Grain og. calculator?

[Mike2]

Hey guys,
I've been all grain brewing for 4 batches now. I'm doing 10 gallon batches. Last weekend I mashed 25 pounds of grain in 11 gallons of water, Batch Sparged with 5 gallons and ended up with a 1.052 OG. I thought I'd be a little higher. Is there some sort of calculator to give you an estimate on how much sugar you can get out of a pound of grain? I'm assuming different grains have different sugar contents. Could I get more sugar if I mash with less water?
Thanks

 

[day_trippr]

There are all kinds of brew calculators to solve recipes - you can find web apps on-line, there are programs for peecees, and apps for phones. Some are free, some not. You could start snooping around by Googling "beer brewing calculator". There are far too many solutions to provide a primer. Fwiw, I use a paid program called BeerSmith for such matters.

As for the available sugars per pound from various grains, a little ways down this page you'll find a table for grain extract values.

Fwiw, if one assumes a maximum contribution of 35 points per pound for your 25 pounds of grain (assume all base grain), and you ended up with 10 gallons of 1.052 wort, your efficiency into the fermenter would be around 60%. Not great, but not totally horrible. There are quite a few factors that could account for that, including problems with the crush, incomplete mixing during the mash-in and/or during the sparge, and channeling issues withe the manifold (<= though that last one would be more applicable to fly sparging than batch)...

Cheers!

 

[Mike2]

Looks like I should start working on my efficiency!! I can seem to find that grain extract table...

Thanks

 

[feinbera]

Palmer's got a pretty complete table of PPG values online; anything he missed, you should be able to google "bulgar wheat points per gallon" or whatever and find some brave soul who's figured it out.

You can also google for homebrew recipe calculators, if you don't wanna do all the math yourself or shell out for an app; Brewer's Friend works well enough for me.

 

[Mike2]

Thanks I'll try that out.