Stupid Dog!!!!! can you measure grain by volume?

My dog chewed up my digital scale that i used to weigh out my grain. Can you measure grain by volume?

kind of. I find that two cups of grain is about .9 lbs or so, give or take. If I fill the cup up so its heaping, its about 1 lb. its not perfect, but it may get you through in a pinch.

According to Wiki (take that fwiw), Malted Barley is 34lbs per 8 gallons (1 bushel).

So if your recipe calls for 10lbs of base grain, you would want 10/34 of 8 gallons or 2.35 gallons.

You could then use the percentages of your grain bill to calculate your specialty grains. 16 cups per gallon.

have fun with that

Slightly more than than 1 lb equals 1 quart .......... 1.06 lb = 1 qt

have you got a bathroom scale?

Fill a grocery bag with 10 scoops from a measuring cup.. Stand on the scale and subtract your weight from the total of you and the grain. You can then get a rough approximation of weight per volume.

I measured it out once and two row was slightly less than a quart per pound. Just sort of eyeballed it and always got close enough.

I always measure my base malt by volume, because all I have is a blade scale. A tiny bit more than three cups is one pound, which conveniently works out to a heaping scoop with my Pyrex cup measure. This method has me hitting my OG perfectly for the last ten or so batches of beer.

Thats good information, all I have is a bathroom scale and it is not accurate, it always shows more than whats's on it :^)
STAT said...
" I measured it out once and two row was slightly less than a quart per pound. Just sort of eyeballed it and always got close enough."

I have a tupperware pitcher, and it holds 3 pounds, when filled to the tippy top. It says "10 cups" right there.

Also, a completely full sour cream/cottage cheese container (the 16 oz size, I think, the one most people seem to have), holds one pound of grain, when completely full.

I hope that helps. If not, I can run to the basement and weigh a cup if you need me to!

My 33oz Maxwell House coffee container holds almost exactly 3lbs of grain. That works better for 2-row than it does for black patent.

It should be noted that crushed grain takes up less volume than whole grain.

Is this milled or unmilled grain?

yes, a two cup measuring cup slightly heaping times 5 was seven pounds last night, this was with golden promise malt.

^never mind re: the use of this as my cup has probably another half cup above the two cup mark thats not marked, and everyones measuring cups have different configurations....

I've found that 5 pounds of base grain will make it into a 1 gallon freezer ziplock bag but it's tight. I mean you can just barely close the zipper. When you get to darker malts, the same 5 pounds takes up more room but about 1.125 quarts per pound is a good enough ballpark for all whole kernal malts.

Yes, this is a good measurement as well.

Bobby_M said:

I've found that 5 pounds of base grain will make it into a 1 gallon freezer ziplock bag but it's tight. I mean you can just barely close the zipper. When you get to darker malts, the same 5 pounds takes up more room but about 1.125 quarts per pound is a good enough ballpark for all whole kernal malts.

Click to expand...

Got a Wally World near you? Or a Bed Bath and Beyond? Probably a drugstore?

You can probably find a digital for about $20, quickly. I have a Harbor Freight store nearby and got mine for $20.

billl said:

It should be noted that crushed grain takes up less volume than whole grain.

Click to expand...

I disagree. I weighed my grains out this morning - 6 3/8" in a 5 gallon bucket. After milling - 9 3/4".

Short answer: Yes, you can measure grain by volume. In fact, on the farms, the measure that is used is by the bushel, where barley has a weight of 60 lbs to the bushel. Wheat has a different weight per bushel. And that is my caveat. Wheat will weigh differently for a given volume than barley will. So you might want to be aware of that. Also, I would think that different roasts of barley will give a different weight for a given volume, but on a home brew scale, I think that the differences would be minimal. Mark

jammin said:

I disagree. I weighed my grains out this morning - 6 3/8" in a 5 gallon bucket. After milling - 9 3/4".

Click to expand...

It's hard to account for fluffyness. That is why I would weigh it prior to grinding.

um, I guess I do bigger batches but I find that a 6.5 Gallon bucket holds about 30 lbs of grain.... I usually need about 3 buckets : )