Mashing Question

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BakerBeer

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Quick question regarding how to mash. I have a 5 gallon recipe for a Honey Wheat beer. I am going to be attempting to brew tomorrow. Do i put 5 gallons of water in my mash ton? then after my 60 min, i drain into my brew pot and measure then add water back into the brew pot to make 5 gallons?
 
Quick question regarding how to mash. I have a 5 gallon recipe for a Honey Wheat beer. I am going to be attempting to brew tomorrow. Do i put 5 gallons of water in my mash ton? then after my 60 min, i drain into my brew pot and measure then add water back into the brew pot to make 5 gallons?

No. What you want to do is use 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash, and then drain that off after 60 minutes. Measure that, and then add whatever volume of water you need back into the mash tun with the grain. Stir well, then drain.
 
Based on your understanding of mashing, I would highly recommend watching a couple YouTube videos.

You should try and get an understanding of controlling your mash temperature and sparging.
There are some great videos that will help you out.
 
Based on your understanding of mashing, I would highly recommend watching a couple YouTube videos.

You should try and get an understanding of controlling your mash temperature and sparging.
There are some great videos that will help you out.

What he said. I am fairly new to this hobby too, and am still trying to learn about mashing, YouTube has been my best friend in this process.
 
Quick question regarding how to mash. I have a 5 gallon recipe for a Honey Wheat beer. I am going to be attempting to brew tomorrow. Do i put 5 gallons of water in my mash ton? then after my 60 min, i drain into my brew pot and measure then add water back into the brew pot to make 5 gallons?

List the ingredients of your recipe and we can help steer you.
 
Yea, i have been watching Youtube videos for a few days. I just completed my first batch of beer yesterday. Tasted decent!

I got a firm grasp on the grain method. I am sure it will be a learning process. I am not concerned with making a great batch of beer. I am just learning.

The Youtube video i just watched said 1.25 Qt per pound of grain.

White Wheat 4lb
Flaked Wheat 1lb
Belgian Pilsner 3lb
Honey Malt 1lb

1.25 x 9 equals 11.25 Qt or 2.81 Gallons of water @ 152-154Degrees

Will set for Aprox 60 min...

Drain into brew pot after vorloft of course...

Batch sparge with 170 Degree water for 5 Min... (to make my 5 gallons)

Vorloft again...

Drain into brew pot...
 
With all that wheat I would recommend almost a pound of rice hulls and a thinner mash, maybe 1.5 to 1...the wheat has no husk and it is easy to get a stuck sparge since it can get rather porridge-like.

What are using for a mash tun?
 
a big cooler i modified with PCV. I drilled 1/4 holes into the PCV that drain into a stainless steel valve. Its a nice set up so far. I wanted a better strainer however. I may have some get through tomorrow but i have a fine strainer i am going to use just in case. I think the grain bed will get thick and i hope it wont come through.
 
I agree with the comment about thinning it out and adding rice hulls. You also need to add hotter water to get to your 153 temp. With your numbers the Mash Tun water should be 164. When mashing, I make sure the water is at the correct temperature and volume before adding the grain. That means I add more and hotter water than needed and get it correct. There is a great app on the iphone called brew math. There are other programs that will calculate it for you. Beer Smith can help you a lot and it is very little. Normally your sparge volume = your mash volume. You can then top off your brew kettle with plain hot water. Remember you will lose some volume in the boil. I have some light DME that I add if I miss my OG (When we started All Grain, we still have the DME but have not used it except for starters in a while).
 
Normally your sparge volume = your mash volume. You can then top off your brew kettle with plain hot water.

Is there any reason why you'd dilute the draining from your MLT with hot water when you could easily put that hot water through the MLT as a sparge (or second sparge) and extract all of the extra goodies from the grain?
 
metanoia said:
Is there any reason why you'd dilute the draining from your MLT with hot water when you could easily put that hot water through the MLT as a sparge (or second sparge) and extract all of the extra goodies from the grain?

I don't know why you would top off with hot water...

I agree with the others. 1.5ish ratio and a half pound of rice hulls. Mash, vorlauf, drain. Measure that volume. The grain won't absorb any more water when you sparge, so let's say you collect 2 gal when you first drain your MLT and your preboil volume is 6.5 gal. You'd need to add 6.5 - 2 = 4.5 gallons of sparge water. Then stir, vorlauf, drain.
 
Thanks Chief! I am going to add a false bottom. Went out and bought a large cookie sheet i am going to drill small holes in and lay on the bottom about 1 inch from the bottom. I hope this help with the drain not getting plugged.
 
You can do the double sparge rather than top off but we have found that is is just time wasted. If you have a thinner batch sparge you do not get much from the second sparge. You may also pick up some tannins if the PH is wrong due to all the sugars being gone. We top off just to save time for the most part. We used to regularly do the double sparge and checking SG on the drainage. When we did we got little off the second sparge before it was basically water (with very little sugar). We changed to a single batch sparge and see no difference in our product. We get the volume in the BK to our desired OG. In other words, we adjust the BK volume based upon the Mash SG and predicted boil off. We do sometimes add water at the One hour time (We boil for 90 minutes) if we are light, Additionally we will add boiling water when we add the Irish Moss to make sure we reach the correct OG.
 
Going to get a new cooler today... i was thinking of either a 5 gallon or a 10 gallon igloo cooler. Does it matter?
 
There is no benefit to topping off the boil kettle with water. It's just wasted opportunity for better efficiency. The one case where it may happen is in a fly sparge where runnings fall to 2 brix before the required preboil volume is reached. This rarely happens. When batch sparging, you can either calculate required volumes or a practical method is to measure first runnings and compare to how much preboil you need to determine sparge volume. Note, you need at least 6 gallons to boil down to 5.
 
BakerBeer said:
Going to get a new cooler today... i was thinking of either a 5 gallon or a 10 gallon igloo cooler. Does it matter?

Get the 10 gallon. You won't be able to fit high gravity 5 gallon batches in a 5 gallon.
 
Thanks, however I already got the five gallon. I went to my local brew shop and asked a few questions.

I don't make huge batches of beer, mostly 5gallon and under. I mashed up one last night and my pre boil gravity was around 1.033... I haven't measured my post boil before I pitch the yeast. I would have to say it went up some... The recipe I was following calculates a 1.042 OG.. So I think I will fine.
 
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