Too much water?? Where did I go wrong

This was my 3rd All Grain batch. The first 2 batches I will be honest I guestimated the amount of water. And both turned out ok. I made a NB Oktoberfest yesterday and had to boil twice to get the OG correct, but took 2 hrs instead of 1. And I ended up with about 6 gallons. Here is my water usage from Brew365. What should I adjust next time to only have to boil for 1 hour?

Batch Size - 5gal
Grain Bill - 11.5lbs
Boil Time - 1hr
Trub Loss - .5 gal
Equipment Loss - 1 gal
Mash Thickness - 1.33
Grain Temp - 70
Target Mash Temp. - 152

Wort Shrinkage - 4%
Grain Absorption - .13 gal/lb
Percent Boiloff/hr - 10%

Total Water needed - 8.86 gal
Mash Water - 3.82 gal
Sparge Water - 5.04
Strike Temp - 164
Pre-Boil Wort 6.37

Do you lose .5 to trub? I lose a lot less because I use a hop screen. Maybe bump that to .25? Bump down the mash to 1.25 gal from 1.33 (if I am reading that right). See where you land.

6.37 pre boil wort is actually quite good for me and I should be able to get 5-5.5 into the fermenter which is ideal for me. I have the opposite problem though often and that is too little wort.

I'm also thinking that your estimated loses are too high. 1/2 gallon to trub, and then 1 gallon in equipment loses? I generally lose less than a quart to trub and maybe 2 quarts in equipment loses. Can you describe your setup better? are you using pumps? that may account for a greater loss.

Total Water needed - 8.86 gal
Mash Water - 3.82 gal
Sparge Water - 5.04



Look at the above from your post.

According to your entries, your pre-boil volume was actually 7.365 gallons. Mash(Strike) water(3.82 gal.), less .13gal./lb of grain(1.495 gal.)plus sparge water(5.04 gal.). It should have been 6.37 gal. as the software indicated.

It appears that you subtracted your strike water volume from the total water needed and assumed that the remainder was sparge water. So your pre-boil volume was about a gallon more than it should have been.

Bob

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking some of those numbers might be high. I am just using a real basic setup. Single stage mash in the pot. Need to upgrade to cooler mash. Turkey fryer, wort chiller. I only barely had a rolling boil also, since I was almost to the top of the pot. It seemed that after my mash I had 7.5 gallons and thought, "How am I going to lose 2 gallons to boil off."

BigJoeBrew said:

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking some of those numbers might be high. I am just using a real basic setup. Single stage mash in the pot. Need to upgrade to cooler mash. Turkey fryer, wort chiller. I only barely had a rolling boil also, since I was almost to the top of the pot. It seemed that after my mash I had 7.5 gallons and thought, "How am I going to lose 2 gallons to boil off."

Click to expand...

You need to actually measure all of your losses... you have your boil-off set as 10%. I'll bet it's much higher than that, and should be noted as gallon per hour instead of a percentage.
You're wondering how you could possibly boil off two gallons per hour? That is exactly what my boil-off rate is, and is quite common.

Boil a measured pot of water for an hour and see what your actual boil off is.
Measure your trub loss.
Measure your equipment loss. (1 gallon of equipment loss? My god, what are you doing with it?)
Enter those into your brewing software.
And when it comes time to sparge, forget the calculator.
If you're batch sparging, take your first running and measure it.
Calculate what is needed to make up your pre-boil volume.
Use that as your sparge addition.
If you're fly sparging, it doesn't matter because you're constantly adding water anyway.

That looks like the same mash and sparge water calculator that I use.
It took me a few batches to get it dialed in but now I nail my numbers every time.
The big ones where trub loss of which I include hop and break material from the boil kettle and yeast trub from primary and dry hops if I use those. .25 on the low end and kick it up from there depending on your hop schedule.
Equipment loss for which I use .01 because I don't lose any with my set up.
Grain absorption was huge for me. I started with there default .13 but after missing my pre boil volume a couple times I wound up at .092 and I believe this will depend a lot on your crush. My LHBS has a great mill and very consistent. If your not getting consistent crushes this number will likely be all over the map.
Finally, my boil off rate is 8.33 percent which I got as an average after several batches and seems to be working good for my set up.
This calculator works great for me. I gather the water for a batch right to the tablespoon and use every drop. I always hit my pre boil volume, pre boil gravity, OG, FG and fill 50-54 bottles for a 5.5 gallon batch every time.
Know your system and tweak those numbers to work for you.

Thanks sky. I will definitely continue to use the calculator. I thought maybe the grain absorption rate might need a little tweaking and I also have no loss from equipment with my setup but wasn't wise enough to figure that out until after this batch.