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lespaul23

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I have searched and found multiple answers, dont know what to follow.

Im starting my AG soon, one thing im comfused on is how much mash water and how much sparge water to use per lb of grain.

I have heard 1gal water to 1lb grain, 1.5gal water to 1lb grain and ive heard use half your pre boil vol in your mash and the other half in your sparge. Ive also heard half your preboil vol and sparge to you get to your pre boil vol.

How come everybody has a different opinion on this. Im doing 5 gal batches with a pre boil vol of 6.5gal.

What is the right way that the majority of brewers calculate this.


Thanks and I know this has been coverd but like I said every thread is different. I want to get the most out of my grains and really want my first AG to turn out well.
 
In general, you use 1.25-2 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash, and then sparge up to your boil volume.

Some say it's ideal to divide it up into roughly equal amounts, but I'm not sure there is any scientific basis for that.

So, say you have 10 pounds of grain and you want to start with 6.5 gallons for your boil volume.

Using 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain (a happy medium), that's 15 quarts. The grain will absorb about 1 gallon of water in the mash, so you should get 2.75 gallons of runnings out of the mash. Then, you will need 3.75 gallons for the sparge. It's always good to have a little more water ready for the first few times just in case you need it, because you may have some other things (deadspace in the MLT for one) that impact the amount you get out of the mashtun. But that should get you close.
 
If you're going to batch sparge check out this calculator, I use it all the time:
http://onebeer.net/batchspargecalc.shtml
The main thing is that you'll need to know what your pre-boil volume is. So you need to know the amount you want post-boil(basically the volume into the fermentor) and the amount of boil-off you get. You can adjust your grain to water ratio however you'd like. Works great.
 
Thanks.

It just seems like everyone does something a little different. So you go with the 1.5gal/per lb of grain. Ive been doing all sorts of calculations and it seems when I get up to 15lbs of grain or so things become more difficult. Not as much sparge water. But thats probably for a different thread.

Thanks again.
 
1 gallon per pound is going to be a bit ridiculous unless you're doing no-sparge, a several hour boil, or a VERY light session beer. As far as mash water, I'm usually in the neighborhood of 1.2-1.4 QUARTS per pound of grain depending on the beer (usually go thinner with smaller beers and thicker with bigger ones). I opt to have more sparge water ready than I think I'll need, and just stop the sparge when I hit my preboil volume. It's essentially mash water + loss to grain absorption + mash tun dead space + sparge water = total water needed to meet your preboil volume. Grain absorption only needs to be factored for the mash, not the sparge, since the grains should already be at capacity by the time you're sparging. Dead space should be constant for your system, grain absorption will depend on the size of the grain bill and the rate of your system (somewhere in the .1-.2 gallons/lb range usually), one you're picking (mash water via chosen water to grain ratio), and then the sparge water fills in the rest based on the first factors. And like I said, I see no harm going with more and just stopping when you've collected enough runnings (assuming you're not using sparge water hot enough that increased volume raises the temp enough for unwanted tannin extraction)
 
Thanks.

It just seems like everyone does something a little different. So you go with the 1.5gal/per lb of grain. Ive been doing all sorts of calculations and it seems when I get up to 15lbs of grain or so things become more difficult. Not as much sparge water. But thats probably for a different thread.

Thanks again.

No. 1.5 QUARTS of water per pound of grain in the mash.
 
Not sure if that's a typo, but you want quarts/lb, not gallons/lb. You'll use 4x too much strike water... and probably have a huge mess overflowing your mash tun.

Typo sry. Got a lot of calulations going on in my head. Lol
 
Ok so I will shoot for 1.5qts per lb of grain, then ill just sparge untill my pre boil vol is hit? That sounds easy enough.

Thanks again guys, appreciate it.
 
Are you batch of fly sparging? Just curious.

I built a very basic spreadsheet with which to log my brews, and the most useful aspect of that sheet is a 'water needed' section.

Water Needed | Wort Recovered
7.8 pounds grain |
=A2*1.25 quarts | Circumference Depth
=A3/4 gallons | 14.5 5.5
| Cubic Inches _> =PI()*(D4/2)^2*E4 =D5/231

The above are my formulas, set for 1.25 qts/ lb. Basically, input pounds of grain and it spits out gallons required. The stuff on the right is a simply volume recovered table using cylinder volume (pi*r^2*h) for my 14" diameter kettle.

BeerSmith will do the water needed calculation much more sveltly but I find it nice to double-log everything with Excel. Plus I don't have to search through menus looking for the proper tool.
 
Are you batch of fly sparging? Just curious.

Was thinking about making 2 coolers for fly sparging but money and space is tight so im thinking about just making a mash tun and batch sparging for now.
 
Since you are batch sparging, subtract how much liquid you get from the mash from preboil amount you want,that will tell you how much water to sparge with.
 
Was thinking about making 2 coolers for fly sparging but money and space is tight so im thinking about just making a mash tun and batch sparging for now.

Since money and space is tight why don't you look into Brew in a Bag. I started with that in my 5 gallon pot that I had for extract brewing and just did a 2 1/2 gallon batch to try it out. The only extra that I would have needed was the paint strainer bags if my local store had a mill but since they didn't I bought a Corona style mill for another $25 and I was brewing all grain. I liked it so well that I bought a turkey fryer so I could brew the 5 gallon batches but that wasn't really expensive either. I think I put a total of about $100 and have been brewing with that setup for a couple years now.
 
I was thinking of biab I have a 24x24 mesh bag and a 8gal pot but I dont have a valve on my kettle and dont want to mess around with pasta strainers or anything. Plus im working on a electric stove and a cooler would keep a better constant temp. And im getting the itch to buy/make some new equiptment. Lol
 
I was thinking of biab I have a 24x24 mesh bag and a 8gal pot but I dont have a valve on my kettle and dont want to mess around with pasta strainers or anything. Plus im working on a electric stove and a cooler would keep a better constant temp. And im getting the itch to buy/make some new equiptment. Lol

Remember that part about money being tight? BIAB is really cheap and with the lower cost of all grain you can pay it off really quickly. You don't have to mess with pasta strainers but they do make it easier. You can just pull the bag out and let it drain while you hold it or drop it into another pot to get a little more wort out of it but your efficiency will be pretty decent without any extra work. One of the benefits of BIAB is you use the full volume of water so you have the extra mass to help hold heat. With just a little insulation (I use a bath towel) and a shorter conversion time if you get your grains double milled or ground fine you should be able to hold the temperature within a degree or 2.
 
If batch sparging it helps to make a dip stick for your boil kettle. Just get a yard stick and take the time to measure out quart increments up the stick. Then after you drain your first runnings, dip the stick in and it will tell you exactly how much sparge water you need to hit preboil volume, since you will be getting back everything you put in for sparging.
 
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