Mash ratio with eherms system

Hey everyone, I have a quick question for you...When circulating your mash through the herms coil, do you add in water to make up for the losses in your pump suction and discharge hoses as well as the herms coil itself to maintain lets say a 1.25 qt/lb mash ratio inside your mash tun? Otherwise if you don't you will essentially have your mash at a smaller ratio due to the line losses, or am I just way over thinking this? Maybe its negligible, what are your thoughts?

Yes, I believe you would take the lines, pumps and area under the false bottom into account. Here is the calc from Kal's site (www.theelectricbrewery.com)

Strike water = (Mash Thickness X Pounds of Grain / 4) + dead space under false bottom + liquid in hoses

Thank you Mountainsax! This is exactly what I was looking for. Much appreciated!

When I starting using my current HERMS, I ended up with increasing my mash liquor to 1.5 quarts/pound.

You don't have to be exact by measuring the amount in all the tubing, but you can. The goal is to have a free-flowing mash. You don't need it too thin, but it needs to not compact and to not have a tight fit. A guestimate is fine, and if you find that it doesn't look right, like too thick, you can always add more liquor to the mash.

ericms86 said:

Thank you Mountainsax! This is exactly what I was looking for. Much appreciated!

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Glad to help! All that reading and research has to come in handy sometime!

Another recommendation for you. When I brew, I fill the HLT and also put the amount of needed strike water volume in my mash tun. I then begin recirculating my strike water through the pump, hoses, herms coil etc. I then check my strike water volume because I know it will have dropped and then add water to bring my strike volume back to the appropriate level. This method solves two issues for me as it maintaines both my HLT water above the coil and verifies that the correct amount of strike water is in my mash tun. Hope this helps.

All of this is great advice! I will take this all into consideration when I get my system up and running. Thanks everyone for the responses.