Only one gallon water for mash??

Got a partial grain belgian blonde kit recently that says:

-- Heat 1 gallon water to 157F and soak grains in grain bag for 60 mins. Big bag of grains - looking at recipe sheet, its over 3.5 lbs of grain. How is only one gallon of water supposed to cover that much grain? It'll expand once wet so Im guessing I'll have an oatmeal consistency? Which is fine if its intended, but wanted to run by all of you and see if that makes sense?

Ive never started with only one gallon of water....

 

Will you be sparging later on? Because I recognise these amounts from the Brooklyn Brewshop kits.

 

Its a Love2Brew kit, not sure where they are.... but yes, I'll be sparging with 2.5g after the 60 min mash. Im not worried about the amount of water total, just the small amount in the beginning. My brew kettle is a 10 gallon so the one gallon barely covers the bottom.

I guess I wonder if I can just put in 3.5 gallons right away and keep it at 152 for the one hour mash, then move on to the sparge soak part of the process, omitting the actual physical act of pouring water over the grains....

 

Provide as much recipe detail as available. 1 gal (4qt) per 3.5 puts you at a thickness of 1.14, which is definitely on the thick side but it's not terrible. It may be done for pH reasons, but more likely it's a standard amount they use for all their recipes.

 

For the L2B kits, I usually mash with 1.5-2 gallons of water and sparge with 1.5 gallons. This is about 1.5 qt / 1 lb ratio for most of their kits.

 

Instructions / Recipe:
Belgian Blond Ale (Partial Mash) Instructions
Style:
Belgian Blond Ale
Original Gravity:
1.054
Recommend Time:
5 Weeks
BeerSmith:
Belgian Blond Ale (Partial Mash)
Stats:
- 2 Weeks Primary Fermentation
- 3 Weeks Bottle Conditioning
- Original Gravity: 1.054
- 6.2% ABV (Estimated)
- IBUs: 16.6
- SRM: 5.7
- 60 Minute Boil
Kit Profile:
Malts & Specialty Grains
- 3 lb. Pilsner Malt Extract
- 2 lb. Belgian Pilsner Malt
- 12 oz. Caramel Vienna Malt
- 4 oz. Honey Malt

Hops
- 2 oz. Styrian Goldings
Yeast Choices:
- Saflager T-58
- White Labs Belgian Ale Yeast (WLP550)
- Wyeast Belgian Ardennes (3522)


Other
- Simplicity Candi Syrup
- 5 oz. Priming Sugar

 

Yeah, after using only one gallon, I could see it just wasnt enough. Agreed about the water amounts being standard across many of their recipes.

Ended up doing just that - added one gallon of 160F water to the mash and its doing fine now. I knew what I wanted to do but was afraid to add more water for fear of ending up with a darker color than would be right for a blonde. Which I always seem to do with my belgian recipes....

 

Me, too. 1.5qt/lb of grain is my typical mash ratio. It makes numbers easier to play with and allows for water absorption in the mix.

 

That sounds like what I thought, thanks fellas!