all-grain water amounts

So, I apologize if this is a little elementary, but can someone explain a couple of things with all-grain for me?

I am basing my questions off of the Mash Schedule below. I am going to use 1.3 qts water/lb grain. Do I add all of that to my mash in the beginning or is some of that for the sparge? If it is all added initially, how do I know how much to sparge with? It also says the sparge is for 60 minutes. Does that basically mean I am going to mash twice for 60 minutes each?


Thanks for the help...

That 5.12 gallons is how much water you will be adding to the grain at the very start, and then letting it set for the mash.

The sparging ("fly sparging" in this case) means that you have to slowly trickly more water over your grains after the mash is done and constantly collect the run-off. This schedule is telling you to sprinkle and collect water for an hour AFTER the 5.12 gallon mash is done.

Your schedule does not indicate how much sparge water you will be using, just that you are going to sparge for an hour.

If this is your first AG, there is another alternative for sparging called "batch sparging".

That's basically a mash, drain to kettle, and a second "quick" mash with more water to get the rest of the goodness rinsed out of the grain.

I do batch sparging so save myself some time. The downside is that I think my efficiency isn't as high as it would be if I fly-sparged, so I use more grain to compensate.

Thanks for the response. Is there a way to figure out grain absorption? Is that a constant? I'm sure it depends somewhat on the quality of the crush, etc...? For example, if I had 12lbs of grain, I would mash with (according to 1.3 q/lb) 15.6q water, correct? Of that 15.6, is there a way to calculate how much will be absorbed? Therefore, I could figure out a sparge volume. Or am I being way too crazed about this?

I think it's really easy to overthink this stuff during the prep phase. I am also jumping into all grain just now and am in the same boat as you but I've decided to run with it with a lesser stressed attitude and see how my first batch works out before thinking about it again...

Do yourself a favor and download a free trial of beersmith, it's tricky to use at first, but it will nail all of your water measurements.

I wouldn't worry too much about grain absorption, just plan on using a little extra water.

If you are new to all grain, a couple pieces of advice:

When you get ready to mash in, make sure you have some extra water in case you don't quite hit your mash temp. I always have a small pot of really hot water (like 190 F) ready when I mash in because I never quite hit my temp on the first try. I always use online calculators to figure my mash water temp, and I always wind up a couple degrees too cool, so I just add a little bit of extra hot water at a time until I hit my temp.

Same deal with the sparge, just get some extra water heated up in case you come up short.

Grain absorption is ~0.125 gallons, or 1 pint, per pound of grain. 1 L/kg if you prefer metric.

Thanks for all the advice. And trust me - I'd love to download BeerSmith, but it doesn't come Mac-compatible. I've tried Beer Tools and Beer Alchemy. And neither one of them (to my knowledge) provide water calculations. Could be wrong.

Anyway - thanks for the help.

here's what I use for water calculations:

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