Water volumes looks weird

Hi there!

This is my first venture into the forums here. I'm used to having a really well-versed homebrew partner but recently moved away and am now flying solo. I've got a pretty simple APA in line for Friday, and after putting the recipe into BeerSmith, I'm getting some weird numbers I need to figure out. It's a small 2.5 gallon batch with 5.75 lb of grain, and the program is calling for over 12 gallons of water between a single infusion mash and batch sparge set up. This is almost triple the water it's called for in the past, and I've been getting decent results. What gives? This can't be right, can it? My only idea right now is that I've never messed with some of the more specific numbers in the program, like "tun deadspace" for example.

Any experts with a clue as to why this number is off or why this number is actually correct?

Thanks guys,
Chris

 

is beer smith saying 12 gallons or 12 quarts?
boiling off 9.5 gallons of water is a lot.
5.75lbs X 1.25quarts = 7.2 quarts. doubling for an even volume batch sparge is 14 quarts (a lot closer to 12 than 48).

 

I checked and it's definitely gallons. It tells me to mash-in with 1.80 gallons and then sparge in two steps with 4.6 and then 5.7 gallons. This just makes no sense to me. Thanks for your help!

 

Sounds like it's giving you water for a 10 gallon batch. What is your batch size setting on?

 

It's weird. My batch size definitely reads 2.5 gallons, and it calculates the boil volume at 3.46 gallons. But, for some reason, the sparge water is over 10 gallons.

 

You need about 4-4.5 gallons total. That's spitballing but if you boiloff 1g/hr and absorb 0.15g/lb, trub loss, that's pretty damn close.

 

Check absorption and tun loss. Abs should be in the 0.1x range and loss should be minimal.

 

What are the settings for mash tun dead space, boil off, I think there's one for kettle dead space as well.

 

Ah! Yes, the tun deadspace number was 8.0 gallons. Don't know why it changed out of the blue. It's been 0.25 in my prevous batches. Changing it reverted the water volumes back to normal. I'll do some more research on what that number should be. Thanks guys, especially Dan, for your help. And tre9er, you're dead on. It calls for 4.4 gallons altogether.

 

Thanks for the nice words but tre9er was first. Anyway HBT to the rescue!