Question from a total novice; How Much Water?!?

For being a certified novice, I have actually pulled off some pretty great beers so I am not totally helpless. However, it takes me forever (it seems) to get my head around a recipe (most) that does not specify how much water is mashed in or sparged with.

How do I figure this out?? Is there a basic rule that I am overlooking? Do all recipes assume that one will mash in with "x" and collecy "y" for the boil??? Is there a certain ratio of water to grain that I never learned?

Please help. It will make life so much easier.

For the mash most people use roughly 1.25 quarts of water for each pound of grain. For the sparge it depends on how your sparging and if you did another infusions in the mash but you want to end up with enough wort so that when you loose some to evaporation you end up with the target amount for that batch in your fermenter. Everybodies boil off amount is different. For me, I know if I collect 6.75 Gallons of wort pre-boil I will end up with a full keg when I'm done fermenting.

I actually re-mash so maybe that is part of the problem for me. It is hard for me to calculate the exact amount to ensure that I end up with a suitable pre-boil volume.

To that point, what is the rough math on loss of water at a boil? Your 6.75 gallons (boiled over what I assume to be 60 minutes) means a loss of seven quarts in total or an average of 3.7 ounces per minute. I suppose I could work backwards from this for a 90 minute boil, correct? Does that make sense to you?

Ernie Diamond said:

I actually re-mash so maybe that is part of the problem for me. It is hard for me to calculate the exact amount to ensure that I end up with a suitable pre-boil volume.

To that point, what is the rough math on loss of water at a boil? Your 6.75 gallons (boiled over what I assume to be 60 minutes) means a loss of seven quarts in total or an average of 3.7 ounces per minute. I suppose I could work backwards from this for a 90 minute boil, correct? Does that make sense to you?

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Figuring your boil off will take some trail and error. I loose about a gallon over 60 mins to evaporation. Then there is some loss to trub and transferring to the carboy. I usually end up with 5.5 gallons in the carboy and when fermentation is finished that makes a full keg.

Your set up is bound to be different so you kinda have to figure it out for yourself. Having a good method to measure the volumes is key. Make a stick with marks on it that you can dip in your pot and instantly tell how much liquid you have. Mark your fermenter so you can read how much is in there. Then brew a few batches and take good notes.

Once you figure out your boil off rate, use a calculator like this one to figure out your water additions: http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php

Aah, that is most helpful, thank you.

The one figure that puzzles me is the Mash Thickness. If I don't know how much water to use, how do I calculate this? I entered a fairly arbitrary number of 4 qts/lb but I don't know whether that is correct. Otherwise, this is a very handy tool. Thank you.

per that site the average mash thickness is 1.33 qts/lb

This is my personal spreadsheet I use to create recipes or adjust recipes to fit my brewing specifications.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tE7ZG0u-7buCu330Hk4Thxg&gid=0

All the formulas are adjusted to suit my capabilities and my brewing system, but if you want something like this for yourself I would be more than happy to give you a working copy and help you adjust it to suit your brewing specs. For myself, I evaporate about 1.48 gallons per hour in the boil, lose about 0.125 gallons of mash wort per pound of grain (this also takes into account dead space, I need to get this number more accurate), and lose about 0.0336 gallons per pound in my sparge (here dead space is not a factor as it's already been filled). I finish with 5.5 gallons of a desired gravity in my boil kettle then usually leave behind a bout 0.5 gallons when i transfer to the fermenter. My starter then adds a little volume to the fermenter and lowers the gravity SLIGHTLY (not really enough to make a difference), and this added volume I lose when I transfer the beer to keg. So I always have really close to 5 gallons when I keg and as long as nothing goes drastically wrong, I always am within 0.00X of my target gravity.

Ernie Diamond said:

Aah, that is most helpful, thank you.

The one figure that puzzles me is the Mash Thickness. If I don't know how much water to use, how do I calculate this? I entered a fairly arbitrary number of 4 qts/lb but I don't know whether that is correct. Otherwise, this is a very handy tool. Thank you.

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Mash thickness should be somewhere between 1 and 2 qt per lb. (Most people use between 1.25 and 1.5 qt / lb).

-a.

phatuna said:

Once you figure out your boil off rate, use a calculator like this one to figure out your water additions: http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php

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I agree. I am spot on with the calcs from brew 365. I hit my temps and volumes every time. They also have it for your ipod/iphone I thinks its called sparge pal. It uses the same calcs as the one on the website.