First Time AG Process

Hey guys, I have been brewing extract + grians or about a year, and am making the leap into AG.

My question is about my process for the first time, I just wanted to make sure this sounds correct after reading lots of threads and listening to podcasts. I am converting the 10 gallon Igloo for a MLT and batch sparging, so here is how I understand the process:

1. Heat up strike water in kettle.
2. Pour strike water in Cooler/MLT, let sit for a couple minutes to preheat MLT.
3. Add grains into water, and mix, let sit 60 minutes or until conversion.
4. Begin heating sparge water in kettle.
5. Vorlauf in MLT
6. Drain MLT into smaller kettle, put onto burner.
7. Dump sparge water into cooler, stir, let sit 10 minutes
8. Drain MLT into kettle, combine smaller kettle and larger kettle on burner.
9. Proceed like a extract brew.

Does that sound right?

gtn80 said:

Hey guys, I have been brewing extract + grians or about a year, and am making the leap into AG.

My question is about my process for the first time, I just wanted to make sure this sounds correct after reading lots of threads and listening to podcasts. I am converting the 10 gallon Igloo for a MLT and batch sparging, so here is how I understand the process:

1. Heat up strike water in kettle.
2. Pour strike water in Cooler/MLT, let sit for a couple minutes to preheat MLT.
3. Add grains into water, and mix, let sit 60 minutes or until conversion.
4. Begin heating sparge water in kettle.
5. Vorlauf in MLT
6. Drain MLT into smaller kettle, put onto burner.
7. Dump sparge water into cooler, stir, let sit 10 minutes
8. Drain MLT into kettle, combine smaller kettle and larger kettle on burner.
9. Proceed like a extract brew.

Does that sound right?

Click to expand...

Sounds fine, except that I use the smaller pot to heat my sparge water instead of draining the tun into the small pot.

While mashing, I heat the sparge water in the small pot. When I am ready to drain the tun, I pull the small pot off off the burner and set it on the ground, put the boil kettle on the burner and drian the tun into it. Then I dump the sparge from the small pot into the tun.

My buddy uses his boil kettle to heat all water, but he drains the sparge water into a small pot just before draining the tun into the boil kettle.

He avoids having to move anything on or off the burner this way.

I was just going to do a similar post.

My question:
Following the process outlined above, do most recipes result in a 5 gallon wort to boil? I've read other posts on here that suggest boiling down to that volume, but what does that do to the gravity?

To get the most out of your grain, you will start with more than 5 gallons in the kettle, and the gravity will be lower than your target.

When you boil it down for the hour or more, it will reach 5 gallons and the gravity will have gone up.

Example: my porter recipe is for a 5.5 gallon batch. After mashing and sparging, I have about 6.5 gallons of wort in the kettle at 1.046.

I boil for an hour and lost 1 gallon of volume to finish with 5.5 gallons of wort at 1.055.

Only 5 gallons of this makes it into the carboy, though. The rest is stuck in my kettle's deadspace and soaked up in the whole-leaf hops that I use.

edit: my general proceedure is to use 3 quarts of water per pound of grain. Mash uses 1.25 qt/lb or so of that and sparge uses the other 1.75 qt/lb.

So if I understand you correctly, the amount of water called for in your recipe results at the 6.5 gallon pre-boil wort, or did your ratios simply equal that result?

I see that strike water at a specified temp + grains=target mash temp, if you get it right. What effect does the temperature of the grain itself have on this equation? If I keep my grains in my basement where it's closer to 60 degrees, vs. in my kitchen where it's closer to 70, I would think that could result in some variation.

Back to the OP process....

In the step where the mash is drained into the kettle, I assume all of the strike water is drained, then the sparge water is added?

Does this not increase the chance for a "stuck sparge," considering that the grain bed will have settled onto the bottom of the MLT?

Slow down here....

The 3 qtarts/lb of grain is a loose guideline that I picked up from Papazian's book. He says he uses 1 qt/lb for mash and 2 qt/lb for sparge. There has been a lot of talk lately about using thinner mashes, so I just adjust my mash and sparge amounts to make a thinner mash, but maintaining the total of 3 qt/lb.

This is not "The Only Way To Do It", it's just my process, and I am happy with my results.

The grain and tun will absorb some heat, so your mash water needs to be hotter than your desired mash temp. When you mix it all together it will balance out at a temp. It might take a little time for you to get things tuned for your system, but I would suggest taking a stab with 1 qt/lb of mash water. If this settles at a good temp, let it roll that way. If it's too hot, add some cool water. If it's too cold, add some more hot water. When you get more familiar with everything you will be able to pretty much nail it spot on.

Then after you mash, you drain the whole thing into the kettle. The grain will have absorbed some of the water, so you will not get all of the water out that you originally put in.

I batch-sparge, which means I then dump my sparge water in, STIR IT UP AGAIN, let it sit, and drain again. I have not had a stuck sparge doing this.

Since the grain was already saturated with water from the mash, you pretty much get every drop of sparge water out that you put in.

Zero said:

I see that strike water at a specified temp + grains=target mash temp, if you get it right. What effect does the temperature of the grain itself have on this equation? If I keep my grains in my basement where it's closer to 60 degrees, vs. in my kitchen where it's closer to 70, I would think that could result in some variation.

Click to expand...

Yes, your grain does pull heat from your water. if you let your grain warm up to room temp before mashing, you will lose (according to Papazian, and it seems accurate to me) 17*F per pound of grain per quart of water.

So, if you mash with 1 qt/lb, the grain will cause a 17*F drop in the temp of your strike water. If you mash with 1.5 qt/lb you will get a about a 12*F drop in temp.

This whole thing can end up driving you a little nuts if you let it. You will be wondering where that extra 2*F went or came from, where the extra quart of water disappeared to, etc.

I created a spreadsheet for my personal use that has all of these calculations in it. I had to measure some things on my equipment to get my brewery's "magic numbers", but now that I have that out of the way, I plug in my recipe and it calculates all of my water volumes and temps for me.

FYI, if you care to dive into my personal insanity, here is my water calculation spreadsheet.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/yet-another-brewing-spreadsheet-19844

gtn80,

I use the same cooler set up you do (if your draining through stainless braid). If you use beersmith or other to get strike temp, you don't need to let cooler and water equalize. Using beersmith I nail the strike with the correct settings (cooler temp, grain temp, etc...). If you're guessing at it, you need to allow the cooler and water to equalize for correct strike.

Sparge:
I'd begin heating the sparge water in the smaller pot at about 45 minutes into the mash. I heat to 180. That way your ready with the sparge water when it's time to get the first runnings. First runnings right into kettle. I sparge 2X not once with half the water volume for each sparge straight into the kettle on the burner. I stir well each sparge and don't wait 10 min to vourlaf and drain. Just stir and drain


For water:
I mash at 1.5qt/lb for normal grainbills. However, you can use what you like. In this system (assuming you use the braid toilet hose), you can likely use .11 or .12 gal/lb of grain water absorption. Subtract this from your original mash water volume and that's your first runnings. Initial boil volume - first runnings = sparge water.

eg. 12lb grain X 1.5 = 18qt (or 4.5 gal) strike
12 x .12 = 1.44 gal absorbed by grain
4.5 - 1.44 = 3.06 first runnings
subtract the 3.06 from your initial boil volume to get sparge volume (I boil 6.75 to
get 5.5 into the fermenter on a 1 hr boil)

This nets me about 72 - 75% efficiency. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips guys.

Forbein11, I think I am getting a false bottom for xmas for the cooler, would this effect the amount of water you use to mash or the amount you would expect the grain to absorb.

Thanks for the math, that helps alot, I was playing around with software and was wondering where the numbers came from.

I think if you go false bottom instead of braid you will lose a little more wort. Someone with a false bottom can chime in. There may be deadspace under that bottom. I would suspect not much though.

As for the math, I do it on a piece of paper. Works very well for me. Brewing a brown ale now and hit my preboil exactly using the .12gal/lb grain absorption. I see no reason the grain absorption would be different, only the potential increase in deadspace should be an issue

I have a false bottom in my tun and I lose about 3 cups (1.5 pints) to deadspace.