Please help out a Noob with all grain

I'm hoping you experienced all-grain brewers can help me out a bit. I have been brewing with extract for years. I have recently ventured out into all-grain. I'm about to start my 3rd batch. My first batch was a pale ale, and I know what I did wrong there. I didn't pre-heat my mash tun and it I didn't quite get the temp right, which resulted in a poor conversion. It still ended up being drinkable, but I wasn't thrilled with it.
My second batch was an Irish Red Ale. I get all of my ingredients in kits still. I use midwest supplies. This time, I had great conversion. I was ecstatic with that result. However, both with this batch and the Pale Ale before, I am not ending up with 5 gallons of wort. I follow the directions to the "t". Here are the water volumes for the Irish Red I did a couple of months ago.

Mash in: 1.25 quarts per pound of grain.
This recipe has 10 pounds total grain. So, 1.25 x 10 is 12.5 quarts. 4 quarts to a gallon, so 12.5 / 4 is 3.125 gallons of water for mashing.
Again, conversion was excellent. Now, the sparge.
Instruction say 1/2 gallon per pound of grain. Okay, that's 5 gallons. All went well. I ended up with just over 7 gallons of wort.
After the 1 hour boil, cool down, and pour into fermenter, I'm ending up with 4 gallons. I am not understanding it. I have always used about 6 gallons when doing extract to start out with, and I've always ended up with a 5 gallon batch. The laws of physics don't seem to apply in my garage when I'm doing all-grain. haha. I'm at a loss.
Should I sparge with more water and end up with 8 gallons? Will this dilute the end result? I'm not sure what to do here. I haven't tried my irish red ale yet. Just put a bottle in the fridge last night to test out. It's been in the bottle for 2 weeks. It tasted very promising when I took a taste during bottling, but it was still only 4 gallons. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I want to start a batch today of all-grain, and really want to end up with 5 gallons in the fermenter. Thanks so much.

Edit: Maybe I'm crazy in thinking I have ended up with 7 gallons? I have a 15 gallon brew pot. Surely, I'm not losing 2 gallons during boil? I'm going to measure out one gallon at a time for the brewpot, and maybe mark a stick or something at one gallon intervals. Maybe it is less than 7 gallons and I'm going crazy. It doesn't change the fact, however that I am following the directions perfectly, and coming up short.

what were the og of the two recipes where they on the mark or higher then they should have been. i have done 3 all grains and latly my evap has been about 1.5 gal my first one was 1 gal so it would seen it depends on how rigourious a boil you have

Are you using the same kettle for your all grain batches that you use for your extract recipes? If you are, and you are boiling with approximately the same vigor, I would expect that you'd boil off the same amount of water in both cases. There shouldn't be anything specific that I can think of with the all grain approach that would require you to start with more wort in your kettle than you do with extract.

Each system will be a little different, but I lose about 1 gallon in an hour on my system. I start with 6.5 gallons, end with 5.5 gallons in the kettle and transfer 5 gallons to my fermenter leaving about 0.5 gal of trub behind. I would be a bit surprised if you would need to start with 8 gallons to end up with 5 gallons post boil. That sounds like a lot of boil off to me.

I know this sounds simple, but have you double checked your volume measurements using water and a pitcher or container that you believe to be accurate? I wouldn't necessarily believe that all containers used for homebrewing are marked accurately, so you might want to double-check everything.

The Homebrew Nerd
thehomebrewnerd.com

Thank you both. To answer the SG, it was right on target for the Irish Red. I'm using all the same equipment. And you're right, there's no way I should be losing that much in a boil. Like I said, my measurements could be off with what I end up with, but I still go by the book with the amounts, so it should come out closer than what I'm getting, even if I don't check to see what I ended up with. At least, that's how I'm thinking of it. Doing extract, I too would start with 6.5 gallons, and end up with about 5.5. I use 5 gallon jugs of water to do this. Even then with the extract, so it was pretty simple to start myself off with 6 gallons in the pot just from eyeballing. Pour the entire 5 gallon jug in, and eyeball 1 gallon from a second 5 gallon jug. All grain, obviously is different because I have to use a certain amount in 2 different steps. Maybe I'm messing up there. I was certainly quite confident with my measurements this last time. The 3.125 gallons for mash, and then the 5 gallons for sparge. To me, going by the directions (assuming I did good with the 3.125 measurement) it should have ended up with the correct amount.
I still use the same 5 gallon jugs of water. Any tricks for volume amounts? Maybe mark a stick at 1 gallon intervals? My mash tun is a typical rubbermade 10 gallon thermos, and it has gallon marks on the inside. I really want this next batch I will be doing today/tonight to end up with 5 gallons of beer. Something I should look for?

I appreciate all of your help. Thank you again. I have another question. Sorry. I am going to double check all of my measurements, and be certain this time exactly what I end up with prior to boiling. At the moment, I'm going to get a stick, and mark it at every gallon. But, I was just thinking...Is there a way that you can mark the inside of your brewpot? Has anyone ever done this?

I made a piece of CPVC with markings at each half gallon for both my HLT and my boil kettle.

MississippiSlim said:

I made a piece of CPVC with markings at each half gallon for both my HLT and my boil kettle.

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I think this is the route I'm going with. I have a long plastic spoon. The one with the little spoon on one end, and a big spoon on the other. Got for making wine when you have to stir inside the carboy. I'm going to try that. Does just a sharpie get the job done?

No sharpie.. You don't want the ink in your brew... Just take a knife and make markings... You are prob getting more grain absorption then you are expecting.. Do a second sparge with the extra gallon that you need..

Thank you again all. I will be doing my next batch later on today. I will let you know how it went. Hoping my 3rd time is a charm.

How much water are you leaving in your mash turn, is there dead space under a false bottom? Also doesn't grain absorb .1 gallons a pound so with 10 pounds you would loose a gallon of water to the grain. So if you add 8 gallons, loose one to the grain and then another couple of quarts to dead space you may only be adding 6.5 gallons to the kettle. A hard boil on a dry windy day and you could loose 1.5 gallons. Like you said, you need to measure the water in the kettle before you start your boil.

Keithww said:

How much water are you leaving in your mash turn, is there dead space under a false bottom? Also doesn't grain absorb .1 gallons a pound so with 10 pounds you would loose a gallon of water to the grain. So if you add 8 gallons, loose one to the grain and then another couple of quarts to dead space you may only be adding 6.5 gallons to the kettle. A hard boil on a dry windy day and you could loose 1.5 gallons. Like you said, you need to measure the water in the kettle before you start your boil.

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I plan to do that this time. I have a new way to measure to be sure. One last question. What if I don't have enough water in the kettle when I'm ready to boil? Do I simply sparge more?

Alright. It has begun. I figured I'd kind of document as I went. So this batch is called Ferocious IPA. Tons of hops in this one. OG should be 1.064-1.068. Got both my mash ton, and strike water tun preheating, and am now heating up my mash water to final temp of 152. This one has 12 total pounds of grains. 11 pounds of Golden Promise, 1 pound Munich 10L, and 4 oz of specialty crystal 50/60 grains.
The instructions on this recipe calls for 1 quart per pound of grain. Different from the last, which was 1.25 quarts per pound. But, I will stick to instructions. So that gives me a total of 3 gallons exactly. This time, I measured the 3 gallons precisely, and am heating it up to temp now. More to come..
Sorry if this bores you. I figured it might be good for me to document this as I go, so if anything goes wrong at all, maybe you guys can see where I screwed up.

InHopsWeTrust said:

I plan to do that this time. I have a new way to measure to be sure. One last question. What if I don't have enough water in the kettle when I'm ready to boil? Do I simply sparge more?

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You can sparge more but if your Ph is to high, temp is to high, and or your gravity falls to low you will extract tannins from the husks.

Site was down for awhile, so I need to catch us up. Conversion was pretty awesome. The sweetest I've ever tasted. Just over 6 gallons for sparging. I have also realized that I can't quite get all of the water out of these thermos's without taking off the top and dumping the rest in. Sparged for 1 hour exactly. After making myself gallon marks on my large spoon, I have ended up with exactly 7 gallons. I am 100% positive of this, so if I don't end up with at least 5 gallons after this 1 hour boil, there is definitely some strange things at play here. I am also not going to have my burner going full bore this time. Never had issues in the past, but just in case. Still have a nice rolling boil going, and have started my 1 hour timer. I added 1 ounce of warrior hops. Once strange thing in this recipe is I have 1 oz of amarillo hops and 1 oz of simcoe hops. These are to be first combined and mixed together, Then separated into 5 equal parts. Then adding these 5 separate blend for the last 20 minutes of boil 5 minutes at a time. There will also be dry hopping after seven days with 1 oz ahtanum, 1 oz amarillo and 1 oz simcoe. Should be pretty interesting.

All ended well, started with 7 gallons as I has stated previously and ended with 5.5 gallons. I also turned the burner down during the boil, while still maintaining a rolling boil. I had never thought of this before. I believe this is what my problem was, as our prejudice friend stated previously. Thanks again for everyone's help. The Irish Red Ale that I got to taste last night was awesome!