Not enough water in boil kettle after mash

[Zippox]

I'm looking for possible explanations as to how I came to having 7 gallons instead of 8 at the end of my fly sparging.

I use BeerSmith 2 and have properly entered the deadspace amounts for the HLT and MLT.

I do begin heating my boil kettle as I start fly sparging. This could compensate for a half gallon I guess. A loss of a full gallon in 30 minutes due to starting to heat the wort up seems a bit extreme to me.

 

[Bobby_M]

A traditional fly sparge continues until you have hit your desired preboil volume as determined by level indicators on your boil kettle. Now, I know it's typical that we try to reduce how much water we need to heat up for the sparge so we try to calculate the minimum we can get away with, but I'm not a fan of trying to nail it like it were a batch sparge. You should have at least 1/3rd of your mash tun still full of liquid when you're done sparging.

 

[Zippox]

So when I didn't collect enough my gravity was at 1.060. After adding about a gallon of water it came to 1.051 which was close to what I was going for (8 gallons @ 1.049).

So it seems my efficiency is higher than what I thought I would get. I should bump that up in my software.

 

[joshesmusica]

i usually do biab at home.
but when i brew on a bigger system with a friend, we usually just shoot for the pre-boil SG that we were intending on getting. So we continue to sparge until we get there. If it were my system i would most definitely try to get down the process until a got a very consistent efficiency. but he's not a perfectionist by any means like i am, and therefore we just kinda go with his way.
the nice thing is when you end up with 85% efficiency instead of the expected 70% and are able to do a smaller "session" batch. this last time we had that happen while brewing a pale ale, so we decided on a session ipa.
it's just a different way i guess. i know some people shoot for the preboil amount they hoped, and some people shoot for the preboil SG they hoped to get. Either way, if you're off on your efficiency i would imagine you would end up at the same amount with the same OG (assuming of course that with a lower than expected pre-boil SG that you boiled for longer in order to achieve the OG you intended).

 

[Zippox]

i know some people shoot for the preboil amount they hoped, and some people shoot for the preboil SG they hoped to get. Either way, if you're off on your efficiency i would imagine you would end up at the same amount with the same OG (assuming of course that with a lower than expected pre-boil SG that you boiled for longer in order to achieve the OG you intended).

I am one to shoot for same pre-boil SG. That way I have a similar strength beer in the end. Unfortunately with hops, they depend on the volume of the boil so the hoppyness is affected. Luckily after adding straight water to the boil kettle I hit both my pre-boil gravity and the volume of the boil exactly.

I've recently switched to using store bought RO water instead of the extremely alkaline water I have at home so I believe my pH was right this time which explains my better efficiency since I was mashing in the right range. So hopefully as I work with the same water for my future brews, I can adjust my numbers accordingly so I don't have to do too much compensation.

 

[joshesmusica]

I am one to shoot for same pre-boil SG. That way I have a similar strength beer in the end. Unfortunately with hops, they depend on the volume of the boil so the hoppyness is affected.

yeah it's at that point that i'm glad to have beersmith. simply scale the recipe down to what you ended up with (or up) to figure out the hop adjustments needed.

 

[Psylocide]

Or you know... do some simple calculations without spending money on software. But I'm cheap.

 

[Zippox]

yeah it's at that point that i'm glad to have beersmith. simply scale the recipe down to what you ended up with (or up) to figure out the hop adjustments needed.

Funny thing is I didn't really think about that. Sometimes obvious things just need to be said. I would have just added the same amount of hops and been like, "that's too bad I didn't hit my numbers because now I am going to have a beer that isn't exactly like the recipe."

 

[joshesmusica]

Or you know... do some simple calculations without spending money on software. But I'm cheap.

beersmith is $27.95. how many beers have you brewed in the last year? I have personally brewed 20 batches since August. So it's I'll easily pass 25 batches in a year (i just started brewing small batches so I can do those more often). That's $1.12/batch for the software. Let's say I brew another 25 next year (again I'll likely actually brew way more than I have brewed this year, but let's stay conservative), that's $0.56/batch.

There's no way you're that cheap. And with this then I don't run the risk of messing up an on-the-fly calculation and messing up my brew.

 

[MindenMan]

Beersmith is a great program for some people, and not for others. I tried it, I didn't like it, and I now use both Qbrew and BrewMate. BrewMate has a few more styles than Qbrew, and BrewMate will automatically scale ingredients up or down if you want to increase or shrink a recipe's size on-the-fly. Thinking of the above post, BrewMate could be a big help to your hop calculations. Oh, and by the way, both programs are free.

 

[joshesmusica]

Beersmith is a great program for some people, and not for others. I tried it, I didn't like it, and I now use both Qbrew and BrewMate. BrewMate has a few more styles than Qbrew, and BrewMate will automatically scale ingredients up or down if you want to increase or shrink a recipe's size on-the-fly. Thinking of the above post, BrewMate could be a big help to your hop calculations. Oh, and by the way, both programs are free.

beersmith definitely takes a little tweaking to get the right equipment profile down, and to figure out some of the small stuff, but in the end it's the best/most comprehensive brew software available. notice that you're using two in the place of one. and again, spread that cost for beersmith over the next 100 brews that you're gonna do, and it's practically free.

i just love how precise beersmith is for me now that i'm using the right equipment profiles. it says that i should be mashing in at something like 67.3 in order to get a mash temp of 62.8, and it's practically perfect on that .whatever!

 

[adixon3]

The grain absortion rate is about 1 pint per pound of grains, so as an example if you mashed 20lbs of grains it would absorb 2.5 gallons of water
so to answer your question you want 8 gallons in the kettle after fly sparge =8 gal water + 2.5 gals for absortion loss so total water needed is 11.5 gallons

 

[DesignatedDrinker]

I batch sparge, and regularly get 75%-80% efficiency, so I have never seen a reason to add another hour to my process by going to fly sparge, however if you are getting less water in the kettle then you want, you are not using enough in the first place. Try using .125gal per pound of grain for your grain loss compensation. So if I have 10lbs of grain, I know that grain is going to eat 1.25gals of water, So I need to add an additional 1.25gal to my batch sparge.

Batch sparge and fly sparge water are calculated the same way if your trying to meet a certain volume instead of gravity. If you want 8gal in the kettle with a 10lb grain mash, you will need 9.25gallons for your mash/sparge. Mash at what ever grain/water ratio you want, then fly sparge with the rest. If you end up with 8 gallons in the kettle, but gravity is low, then its more then likely you need more fly sparge water so lower your mash water, or your crush needs to be finer.

Either that or just mash/sparge and don't worry about volume, once you get your kettle volume at your desired gravity, even if the volume is higher then you want, who cares, no one says you have to add that extra liquid to your fermenter. If you end up with 6 gallons of wort at your desired 1.050, but your doing a 5gal beer, just add 5 gallons to the fermenter, that 5 gallons will still be 1.050

just decide what is more important, desired kettle volume, or desired kettle gravity. with batch sparge you don't really have to worry about either