great but the efficiency was a bit low. The second one I brewed a few weeks ago had low efficiency and I just plain didn't sparge with enough water.

Lately, I have been playing around with the beer software I have (brewtarget). It has preprogrammed losses and volumes for specified equipment, for example you could choose "5 gallon extract - half boil" and it will do all the calculations for a half boil extract recipe. The equipment I used for my last two was "5 gallon batch - Ideal" and I feel like there isn't enough water, with my last batch I boiled down to 4 gallons during the hop additions and had to boil extra water to bring the OG to where it should have been. I decided to look at the "7.5 gallon kettle with 10 gallon igloo cooler" setting and it definitely uses more water, but it also increased the batch size from 5 to 5.5 gallons.

Questions:
1) Should I just use the Ideal equipment and just sparge with more water, or should I go with the other setting (I would need more grain) and see how it goes?
2) What is the purpose of brewing 5.5 gallons rather than 5 gallons? Is it purely to account for trub and attempt to pull out exactly 5 gallons of beer?

Consider using the software setting that is closest to your actual brew setup. I use Beersmith with "7.5 gallon kettle with 12 gallon cooler" because that's what I actually use. It's pretty accurate once you match it up. You will probably notice some nuances with your setup, such as how strong the boil is, etc... A lot of folks do use 5.5-6 gallon batches to account for trub or loss to dry hops so that they come out with 5 gallons in the end. When my recipe calls for exactly 5 gallons, I almost always end up with less...between 4.5-4.8 gallons.

Hope that helps...

Well I guess in that case the 7.5 gallon kettle 10 gallon igloo cooler will be the closest to my equipment. I use a 12 gallon igloo cooler, but I boil in 2, 5 gallon pots since I am cheap and don't want to fork over 60-80 bucks for a bigger pot, and my stove probably wouldn't appreciate it.

But back to batch size, my next batch is going to be a bock, and the grain bill I formulated turned out the same as some guys dopplebock except he was doing a 5 gallon batch and I was using a 5.5 gallon batch. This is what really made me think about whether I should be doing a 5 gallon or a 5.5 gallon batch. The only reason I am worried about doing a 5.5 gallon batch is that my carboys I use for lagering/secondary are 5 gallons and I'd rather not waste beer (the extra grain seems fairly trivial). Will this be an issue?

My secondaries are 5 gallons as well, and primaries are 6.5-7.5 gallons. Since the purpose of many "5.5 gallon batches" is really so that you have 5 gallons at the very end, I would normally assume you'll only be racking 5 gallons into your secondary. If you're still concerned about it, just scale it back to a 5 gallon batch...you just may end up with slightly less in the secondary. I wouldn't worry about it too much either way.

I don't use any of the pre-determined equipment set ups in Brewtarget. I just input my own information and end up with just about the expected value every single time. Brewtarget is great software for being free but it's not just plug and chug the entire way, sometimes you have to do a little bit of your own homework.