1st Partial Mash

Doing my 1st partial mash tonight!!! I'm reading so many different calculations on the amount of spare water to use. I am going to try 1qt per 2lbs of grain. I'm using 5lbs of grain so that would be a 2.5 quarts which seem a little on the low side to me. Any suggestions?

 

thats way too thick try 1.25-1.30 qts per lb depending on how big your masing vessel is

 

People usually mash 1 to 1.25 qts per pound. That'd be 5-6.25 qts..

You usually lose appx. 0.15 gals per pound to grain absorption, so, using the figures above, that'd yield 4.25 to 5.5 qts in your first runnings.

 

Oops - are you talking mash volume or sparge volume?

 

Sparge volume

 

I haven't done a PM for a while, but I'd probably take the max volume that my stove/burner could handle for a good solid boil, then subtract the volume of my first runnings, then subtract the volume of my extract, and use the result as my sparge volume.

 

The partial mash kits from Austin Homebrew say to use 1qt per 2lb of grain. That's what I used and I think they turned out OK. Haven't tasted them yet but the target OGs were pretty close.

 

I'm over complicating things - if it's your first time with a new process and you're using a kit, I'd stick with the kit instructions. You'll learn the little subtleties and tricks as you do more batches and get more accustomed to the process. Cheers!

 

I do a lot of the AHS partial mash kits and have always used 1 gallon for the sparge. I've calculated the efficiency of the mashes and I always get somewhere around 75% using the BIAB sparge method.