Brewing All Grain for the first time - question inside

[dierythmus]

On Friday, I will be brewing my first all-grain beer. I’m super excited, as I have about 3 years’ worth of extract experience under my belt. I recently built my own Rubbermaid 10 gallon mash tun, and I’m borrowing a friend’s 10 gallon kettle. I have all of the equipment I need, but I have some recipe/process questions.

I’m going to be brewing the Zombie Dust clone located here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/3-floyds-zombie-dust-attempt-help-info-requested-245456/

I’ve brewed the extract version a couple times and it always turns out great. My question is related to sparging. I’m a little confused about how much pre-boil wort I need to collect. I always thought that a general rule of thumb is that a 60 minute boil will burn about 1.5 gallons. If this recipe is a 6-gallon batch, should I shoot for 7.5 gallons of wort before the boil?

According to the calculators I’m using (I tinkered with BeerSmith too, but I’m no expert), I’m aiming for a little over 5.6 gallons of sparge water. Is this accurate? Any help is appreciated!

 

[Soviet]

You've got the right idea. Your mash volume is somewhat fixed if you're targeting a certain water/grist ratio like the classic 1.25qt/lb given in most literature. The amount of water you use to sparge plus your mash liquor after grain absorption should equal your pre-boil volume.

The problem is that nobody can tell you what your pre-boil volume should be. That depends on your evaporation rate and how long you WANT to boil. Have you ever measured your evaporation rate? If you have, then you have all the information you need to figure out your pre-boil volume.

Some other tips on your first all-grain brew day:
Measure everything. Don't be lazy. This will help you dial in your all-grain system much quicker. And by everything I mean volumes and gravities. Here's a list in order:

1. Measure out your mash water volume before you bring it to strike temp. Make sure you're hitting the water-grist ratio you're targeting.

2. After mashing for 1 hour (or whatever the interval), and as your're transferring the sweet wort to the kettle, take a gravity reading. If you have a refractometer, it's ideal because you only need a drop. If you have a hydrometer, make sure you cool the sample to room temp before recording the reading. This will tell you your conversion efficiency of the mash.

3. When all the sweet liquor is in the kettle, measure it's volume. Note the difference between your starting strike water volume and what comes out of your mash-tun. This will help you dial in your grain absorption+mash tun deadspace.

4. Use the volume from #3 to figure out how much sparge water you need to rinse the grain and to total your pre-boil volume you're targeting based on your evaporation rate and boil time.

5. After you sparge and transfer the second runnings, measure your pre-boil volume to see if you were accurate on the previous step. Adjust by topping up with water if necessary, or boil longer if you came out with too much. If you end up having to boil longer, you're gonna want to delay your hop additions so that you don't get a higher bitterness than your recipe calls for.

6. Take a gravity reading of the pre-boil gravity. This will help you understand if your mash is on target. It's another marker to help you trace the efficiency and what really happens with your sugar concentration.

7. Boil. Do your hops, finings, etc.

9. Before chilling, take another gravity reading (in the future you may not need to take all these gravity readings, but it's essential that you do it at least a couple of times to really understand your system).

10. Chill your wort using exchanger, counterflow, or immersion chiller. Once you're at pitching temp, take a gravity reading. Again, this is much easier if you have a refractometer. This reading will represent your original gravity, pre ferment.

11. Take a volume reading of the final volume in the kettle (I use a wooden dowel or a metal ruler that I pre-mark with volumes for all my volume readings). Final volume is essential in understanding how much you actually boiled off, and it gives you a point of reference for your Original Gravity. You might THINK that you have hit your OG as targeted, but when you go to look at your volume you discover that you actually have 4 gallons instead of 5 and your efficiency is way worse than you expected.

Look. I know this seems like a lot of hassle. It is. But that's you you learn your equipment. Once you know your efficiency and it's been consistent from low gravity beers to high og, you'll be able to nail any recipe you take on without measuring everything as outlined here. Don't be lazy. Brew strong.

 

[Yooper]

You could try boiling a few gallons of water for an hour, and seeing how much you boil off. Or, since it's a friend's pot, ask him what his boil off is. If you're using the same pot and the same burner at the same setting in the same climate, you should be very close to his boil off.

Some people in humid climates might boil off a gallon an hour or less, especially in a tall narrow pot, while other folks in the desert might boil off more than twice that, especially in a wider pot.

 

[jesse3474]

I sparge mine with ten gallons regardless of what's needed, use pre boil gravity readings, usually 1-3 gallons left of sparge water, very important to have the correct mash water volumes, people been brewing for 1000's of years with out beer smith program, yes it's a science but you need to perfect your system as far as boil off and mash volumes, if you don't have enough in the kettle add more according to pre boil gravity readings, you can only put so much In the kettle, I have always winged it on my 5 gallon, now with my ten gallon, mash is between 6-8 gallons of mash and 7-9 gallons for sparging, I have beer smith and it says for 12 gallon zombie dust 39 quarts of mash water at 170 degrees and sparge water is 10 gallons 168 degrees


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[Yooper]

I sparge mine with ten gallons regardless of what's needed,

I'm wondering why? I'm trying to wrap my head around sparging with 10 gallons if someone only needs 4 to get to their boil volume or OG. I'd be very interesting in learning why.

 

[MC_McMic]

OP, I did my first couple all-grain batches this past weekend, and I can't recommend enough actually testing your boil-off rate.

I boiled 5 gallons of water the night before I brewed my first beer, and by factoring the results of that in, along with an expected 0.1 gallons of mash water lost per pound of grain, I hit both batches right on the nose at 5 gallons (my target).

My boil off rate is almost exactly 1.5 gallons per hour.

 

[jesse3474]

Brewed a 10 gallon batch of 2x4 pale ale last night and had 20 pounds 2 row 2 pounds cara pills and 2 pounds of honey malt, pack man yeast and yes 12 ounces of Saaz, the mash water was 156degree for 75 min, and called for 8.5 gallons of mash water, then the recipe called for 10 gallons of sparge water, kettle volume was about 13.5 gallons and boiled for 75mins and ended up with about 11.5 gallons between 2 fermentors, lots of hops, so when done fermenting I will end up with 3" of trub, my 11.5 gallons becomes about 10.5 gallons then when rack from Carboy I will have my 10 gallons, I learned from making 6 gallon batches and ended up with barely 4.5 gallons, even if you have a clone recipe it don't tell you every thing, I got tired of ending up with 4 to 4.5 gallons so I started sparging with more water and using more grain to fill the voids, my ten gallon brew starts out mostly at 13 to 14 gallons just to get my 10 gallons


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[Flipadelphia]

Brewed a 10 gallon batch of 2x4 pale ale last night and had 20 pounds 2 row 2 pounds cara pills and 2 pounds of honey malt, pack man yeast and yes 12 ounces of Saaz, the mash water was 156degree for 75 min, and called for 8.5 gallons of mash water, then the recipe called for 10 gallons of sparge water, kettle volume was about 13.5 gallons and boiled for 75mins and ended up with about 11.5 gallons between 2 fermentors, lots of hops, so when done fermenting I will end up with 3" of trub, my 11.5 gallons becomes about 10.5 gallons then when rack from Carboy I will have my 10 gallons, I learned from making 6 gallon batches and ended up with barely 4.5 gallons, even if you have a clone recipe it don't tell you every thing, I got tired of ending up with 4 to 4.5 gallons so I started sparging with more water and using more grain to fill the voids, my ten gallon brew starts out mostly at 13 to 14 gallons just to get my 10 gallons


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For some reason I had difficulty reading that.

 

[kh54s10]

You will need to do a boil test in your kettle with your heat source to determine your boil off rate. I boil off 2 gallons in an hour. So, I have to collect a little over 7 gallons to end up with a little over 5 gallons in the fermenter.

As to the sparge. I do batch sparging so I measure how much wort comes from the mash. I use a dip stick. I then sparge with about half of what I will need, stir it well, then measure again. I then do a second sparge adjusted to the amount I need in total. This way you are not leaving a lot of extra water/wort in the mash tun.

 

[GoodOleDave]

I am looking at all these tips and really appreciate them. I am brewing my first all grain tomorrow. Thanks for the original question and thanks for all the answers.