First all grain water volume question

Hey guy, I'm planning on doing my first AG brew day tomorrow or Saturday.

I got these ingredients for a beer:

grain Bill (75% Efficiency assumed)

10 lbs. - 2 Row Pale Malt
2 lb. - Vienna Malt
1/2 lb. - Caramel/Crystal Malt (15L)
1/2 lb. - CaraPils
Hop Schedule (47 IBU)

1/2 oz. - Centennial (60 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (45 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (30 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (15 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (flameout)
1 oz. - Centennial (Dry Hop)
*optional*
If you like a bit more hop, use 1/2 oz of Centennial as a First Wort Hop addition
Yeast

Wyeast American Ale II Yeast (#1272) - 1800 ml starter
Mash/Sparge/Boil

Mash at 153° for 60 min.
Sparge as usual
Cool and ferment at 65° to 68°


And I didn't realize till i was trying to work out how I was going to organize all my equipment that I have absolutely no idea how much water I'm supposed to use either for my strike or sparge, etc, and all the calculators I've tried assume I know way more about what I'm doing than I do.

Sorry for being such a novice, but I haven't been able to find any consistency on hard and fast rules for guessitmating how much water to use, and I was wondering if anyone could give me a little nudge in the right direction.

Single step mashing and batch sparging if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.

The standard for mash water would be 1.25 qt/lb (you can however use as much as 2.25 qt/lb, but I have never mashed with more than 1.5 qt/lb), and you will lose approx .12-.13 gal/lb to grain absorption. Then all you need to do is figure out how much water you need for sparging to achieve your total pre boil volume. Grain will not absorb much if any sparge water because it has absorbed all it can from the mash, so in essence you are only rinsing the grain, so you can count on getting as much out of each sparge as you put in. Another thing you need to take into account is your boil-off rate. It depends on your equipment (kettle), but about 1 gal/hr would be a good starting place, and the last thing you also need to take into consideration any loss to trub, and equipment (again this is specific to your kettle and MLT).

13 lb (of grian) * 1.25 (qt/lb water) = 16.25 qts for strike water which is approximately 4 gallons
4 gal *.125 = .5 gal, so you will lose approximately 1/2 gallon in the mash to grain absorption
3.5 gal + 3.5 gal (of sparge water) this will give you a total volume of 7 gallons = 7 gal
7 gal - 1 gal (approx boil off amount) = 6 gal
6 gal - .5 gal (approx loss to trub and equip) = 5.5 gal
5.5 gal - .5 gal (loss to trub and yeast in fermenter) = 5 gallon finished beer.

This is all approximate, but should give you a good idea of how to calculate water volume for a recipe, again you must take into account your specific equipment. In order to make this more accurate, finding out the dead space (loss) in your MLT and kettle using water before hand is a good idea. Until you brew a few times, you will not know your exact boil off rate which is also another consideration depending upon your equipment.

I hope that helps.

Cheers!

Also factor-in dead-space. My MLT will leave some liquid behind so my loss rate in mashing is closer to 0.19g/lb. You also have trub loss/hop absorption and kettle dead-space (if you use a valve).

I'll throw the recipe into my software and let you know some rough numbers.

In my system, I would strike with 4 gallons (but I'd heat 4.19 due to dead space in my HLT). I'd absorb 2.85g in the grains. I'd sparge with 5.21g. to bring the total preboil volume to 6.54g. (including the 0.19 left in my kettle since I use my HLT for BK).

Boiloff is 1g/hr in my wider pot. Lose a gallon there, heat expansion, cooling shrinkage, and hop absorption brings post-boil to 5.38 minus 0.13 dead space.

Total of 5.25 into primary of which 0.25 will be trub/yeast after fermentation.

So essentially 9.4g. of water total.

I've always heard .2gal lost per pound of barley...and that seems to be the loss I get with my crush at least.

How big is your mash tun? 10 gallons? If so yer good but if its only 5gal you'll barely fit that grain bill plus 1.25qt/lb which is OK, just something to be aware of.

There's nothing wrong with doing a double batch sparge either (i.e. sparge twice with 2gal each time or whatever gets yer final volume)

I have to double sparge in my 6g. cooler on pretty much every batch. I collect runnings in an extra kettle since I don't have pumps or multi tier system.

Don’t be worried if you have added too much sparge water, stop sparging when you reach the volume you were shooting for, also if your sparge volume yields a lesser volume than you were shooting for and you feel the sparge was sufficient do not hesitate to add water to your boil kettle to reach the desired volume.

I'd recommend adding water to the grains and doing another quick sparge if your volume is low. Better to get some sugar in the addition, something I learned the hard way.

It's best to have a means to measure your volume in the kettle, such as a mash-paddle or spoon marked in gallon increments. Also DO take a preboil gravity sample and chill it while you boil. It will help you know where you are and if you need to add water or extract.

Thanks for all the replies guys,

My MLT is 10 gallons so I'll able to single batch sparge, and I feel a lot more comfortable about the approximations of water I should use now.

I really appreciate the help, less worried now about making a complete hash job of this.

It's a pretty safe idea to heat 2x the water you expect your finished batch to be.
So if you are brewing for 5 gallons into the fermenter, heating 10 gallons of water gets you plenty of strike and sparge water, plus maybe a bit of 'oops' water. It's pretty easy to forget water in the hoses, water in the pump(s), etc.

Assuming you can heat 10g. of water at one time, sure...but most guys just starting out are using a single pot or multiple smaller pots. But yeah, double the batch size is a good place to start. Mash-in with 1.25qts/lbs of water and sparge until you hit preboil volume of just over 1g. more than your batch size. I always do 5.25g. batches due to trub loss in fermenter. I want full cornies.

Schnitzengiggle said:

13 lb (of grian) * 1.25 (qt/lb water) = 16.25 qts for strike water which is approximately 4 gallons
4 gal *.125 = .5 gal, so you will lose approximately 1/2 gallon in the mash to grain absorption
3.5 gal + 3.5 gal (of sparge water) this will give you a total volume of 7 gallons = 7 gal
7 gal - 1 gal (approx boil off amount) = 6 gal
6 gal - .5 gal (approx loss to trub and equip) = 5.5 gal
5.5 gal - .5 gal (loss to trub and yeast in fermenter) = 5 gallon finished beer.

Click to expand...

It might not make too much of a difference here, but the bold step was calculated wrong. You lose .125 gallons per POUND, so you multiply by pounds of grain, not gallons of mash water. It should be:

13lbs * .125gal/lb= 1.625 gallons lost to absorption.

You can make sure you multiply things right if you use this trick I learned in Chemistry a long time ago. Write everything out as fractions with units, then cancel out units that are in both numerator and denominator:

13lb * _0.125gal = _1.625 gal-lb
...............lb.................lb

lb on top cancels lb on bottom and you're left with gallons, which is the unit you're looking for. In the original calculation you end up with .5gal^2/lb (.5 square gallons per lb), which is something weird and nonsensical, since you're looking for the volume of water absorbed and you get volume squared per weight for your unit.

tennesseean_87 said:

It might not make too much of a difference here, but the bold step was calculated wrong. You lose .125 gallons per POUND, so you multiply by pounds of grain, not gallons of mash water. It should be:

13lbs * .125gal/lb= 1.625 gallons lost to absorption.

You can make sure you multiply things right if you use this trick I learned in Chemistry a long time ago. Write everything out as fractions with units, then cancel out units that are in both numerator and denominator:

13lb * _0.125gal = _1.625 gal-lb
...............lb.................lb

lb on top cancels lb on bottom and you're left with gallons, which is the unit you're looking for. In the original calculation you end up with .5gal^2/lb (.5 square gallons per lb), which is something weird and nonsensical, since you're looking for the volume of water absorbed and you get volume squared per weight for your unit.

Click to expand...

Woops my bad, you are correct.

I use this sequence in my AG brewing, I follow his directions and it has worked out well for me.
http://http://www.suebob.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53:all-grain-primer&catid=40:brewing-articles&Itemid=66
Scroll down to The single burner/kettle method with picnik cooler MLT.
It lays it out nicely for new to AG.

ron said:

I use this sequence in my AG brewing, I follow his directions and it has worked out well for me.
http://http://www.suebob.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=53:all-grain-primer&catid=40:brewing-articles&Itemid=66
Scroll down to The single burner/kettle method with picnik cooler MLT.
It lays it out nicely for new to AG.

Click to expand...

Agreed Bobby_M's primer is what got me going with AG. I highly recommend it!

+∞

So, it's alright to have more sparge water than strike water?

scottvin said:

So, it's alright to have more sparge water than strike water?

Code:

8lb of grain 
3g strike water (1.5qt/lb)
1g due to grain absorption  (.125g/lb)

2g post mash

4.5g sparge water

1g boil off
1/2g trub loss/cooling

5g fermenter volume

Click to expand...

Yep. Usually will unless you have a huge grain bill.