Question about HG brews using AG

I read you're suspossed to use about 1 lb of grain per quart of water, right? So that's at most 4 lb per gallon, and you're supposed to sparge with 2x as much water as you mashed with right? So Promash says 4 lbs pils in 3 gallons gives me an OG of just 1.037! So how do you get OGs above that do you make thinner worts and boil them down (which it seems would take forever)? Or is the 1lb/quart thing not really that true and you just throw more grain in the mash?

I use around 1.3 qts/lb. 1qt/lb is a but stiff.

After subtracting the loss to the grain (0.15gallons/lb for me), I just batch sparge twice with a total volume to get me 7 gallons pre-boil.

I use 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain in my mash. I then sparge with enough water to get me to 6 gallons of wort (my boil volume). That can decrease efficiency a bit- you'd probably get much better efficiency to sparge until the runnings are at 1.010 or less and then boil that down to 5 gallons, but I don't want to spend all day boiling.

I don't understand what you mean about promash and the OG. I don't think you've included the sparge water in that calculation.

Yeah, I just set the boil size to 3 gal and made the grain bill 4 lbs of belgian pilsner. You have to do it differently?

So if I wanted to do a heavy beer, say 1.1 OG, I'd have to make 15 gallons of 1.033 wort and boil it down to 5 gallons?

No, I don't understand what you mean. Are you doing partial boils, then topping off? Or are you actually making three gallon batches? When do you do your sparge?

Here's an example:

Copy of Arrogant Bastard Clone
Style: American Amber Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (35.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.00 gal
Boil Size: 6.84 gal
Estimated OG: 1.070 SG
Estimated Color: 19.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 91.6 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
11 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 88.00 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 12.00

1.25 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (90 min) Hops 50.9 IBU
1.25 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (30 min) Hops 36.5 IBU
0.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (5 min) Hops 4.2 IBU
0.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %] (0 min) (Aroma Hop-SteeHops -
1.00 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Pacific Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP041)

60 min Mash In Add 15.63 qt of water at 170.1 F 154.0 F

Sparge with 4.5 gallons water.

I mash in with 1.25 quarts of water per pound- which is 15.63 quarts. (I'll round up to 16 quarts, though). After the mash, I drain the runnings. Since I batch sparge, I'll use 4.5 gallons of water to sparge (and the calculation isn't shown, but the water will be about 181 degrees to bring the grain bed/sparge up to 168-170 degrees). This is give me a total boil volume of about 6.8 gallons for my 90 minute boil.

Does that help at all?

This is what I was planning:

1) Mash 4 lbs grain in 1 gal water in pot#1
2) Strain off mash into pot#2, keeping grain
3) Put grain back in pot#1, add to 2 gallons 170F water to sparge
4) Strain off sparge into pot#2
5) Proceed with boil in pot#2?

That will give me a pretty light beer, around 1.037 OG, right? I calculated that number in promash by setting the batch size to 3 gallons and then setting the grain bill to 4 lbs belgian pils.

My question was though, how do you make heavier beers (in the 1.1 OG range) using AG since you end up using about a gallon of water per pound of grain?

Maybe the sticking point is that you do not have to sparge with 2x the mash volume. I think this is mentioned in How to Brew as being the optimal, but I always do it just like Yooper said. I let my desired pre-boil volume dictate my total sparge volume (not the grain bill).

ericd said:

This is what I was planning:

1) Mash 4 lbs grain in 1 gal water in pot#1
2) Strain off mash into pot#2, keeping grain
3) Put grain back in pot#1, add to 2 gallons 170F water to sparge
4) Strain off sparge into pot#2
5) Proceed with boil in pot#2?

That will give me a pretty light beer, around 1.037 OG, right? I calculated that number in promash by setting the batch size to 3 gallons and then setting the grain bill to 4 lbs belgian pils.

My question was though, how do you make heavier beers (in the 1.1 OG range) using AG since you end up using about a gallon of water per pound of grain?

Click to expand...

You don't need a gallon of water per pound of grain- as Beeriffic said. An "ideal" volume would be 1.25 or so quarts/pound for the mash, and half a gallon per pound for the sparge- but that usually isn't realistic. If your efficiency, is say, 75%, then you can make a 1.109 beer with 20 pounds of 2-row (for a 5 gallon batch).

Ok thanks guys. Let me think about this a bit.

For high gravity beers, what some people do is the Parti-gyle method. You calculate the grain bill 50% higher than the gravity you want for the big beer. The first & second runnings give you a high gravity wort, the third and fourth a low gravity wort. In the traditional method, you made a barleywine, a regular beer and a small beer for one mash.

Some people save the last runnings for starters.

Some make a big beer and use extract to make it huge.

ericd said:

This is what I was planning:
1) Mash 4 lbs grain in 1 gal water in pot#1
2) Strain off mash into pot#2, keeping grain
3) Put grain back in pot#1, add to 2 gallons 170F water to sparge
4) Strain off sparge into pot#2
5) Proceed with boil in pot#2?

Click to expand...

First, 4lbs of grain for 3 gallons is pretty light.
Using tastybrew calculator does show it at 1.037, looks like a good bud light clone.
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html

You will have some water adsorbed by the grains in your initial mash, but a 1.2 gal initial mash would be good. I tend to use 1.25 quarts per lb of grains.
Then to get the best extraction I would break up the batch sparges into 2 separate of using 1.25 gals each. You will have some loss due to evaporation, gunk in the bottom of the kettle, etc.
To up the gravity, you would have to use more grains if you can fit them into your pot.