First brew in decades. Question about amount of water needed.

[kohalajohn]

Hello all.

I am now returning to the wonderful hobby. Answers about how much water I need, are appreciated.

Tomorrow I am doing an all grain in my Brewzilla 35l

I'll get into precision later, but for now, I'm just looking at rough numbers.

Aiming for a 4 us gallon batch (15 liters) of Pale Ale. Will ferment in cornies.

4kg grain. so 4k x 3 is 12 liters mash water? Grain should absorb 4 liters, so 8 liters net?

Sparge with 10 liters? A one hour boil should boil off 3 liters, so 7 liters net?

This would end up with 15 liters wort? That's about the goal.

 

[Bobby_M]

Make your life easy and perform it as a no sparge. You're more likely going to boil off about 4.5 liters on 240v

You'll start the boil with a little more than 21 liters. That should yield you about 15 liters into the fermenter at 1.057

 

[kohalajohn]

Excellent

 

[VikeMan]

The total amount of water you need is going to depend on your equipment and process. This is what you'll need:

Desired batch size into the fermenter
+ grain absorption
+ unrecoverable mash tun dead space
+ tun to kettle transfer losses
+ kettle hop/trub absorption
+ boil off
+ kettle to fermenter transfer losses.