First All Grain brew coming up and I have questions

[jeramieb]

Like the title says, first All Grain coming soon and I'm not sure about a couple things. First off this is a brew kit (Caribou Slobber from NB) that I'll be working with. I found the same recipe in Beersmith so I loaded it up with my equipment profile I made. I have a 5-gal cooler mash tun and 36-qt kettle btw which I will be using and will be doing this via batch sparge method.

Okay, now that that's all out of the way... I noticed Beersmith says to "Mash In with 3.82-gal of water" and then to "Batch sparge with 3 steps (Drain mash tun , 2.08gal, 2.08gal) of 168.0 F water"...

How important is it to hit those EXACT volumes of water (3.82 & 2.08 respectively) when doing All Grain? Up until now I've only brewed Extract with specialty grains. I had a smaller kettle so I boiled with around 3.5-gal and topped off once in the fermentor.

Thanks in advance!

 

[porterpounder]

It's not imperative to hit those volumes exactly. The mash-in water temp and/or volume will often have to be changed due to the temperature of the grain. This time of year up here the grain gets cold in storage and strike water has to be up a few degrees or I have to add more to compensate. You can batch sparge with as many dumps as you like. Most people I know do 2. The should be about an inch of water above the grain when it all settles before vorlauf and dump. You can always stop the runoff into the kettle when you hit your per-boil volume, so there is not need to exactly calculate out the sparge volume so it runs dry each step.

 

[jeramieb]

Exactly what I was looking for and also what I was kinda thinking but wanted to make sure. Thanks for the info!

 

[Yooper]

Remember that you are supposed to put in the mash steps into Beersmith- it doesn't "know" what you want.

Set it up so that you mash in with 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain (click on the "mash" box next to the profile), and then go into the sparge screen and fix that so you can have a reasonable amount of sparge water. 4 gallons of sparge water should fit just fine in your MLT, so unless you have a little tiny MLT, no reason to split it up. You can set it to only be one addition of sparge water.

 

[ThunderpantsBrewing]

Remember that you are supposed to put in the mash steps into Beersmith- it doesn't "know" what you want.

Set it up so that you mash in with 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain (click on the "mash" box next to the profile), and then go into the sparge screen and fix that so you can have a reasonable amount of sparge water. 4 gallons of sparge water should fit just fine in your MLT, so unless you have a little tiny MLT, no reason to split it up. You can set it to only be one addition of sparge water.

This is true, and for Caribou Slobber, it will definitely work, since it's a lower gravity wort. But for better efficiency on higher gravity beers, your may want to do two separate sparges so that you hit your anticipated OG. Not disagreeing with Yooper by any means, I'm just giving you advice for the future.

 

[henryred]

One trick I learned on mashing. Put the mash water in mash vessel 4-6 degrees hotter than desired addition temp. When it comes down to temp add grains. Vessels like my cooler gobble up heat before I get to my 168. Then when I add my grain It drops to 154. And it makes mixing grain and water easier then adding water to grain. Dough balls normally don't exist.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Hoosierbrewer]

I batch sparge separating volumes. Great results.

 

[Rev2010]

One little thing I'd like to add, it's not imperative to hit exact water volume amounts so long as you're not coming up under. In other words, if in doubt go over, because if you end up with more wort you can simply boil off some first before you add your first hop addition in. If you come up short you can add water but it's just water, not wort, so you'll come in under your expected OG.


Rev.

 

[kh54s10]

You will find that with Beersmith, you will have to "tweak" it. You have to adjust things, especially your equipment profile.

Then I use the numbers for the mash but then for sparging I measure the wort already collected, then add a little more than half of what I need for my preboil amount (about 7.3 gallons for my setup) then I collect enough in a second sparge to get the whole amount.

It will come with a few batches. Take good notes, figure out what needs adjusting, and proceed. I did maybe 10 batches to get close and at 40+ batches I am still making little tweaks. But even batch #1 was good.