Water Ratios

I am about begin a partial mash recipe that I created. Of course I will be going through the mash and batch sparge processes, but I wanted to get people's feedback on water ratios because I really do not want to have to top-up my wort after I've completed the boil, chilled the wort and am putting the wort into the primary for pitching.

My question is this. I would like to end up with the typical five gallons of wort from a six gallon boil. Now as I go through the process, I'm aware of the following ratios for each stage:

1. 1.25 liters of water per lbs. of grain for the mash (then runoff)
2. 1.25 liters of water per lbs. of grain for the sparge (then runoff)

Now, this is a partial mash, so assuming that I have 5.25 lbs. of grain for the mash and sparge, this would leave me with 6.6 liters of water for each of the mash and sparge water, which would leave me with approximately 3.5 gallons of wort prior to the boil. Assuming water loss in grain absorbtion and boil off, this does not get me anywhere close to six gallons for a boil.

Now, if I factor in the dry malt extract, it would bring my grain bill to about 9.12 lbs., if I used the same ratio above I would come out with about 11.4 liters for both the mash and sparge water, or about 6 gallons of wort, so this makes more sense. However, is this still enough to get me through the boil and leave enough wort to fill a bit more than five gallons in my primary? My concern is that through absorption, boil off and loss from trub I will be left with less than my ideal amount of final wort.

Also, if I cannot factor in dry malt extract, where do I add that extra water? Do I add it prior to the boil, after I've completed both the mash and the sparge, or do I just have to live with topping up my primary (which I find leaves the final product a little watery, and probably no where close to where I wanted it).

Let me know what others have experienced/suggest. Thank you!

I use quarts, not liters, but it's close.

I mash with 1.25 quarts/pound, and then you can sparge with up to .5 gallons of sparge water to get closer to your volume. No reason in the world you have to sparge with such a small amount of water that you're limiting yourself to.

So, say you have 5.25 pounds of grain. You'll have a gallon of first runnings. You can up that to as much as 2 quarts/pound for the mash if you feel you want more. If you sparge with .5 gallons per pound, you'll have an additional 2.6 gallons of runnings. That's about 3 gallons right there.

If you're doing a 3 gallon boil, you're all set. If you want to do a full boil, this is when you'd add some water to get you to your boil volume.

The DME is not a part of the equation, so I don't know what the rest of your post is saying.

That's what I meant, quarts, sorry I was just reading other forums where they were using liters, so I got stuck on the metric system.

So you recommend that after doing the mash and sparge at the recommended ratios (perhaps a bit more for the sparge, e.g. 2 quarts/lbs.) then you can add water afterwards to bring it to a full boil of 6 gallons. Have you had good success with this process?

I will not factor in the DME into my water ratio equation, per your suggestion. I'm using BeerTools for my recipe, so I've got it set for a six gallon boil to produce five gallons of wort at 72% efficiency, but they don't mention where the extra water comes in after you've mashed and sparged at the appropriate ratios.

woodsconsin81 said:

That's what I meant, quarts, sorry I was just reading other forums where they were using liters, so I got stuck on the metric system.

So you recommend that after doing the mash and sparge at the recommended ratios (perhaps a bit more for the sparge, e.g. 2 quarts/lbs.) then you can add water afterwards to bring it to a full boil of 6 gallons. Have you had good success with this process?

I will not factor in the DME into my water ratio equation, per your suggestion. I'm using BeerTools for my recipe, so I've got it set for a six gallon boil to produce five gallons of wort at 72% efficiency, but they don't mention where the extra water comes in after you've mashed and sparged at the appropriate ratios.

Click to expand...

Sure, you can top up the wort with water to get to your volume for your boil, with no problem. The other choice is actually my preference, though- mash more grain! In the PM, even though you're mashing, the vast majority of the fermentables would come from the DME, especially with only 5 pounds of grain. If say, half, of those grains were specialty grains, you'd get very little in the way of fermentables but lots of flavor.