Figure out my grain bill

[BrewBoy19]

ok so i got a recipe off of here for a two hearted clone and it called for 10 lbs of pale malt 2 row, 2lbs vienna malt, 8 oz of both cara pils, and crystal malt.

what is the formula to figure out how much extra grain i need to get a proper batch size of 6 gallons of wort, instead of the 1/2 gallon of lautering water that will cause me to boil forever to get down to the proper gallon amounts?

sorry if the terms are wrong, this will be my first all grain.

 

[hoppymonkey]

Thats an easy one. Just add 20% more everything to get an additional gallon batch

FYI, If you have a smart phone you can download brew pal which is great at scaling recipes

 

[JuanMoore]

It sounds like you're wanting to scale a recipe up in size, but it's unclear what size batch you're starting with. Are you going from a 5.5 gal recipe to 6, or from 5 gal to 6? Either way just increase the grains in the same proportion as the increase in volume. 5-> 6 = 20% , 5.5-> 6 = 9%

 

[BrewBoy19]

i read that is you fly sparge to get as high an efficiency as possible you end up with tons of wort that needs to be boiled back down to the 5 gallon recipe size to get the proper OG.

so they said u could just add more grain so you can just sparge with less water and not worry about your efficiency.

Just confused my books numbers don't match up well maybe some typos or editing errors.

 

[JuanMoore]

I think you're a little confused. Most brewers do not collect more than the necessary pre-boil volume, regardless of the sparging technique used. If your batch size is the same as the recipe, then the only reason you'd need to increase the grain bill is if your efficiency is lower than what the recipe is based on. Since you've never done an AG batch before, you don't even know what your efficiency is yet. Since most people get a little lower efficiency their first time brewing all grain (often 60-65%), it might not hurt to add a half pound of base malt for your first time just in case. The worst that would happen is you get great efficiency and the beer ends up a little bigger than expected. Did the recipe say what efficiency it was based on?

Just confused my books numbers don't match up well maybe some typos or editing errors.

What numbers aren't matching up? Does the recipe have a larger pre-boil volume than what you'd expect from reading your book, and that's what's throwing you off? Everyone has different boil-off rates, so it could be that the recipe has a larger pre-boil volume simply because they boil more off in an hour, not that they're oversparging.

 

[BrewBoy19]

The book says that to maximize eff. brewers fly sparge with 1/2 gallon per pound grain. so it says that you would use 1 to 1.25 quarts per pound to mash. my grain bill is 12.5lbs.
That would put me at 4 gallons to mash and 6.25 to sparge which is 10.25 gallons total.
Then the book says you would have to boil it down to 5 gallons but says most home brewers dont want to do this because it can make the beer bitter etc.... so they just use less water and add more grain to accomodate. It just never tells you how to adjust lol. Its just confusing i think i need a better book.

also, it was talking about the ppg etc..... but in the recipe example it gave it didn't match the chart they gave you for grains max eff.

for example it gave a formula and said this grain has 36 total possible ppg and 80% eff. but when i looked at the chart they gave you to figure out your own the grain they used and its ppg did not match; the chart said 38 ppg for their grain but when they did their math formula they used 36 ppg which threw me way off.

 

[hoppymonkey]

you aren't taking into account the amount of grain adsoprtion which is substantial. You also dont know your system yet which means you dont know the amount of boil off in an hour you will get. most people's systems boil off around 1 1/2- 2 gallons per hour. which means actual collected pre-boil wort needs to be 6 1/2- 7 gallons for a 5 gallon batch. mine personally is 7 gallons.


your first couple of Ag batches are experiments with your system to see what you actually get and adjust processes as needed so dont worry it'll still be beer when you are done.