Questions About Doing a Double Wit with AG

Well I think my brewing balls have grown big enough that I can do a AG batch now. I've been messing around with a double wit recipe since I started brewing, about a year now, using extract. I plan to make a half batch (2.5 gallons) to keep things managable. My grain bill will be

2 lbs 13 oz White Wheat
9 oz Raw Wheat
4 lbs 8 oz Belgian Pils
1 lbs 2 oz Flaked Wheat
6 oz Flaked Oats

That's about 9.2 pounds of grain; multiplying by the magic 1.25 quarts to get your mash volume gets me to almost exactly 3 gallons. Well that's fine, I can boil off the extra 0.5 gallons to land me at the OG I want. What am I supposed to do about sparging though since my OG is already lower than I want it and adding any more water definately wouldn't help in that department? Can I reheat the mash water to 170F and use THAT to sparge? Please Help!

Have you taken into consideration that your grain will soak up a good deal of that water?

you will need to sparge or you will get low efficiency. i'm not sure about heating the water and using that...it MAY work. absorption is about 25% of a typical mash, so take that into consideration. you'll probably only get about 2 gallons.

so, go ahead and sparge with 2 gallons and boil that. you should be able to boil 4 gallons down to 2.5 in 60-90 minutes, no problem.

I could be wrong and please someone correct me if I am but all the Wit recipes I've seen use a step infusion mash.

nah...you can do a single infusion mash, although you may benefit from a protein rest.

+1 on the grain absorbing water also your gonna want to sparge that mother otherwise your eff will suck bilge water.

Ok thanks for explaining that all. How do you know when to stop sparging? I figure it's when you've collected enough for final volume + boil off...so how do you approximate boil off?

generally it's about 1.25-1.5 gallons per hour. i'd shoot high (1.5G) and go for a longer boil (90 min)

DeathBrewer said:

generally it's about 1.25-1.5 gallons per hour. i'd shoot high (1.5G) and go for a longer boil (90 min)

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I'dd second that anyhow because half of your malt is pils, and a 90 minute boil will help avoid DMS issues.

Calculate your grain bill for like 50% efficiency if you plan on making a big beer without sparging and boiling down a lot to your intended OG. Add all the water you will boil (+grain absorption, etc) before you run off your wort. You can mash at 1.25qt/lb and add the remainder hot/boiling water right at the end to help loosen everything up.

carnevoodoo said:

I'dd second that anyhow because half of your malt is pils, and a 90 minute boil will help avoid DMS issues.

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Is that bad? When I was formulating I was under the impression that there wasn't a HUGE difference in base malts. Most other recipes I saw used belgian pils so I went with that....

ericd said:

Is that bad? When I was formulating I was under the impression that there wasn't a HUGE difference in base malts. Most other recipes I saw used belgian pils so I went with that....

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No, pils malt is good for a lot of styles, but it contains a fair amount of DMS. The longer boil will help.