1st Partial Mash

[Scooba]

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?

 

[AleFred]

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

 

[JonM]

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.

 

[JonM]

Oops - are you talking mash volume or sparge volume?

 

[Scooba]

Sparge volume

 

[JonM]

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.

 

[29thfloor]

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.

 

[JonM]

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!

 

[TzeentchPlayer]

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.