Water amounts.

Sorry I'm on my phone and the search will not work. Two week ago I brewed up a heff. One question. I mashed my grain bill in 5gals of water at 150 for 30 min. My question is: when mashing the grains it is ok to use a full 5 gals right?

More water = thinner mash = better extraction, in general. I use 1.5qts/lb of grain, and I get great efficiency.

Then you can sparge and get a bunch of those extra sugars out. I typically run 9-10 gallons through total (including the mash) to get to my boil volume. Single infusion of 5 gallons is okay, you'll lose some of that to the grain absorption, but you probably already figured that out.

MichaelSterling said:

Sorry I'm on my phone and the search will not work. Two week ago I brewed up a heff. One question. I mashed my grain bill in 5gals of water at 150 for 30 min. My question is: when mashing the grains it is ok to use a full 5 gals right?

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Partial mash recipe? Or are you talking about steeping grains in an extract batch? 30 mins might be a little short for conversion in a typical mash.

Reelale said:

Partial mash recipe? Or are you talking about steeping grains in an extract batch? 30 mins might be a little short for conversion in a typical mash.

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Sorry, yep steeping grains in 5 gals of water for 30 min.

MichaelSterling said:

Sorry, yep steeping grains in 5 gals of water for 30 min.

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Yeah, you're fine. Brew on!

Reelale said:

Yeah, you're fine. Brew on!

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Thank you very much. The reason for the question is I tasted the the beer after the primary and it tasted kinda like ... Well water. I used 6 lbs of dry wheat extract and 8 oz of cara pills. Then about 2 oz of hops. Just not the favors I was looking expecting. I added 4 sliced oranges to the secondary and going to let that sit for 2 weeks.

MichaelSterling said:

Thank you very much. The reason for the question is I tasted the the beer after the primary and it tasted kinda like ... Well water. I used 6 lbs of dry wheat extract and 8 oz of cara pills. Then about 2 oz of hops. Just not the favors I was looking expecting. I added 4 sliced oranges to the secondary and going to let that sit for 2 weeks.

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Post your recipe and fermentation schedule/temps. Someone here will help you. That should be about 1.050 or so OG beer. You do know that it will taste much, much different once it is carbonated? Extracts have a good proportion of non-fermentables already, so I'm at a loss for the addition of the carapils. Seems like it would be on the sweet end if anything.