amount of water mash & sparge

[nizce]

Hi I'm a newbie and just stumbled across this recipe and it sounds VERY good:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=155009

I've only made two batches in my life so far, now I'm trying to figure out how much water i should use in the different steps.

The recipe is for 5 gal but i only got a 3 gal fermentor so i thought I'd just take half of everything(except the yeast).

Do these volumes seem ok at the different steps, for a 2,5 gal batch?
There is a total of 4lb grains + 4.5lb LME.


Mash all the grains in a bag with 1,25 gal for 1 hour in 150f water.
Sparge with 1 gal 170f water.
Boil(add hops and so on)
And then add water so that there is a total of 2,5 gal in the fermentor?

Perhaps this is more a general question that goes for a lot of other recipes as well.


Thanks and sorry for my bad English
/Daniel

 

[brewcat]

If you have the pot for it, start with more sparge water like 2 gallons. Then you should be able to get to 3.5 gallons pre-boil volume, depending on how much volume the LME adds.

 

[nizce]

If you have the pot for it, start with more sparge water like 2 gallons. Then you should be able to get to 3.5 gallons pre-boil volume, depending on how much volume the LME adds.

Ok, thanks!
My pot is 6gal so that is great.

Is it always prefferable to have an as large pre-boil volume as possible(not over 3gal in my case though) and not have to add tap water at all if possible?

I guess what im trying to ask is if you can sparge with to much?

 

[brewcat]

Ok, thanks!
My pot is 6gal so that is great.

Is it always prefferable to have an as large pre-boil volume as possible(not over 3gal in my case though) and not have to add tap water at all if possible?

I guess what im trying to ask is if you can sparge with to much?

Full boils are generally preferable. So the pre-boil volume will include boil off. For example, I start at 6.5 gallons to finish with 5 gallons.

Yes you can sparge with too much. Generally I think you want to stop when runnings start reading 1.010, usually you'll reach boil volume by then.