Lost about 6 litres of water tonight!!

Hey - So first ever all grain brew tonight. Brewdog Punk IPA clone. With the limited equipment we soaked 2.7kg grains in muslin bags in 4l litres of water for an hour. Then sparged them with another 4 litres. So we've used a total of 19 litres. We've literally just put into the first fermenter and we have 13 litres!

Is this normal? The recipe I followed said it was for 5 gallon batch. Now I'm worried I didnt use enough water, but I measured it all out properly first of all.

As a total newbie but massive ale lover can anyone give me some pointers for the next batch please? Should increase water volume by 6 litres next time in expectation of this much loss? Would that mean I need to increase grains if I do?

Please help because I want to get the spot on next time. (thanks in advance for all of your advice)

Grains will absorb water when you mash them. It's a loss you have to factor in. 1 quart / pound (6L / 2.7 kg) seems high though. With BIAB you can squeeze the bag to get extra wort out.

Sparge to hit a target volume rather than sparging with a set volume so you always end up with your 19 L as desired. Did you check the gravity of the wort? AFAIK from non-BIAB, missing the last run-off / sparging probably didn't lose too many sugars.

If you haven't tossed the grain then maybe just sparge to get the 6L, boil and then cool.

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Also: How much volume did you lose during the boil? You can lose ~2-4L from a one-hour boil.

Like the above said, you have to account for grain loss, hop absorption, boil off, and any other losses inherent in your system (mashtun deadspace).

Use my calculator at pricelessbrewing.github.io/biabcalc

I boil off any where from 4 to 6 liters, not counting loss to the mash. I generally use 9 to 10 gallons of water pre mash to end up with 5.5 gal in the fermenter.

Here comes the doom-and-gloom:

You mashed 2.7 kilograms in 4 liters of water. Converting systems, that's roughly a mash thickness of 0.7 quarts/lb, or about half the water you should use with that much grain. In the best of conditions, sparging 4L of water on that mash is going to leave a lot of sugars in the grains.

In that small a mash, especially one so thick, it's gonna be nearly impossible to maintain proper mash temperature without really good equipment and/or a well-honed technique. Without bang-on methods, you probably only converted a fraction of the starches into fermentable sugars.

At very high efficiency, with a super-high-attenuating yeast (like many saison strains), 2.7kg of grain might get you a 4.5% beer. With a normal yeast, maybe 3-3.5%. With normal efficiency and normal yeast, maybe 2.5%. With super-low efficiency like you almost certainly had, 1% isn't out of the question. Note that there's virtually no way that a 2.7kg grainbill will make 19 liters of 5.6% beer like Punk IPA unless you're using a lot of simple sugars or malt extract.

Starting at 19 liters of water and making an all-grain beer is going to leave you well short of 19 liters of beer in the end. You're going to lose water that is absorbed into the grains during the mash and sparge. You're going to lose water that evaporates during the boil. You're going to lose wort to kettle trub. You're going to lose beer to fermenter trub. For 20 liters out, I usually put about 36 liters in, more or less. However, in this case, this mistake will help you: fermenting 2/3 of your intended volume will mean that your beer is 50% stronger than if you had the full volume in the fermenter. Considering you're aiming to clone a 5.6% beer and you're not likely to come close to that ABV, 50% stronger is going to be a good thing. And if the mistakes you made render the beer an undrinkable mess, it'll feel less disastrous to pour 13L down the drain than it would to pour 19L.

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Note that I'm making a lot of long conclusions here that may be totally wrong since there's a ton of information I don't have.

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All that said, beer is magical. You can screw up a brewday six ways from Sunday, spend the next month gnawing your fingernails down to the cuticles, and still end up with a delicious malt beverage. That's not to say disasters never happen - even a perfectly-brewed and -fermented batch can turn out to be a dumper - but trust the Sacchromyces to do its job and you'll find out in a month or so.

In the original post there wasn't any talk about loss of water to the boil. The 19L sparge volume and 13L in the fermenter - the way it's written - sounds like there wasn't a boil. All in all, there may be a pretty good sour beer in there somewhere.

As far as the six pounds of malt, I assumed it was a partial mash of some kind.

Arrheinous said:

In the original post there wasn't any talk about loss of water to the boil. The 19L sparge volume and 13L in the fermenter - the way it's written - sounds like there wasn't a boil. All in all, there may be a pretty good sour beer in there somewhere.

As far as the six pounds of malt, I assumed it was a partial mash of some kind.

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Sorry - it was boiled for 90 mins. I dont have a tub yet so we just put the grains into two muslin bags and left them to soak for an hour. Then we boiled for 90 mins adding hops and the start and then at the end. The idea being that we then dry hop in a second fermentation. Its been 24 hours now but I'm getting no bubbling on on the cap so I'm wondering if its no good. We used white labs yeast btw - I'm gutted really. We were desperate to have a go at all grain cos everyone was saying it was easy. We followed a recipe to the letter too! :-(

Thanks for your detailed reply Fat Dragon - We followed the recipe to the letter. Bought ourselves a 32ltr pot with a tap to boil. Did it all right. But for some reason we have gone amiss. This is the recipe we followed:

Ingredients
12.5 lbs. (5.7 kg)  Maris Otter pale malt
16 AAU Columbus hop pellets (90 mins)(1.5 oz./43 g at 11% alpha acids)
8.0 AAU Ahtanum hop pellets (0 mins)(1.0 oz./28 g at 8.0% alpha acids)
1.0 oz. (28 g) Amarillo hop pellets (dry hop)
White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale) yeast (1-qt./1-L yeast starter)
1 cup corn sugar (for priming)
Fermcaps (to help it not to boil over)
Whirlfloc tablets (to make the beer clear)

1. Mash grains at 149 °F (65 °C) for 1 hour, and sparge to collect about 6.0 gallons (23 L) of wort.
2. Boil for 90 minutes with Columbus hops at start and Ahtanum at knock-out.
3. Cool, and add yeast as a 1-quart (1 L) starter prepared 2–3 days earlier.
4. Oxygenate well and let ferment for 3–5 days.
5. Rack into a secondary fermenter and add Amarillo hops in a sanitized muslin bag.
6. Bottle after two weeks

Something's still not adding up...

1. I wouldn't say you followed the recipe to the letter, since it calls for collecting 23L of wort.
2. You also say you used 2.7 kg of malt, where the recipe calls for 5.7 kg.
3. I'm still not sure how 4L mash + 4L sparge = 19L total.

Like others have said water loss to grain absorption (during the mash) and boil-off are normal. That's why you always plan to collect more water in your boil kettle than will eventually end up in your fermenter.

Once you get a couple batches under your belt you'll get to know your equipment better and will be able to predict about how much water you'll lose during the boil, since it varies with each system.

marmalade-soup said:

Thanks for your detailed reply Fat Dragon - We followed the recipe to the letter. Bought ourselves a 32ltr pot with a tap to boil. Did it all right. But for some reason we have gone amiss. This is the recipe we followed:

Ingredients
12.5 lbs. (5.7 kg)  Maris Otter pale malt
16 AAU Columbus hop pellets (90 mins)(1.5 oz./43 g at 11% alpha acids)
8.0 AAU Ahtanum hop pellets (0 mins)(1.0 oz./28 g at 8.0% alpha acids)
1.0 oz. (28 g) Amarillo hop pellets (dry hop)
White Labs WLP007 (Dry English Ale) yeast (1-qt./1-L yeast starter)
1 cup corn sugar (for priming)
Fermcaps (to help it not to boil over)
Whirlfloc tablets (to make the beer clear)

1. Mash grains at 149 °F (65 °C) for 1 hour, and sparge to collect about 6.0 gallons (23 L) of wort.
2. Boil for 90 minutes with Columbus hops at start and Ahtanum at knock-out.
3. Cool, and add yeast as a 1-quart (1 L) starter prepared 2–3 days earlier.
4. Oxygenate well and let ferment for 3–5 days.
5. Rack into a secondary fermenter and add Amarillo hops in a sanitized muslin bag.
6. Bottle after two weeks

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If you only collected 19l of wort, then you started off 4l below your target. I suspect that you really needed to collect more than 23l to account for boil off and trub loss in the kettle.

Also, this recipe calls for twice the grain you mention using in your first post. did you divide the grain into two bags and do two separate mashes and then combine in the kettle?

In all grain, or any set up really, you need to account for the losses in your system. How much do you boil off per hour? How much do you leave behind in the kettle after the boil (trub loss)?

Once you know these you can then determine how much wort you need to collect pre-boil to hit your target volume into the fermenter by adding how much you boil off and how much you leave behind in the kettle to your target volume into the fermenter.

In my system i do 10g batches and shoot for 14-15g pre-boil to end up with 5.5-6g per fermenter in two fermenters and then 5g per keg in two kegs after fermentation.

BGBC said:

Something's still not adding up...

1. I wouldn't say you followed the recipe to the letter, since it calls for collecting 23L of wort.
2. You also say you used 2.7 kg of malt, where the recipe calls for 5.7 kg.
3. I'm still not sure how 4L mash + 4L sparge = 19L total.

Like others have said water loss to grain absorption (during the mash) and boil-off are normal. That's why you always plan to collect more water in your boil kettle than will eventually end up in your fermenter.

Once you get a couple batches under your belt you'll get to know your equipment better and will be able to predict about how much water you'll lose during the boil, since it varies with each system.

Click to expand...

God, you know I'm such a fool. I just realised that i didnt use the right amount of grain did I!!! Doh! I got mixed up weighing. So, how much water should we use to start off then do you think? An extra 5 Litres?

Do BiaB directly in the pot. That is what I do. I use an actual grain bag, not a muslin bag (nylon, washable and reusable. Muslin is not reusable. Or at least you wouldn't want to). You can do a full volume mash that way. Or close to full volume.

You get much under 1Q per 1lb of grain and you are not going to get good conversion nor good extraction of the sugars, even with sparging. With the exception of some really big beers, I shoot for 1.25Q per 1lb for BiaB if not full volume. Even then I think my worst was 14Q of water with 16lbs of grain for a RIS. Followed by a batch sparge with 6Q of water in my other pot and then combined them.

13L from 19L is totally possible if you didn't squeeze the grain bags or didn't let them drain for long. Combined with a 90 minute boil, if very vigorous. Sure, you can easily lose all of that.

I can't speak to no squeeze, because I've never not done it, but on a typical squeeze it like it owes me money brew, I'd guess I lose around 3/4 cup of water per pound of grain. Call it about 1.5 pints per 4lbs. So in a pretty typical 8lbs for a 3.5 gallon batch, I'll end up putting around 17 quarts in my pot to get 14 quarts in the fermenter. About 1.5Q lost to the grains and around 1.5Q lost to the boil. About a 20% loss between boil and grains. A 90 minute boil is closer to 2.5Q lost to the boil.

So with a good squeeze, I would have expected about a 1 liter loss to the grains and maybe a further 1.25 liter loss to boil.

Of course HOW you boil matters a lot. As you can see from some people in the thread, some people are boiling off as much as 6 liters during a boil. I typically average closer to 1/6th that. I still manage a decent low rolling boil and generally leave my pot half covered. Never had DMS issues or hop utilization issues. Probably save a boat load of propane too compared to the heat needed for that kind of a vigorous boil.

Get a strong boil and you can easily boil off 3-4 liters over 90 minutes if not more.

And back to the grains, consider what I normally squeeze out, not considerate of what drips out, I probably get at least half a cup per pound of grain squeezed out of my grains. That is a pint per 4lbs. That is conservative, because that is only what I squeeze in to my mixing bowl that I set my grains in between squeezes, not including the bit the I squeeze out initially after pulling the bag out of the wort and letting it drain for a couple of minutes.

marmalade-soup said:

God, you know I'm such a fool. I just realised that i didnt use the right amount of grain did I!!! Doh! I got mixed up weighing. So, how much water should we use to start off then do you think? An extra 5 Litres?

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to collect 23L? Probably 25-27L plus your boil off, which could be 2-5 liters.

That is if you are trying to pour 23L in to your fermentor. Call it half in your mash (or more) and half as strike water/sparge water. If you are truely sparging, you'll probably lose half a liter per kilo of grain. BiaB you can squeeze it down to less than half that loss.

Boil off depends. From 1-6 liters depending on pot size and how vigorous along with if the pot is covered a little or not at all (don't cover it completely).

Funnily enough I've just bought a proper bag. Out of interest then, if I want to end up with 5 gallons, as an absolute guess what would you start off with?

marmalade-soup said:

Funnily enough I've just bought a proper bag. Out of interest then, if I want to end up with 5 gallons, as an absolute guess what would you start off with?

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If you're aiming for 19 liters into the fermenter, BIAB with 5.7 kilos of grain and a 90 minute boil, I'd suggest starting with about 30 liters of water - that's the total amount of water you'll put into the kettle throughout the process, whether it goes in during the mash, the sparge, or some other time. 19 liters into the fermenter should get you about 17 liters into bottles or kegs after loss to the yeast cake, so if you're aiming to drink 19 liters, you want about 32 liters of water in. Note that - conversion and extraction being the same - the more water that goes in, the weaker the beer that comes out. A two-liter difference into the fermenter won't make a huge difference, but if the original recipe calls for 19 liters into the fermenter and you want to follow it to a T but get 21 liters into the fermenter, you'll want to increase your grainbill accordingly, and probably your hops as well.

What kind of preparation did you have coming into this brewday? How much did you read up on all-grain brewing? Have you watched videos? Read about the common mistakes newbies make? Sat in on a brewday? Brewed an extract beer?

It's hard to know what kind of mistakes you made and whether or not this beer will turn out at all. If you really mashed in 4 liters of water (I suspect it's just a typo, reading your later posts), it's not a good start. If you heated your mash water to 65 C and then added your grains without adding heat, you mashed too low and may not have gotten much conversion because the grains going into the mash water would have lowered the temperature, which would be a mark against the beer. If you didn't crush the grains before mashing, it's probably only got trace amounts of maltose in it and you've basically got barley and hop tea. Any of those potential issues could doom this beer, but the good news is that if it's a dumper, you can still use the lessons learned from the first failed attempt to do a better job the next time around. Learning to brew is a process that inevitably involves mistakes and sub-par product from time to time. Ideally, you don't have to dump any of your precious beer along the way, but if you do, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do a better job the next time around.

marmalade-soup said:

Funnily enough I've just bought a proper bag. Out of interest then, if I want to end up with 5 gallons, as an absolute guess what would you start off with?

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In my 5 gallon batches I typically go with 6 gallons of water with my setup. Generally I'll lose about 2 quarts to the grains for a batch in the 1.050-1.065OG range. Then maybe another 2 quarts to the boil. That'll generally get me between 4.75-5.25G in to the fermenter depending on various variables.

In all honesty, it sounds like you were in too big a hurry to just get this done. Slow down, take your time and read, read, read. I've been brewing for seven years and I still read up on brewing all the time.

Also, measure twice, brew once.

did another one yesterday:

Readings were:
Pre-boil: 1.041
Pre-ferm: 1.050

I started with 30 litres and used a BIAB method. My final volume going into the carboy was pretty much there. Maybe a tad under. I forgot to get some DME so we just pitched the whitelabs yeast rather than use a starter.

We put the bung and airlock with vodka in and it started to bubble right away. 24 hours on though and there's no action at all in the airlock and the beer is just sitting there with a murky cloud at the bottom. (See photo).

Have I screwed up this beer (AGAIN) or am I a little early in expecting some action?

Starting to loose heart with this all-grain lark!

marmalade-soup said:

did another one yesterday:

Readings were:
Pre-boil: 1.041
Pre-ferm: 1.050

I started with 30 litres and used a BIAB method. My final volume going into the carboy was pretty much there. Maybe a tad under. I forgot to get some DME so we just pitched the whitelabs yeast rather than use a starter.

We put the bung and airlock with vodka in and it started to bubble right away. 24 hours on though and there's no action at all in the airlock and the beer is just sitting there with a murky cloud at the bottom. (See photo).

Have I screwed up this beer (AGAIN) or am I a little early in expecting some action?

Starting to loose heart with this all-grain lark!

Click to expand...

Give it a week or so and then check the gravity. Airlock activity or lack thereof doesn't always indicate fermentation. What strain of yeast are you using? Some are slower to start than others.

Your temp looks to be on the warm side, but that does depend on the yeast you are using.

I'd imagine that the immediate bubbling was temperature change of the wort in the carboy. Doesn't take much to cause it to bubble. Even on a fairly light beer, if you don't use a starter for liquid yeast, I personally notice quite a bit of lag, especially if it is an older/less viable vial of yeast. I've had liquid yeasts that took a step up to get krausen even though it was a month from "expiry" date. If for some reason you get a less viable vial, it might take 2-4 generations of yeast (a new generation every 12-24hrs) before you have start having a "reasonable" number of yeast cells which are going to start producing noticable activity in the carboy.

Give it another day or so, but if you don't see activity by tomorrow evening, get another vial and pitch it in.

What temp was the vial and what temp was the wort? Much more than a 10F difference can shock the yeast, which will reduce viability and also activity.

Designing Great Beers has a pretty decent table of "Water Loss in Gallons" vs. "Pounds of Grain Mashed". It does seem awfully random sometimes but mashing out or raising the temperature before sparging (or the BIAB equivalent) and just letting it have enough time to drain can give a surprising amount of first runnings back.

Be sure to calibrate whatever you're using to measure volume with. Brew bucket markings are decent but sometimes off by 1/4 - 1/2 gallon. Three sets of runnings could put you off by 0.75 - 1.5 gallons at that rate. They can deform under heat and the weight of the water.

Also consider that when water is hot it expands around 2-3% and 10# of water at mash or boil temps will take up more space than 10# of water at fermenter temp. My buckets are marked for cold and hot temperatures - the 5 gallon hot mark indicates how much hot wort is needed to cool down to 5 gallon of 'cold' wort. Do what works for you.

Yup. Between 1.8%-2.2% larger at mash/strike and 4.4% larger at boil.