Getting an accurate pre-boil volume?

[aggiejay06]

I'm using Beer Smith to formulate my recipe for my first all grain brew...this thing is great, and I can already tell I'll be buying it once the free trial runs out.

I love the instructions it prints up based on what you've entered...here's my only question...

I'll be batch sparging and draining into my brew pot, and I like how it tells me the volumes and the temps to use for sparge water. But then it tells me to top off my brew pot with 6.41 gallons of water before I start my boil...I've got no lines of measurement in my brewpot (as I imagine is the same for most if not all brewpots), so I'm going to have no idea how much is in it, much less how much I need to add to achieve 6.41 gallons (or even if it were something easy like 6.5).

Nearest I can figure, I can just estimate as much as possible and hope for the best? I can always top off with more water I suppose, but I don't want to end up with 5.5 gallons post boil and screw up my gravity if I add too much water pre-boil. How do y'all handle it?

The only other thought I had was to measure 6.41 gallons tonight (brew day is tomorrow) into my pot and mark on the outside of the pot with a sharpie approximately where that point is, and then just match it as closely as possible on brew day...

 

[BrokenDog]

I can't see why you would top off with water, just sparge more, it might have a low gravity but it's still better then plain water. The way most people do it is just to measure out their brew pot ahead of time with their spoon or something deeper then the pot. Add a gallon, mark the stick all the way up to the max capacity of the pot.

 

[Tall_Yotie]

When I take my runnings from the mash tun (from mash and sparge) I will collect it in my fermentation bucket. It has markings for gallons and portions there of so I can know what I am collecting.

Once it is boiling, if you want to know how much wort is left then make a dip-stick. Take a dowel or huge spoon, and add a gallon of water to the pot at a time. Put the dip-stick in in the pot, mark the gallon level, and then repeat with adding another gallon. It won't give you an accurate measurement, but should be good to around the quart.

 

[aggiejay06]

That's pretty clever...what do y'all mark with? Sharpie? No worries of it leaching anything into the wort?

 

[wildwest450]

For some reason it always tells you to "add" water to achieve a certain volume, but if you follow the strike water and sparge numbers, you'll be spot on anyway's.

As for marks, a sharpie is your friend. Their a little faded, but that's after 20 batches or so from washing.

 

[wildwest450]

That's pretty clever...what do y'all mark with? Sharpie? No worries of it leaching anything into the wort?

If you're using an aluminum pot, Alzheimer's is not far off, so why sweat it??

 

[logdrum]

That's pretty clever...what do y'all mark with? Sharpie? No worries of it leaching anything into the wort?

I taped my markings off, filed around the mark w/ a triangle file, then burned the groove w/ a soldering iron. For my gallon measurements, I weighed each gallon/quart.



-d

 

[Tall_Yotie]

I used a pencil as it grooves and marks the wooden handle, but it is a softer wood, and needs to be darkened from time to time. I think the best answer would be to groove and burn in the mark with a soldering iron, as was stated above. Perhaps mark each gallon level with Roman numerals as it is easier to burn in rather than standard numbers.

 

[sigsegv]

I made a dip stick for my kettle out of a cheap metal yard stick. I calibrated it by filling the kettle a gallon at a time and recording the inches on the ruler for each water level in a table. It's pretty easy to interpolate in between water/wort volumes from that table after that.

 

[tjpfeister]

+1 to sparging into the fermenter. I have several ways of measuring along the way, but considering that I usually want to collect 6.5g of run-off my fermenter is optimal for both collecting and measuring pre-boil.

 

[ChandlerBang]

When I take my runnings from the mash tun (from mash and sparge) I will collect it in my fermentation bucket. It has markings for gallons and portions there of so I can know what I am collecting.

Can the Ale Pail handle this much heat repeatedly? I guess 170* would be the max and it wouldn't be in there for too long......
I'm asking, because I have NO idea. I'm not trying to play devil's advocate.

 

[jmf143]

I used a 3 foot piece of 1/2" CPVC and scored it with my mini-pipe cutter for each gallon. When I'm not using it to measure my kettle volume I use it as a pea shooter with tin foil sabots and "hunt" my dog and cats.

 

[Jawbox0]

I picked up a flat bar of aluminum, bent the end as a hook, and hang it on the edge of my kettle.

I marked out gallons in pencil, then scored them into the aluminum with my dremel and made smaller ticks for half gallons. Finally, I engraved roman numerals with the dremel to make it easy to read.

 

[bigjoe]

I marked a paddle, then metal ruler, and ouitside the kettle while I was at it. The kettle marks have worn off.

Like someone said add water a half gallon at a time from a pitcher or kitchen measure of some sort. I'd checked to see how much your immersion chiller displaces if you use one while your at it. The first time I did I had no idea how much the IC raised the level of wort. It wasn't a big deal to pull it out and check though, but would have been nice if I knew before hand.

I wouldn't trust the gallon marks on store bought buckets. They have all been off on the ones I bought.

I have a ghetto site gauge rigged up now made with a t-fitting and some high temp silicone tubing. Its in my signature.

 

[Ernst-Haeckel]

No one has mentioned that the wort will expand when you bring it to a boil. So if you measure 6.5 gallons into the pot from the mash tun, then bring it to a boil, it may then read more like 7 gallons (with a vigorous boil). This always throws me off when I am taking measurements near the end of the boil. I may want to have 5 gallons at the end of the boil, but when I measure it is more than five, so I boil a little longer, and by the time it cools and goes into the fermenter it is less than 5 gallons.

I just haven't got the hang of it yet. It also helps to know your boil off rates, which I haven't measured.

 

[BrokenDog]

I like the wood burner idea, I hadn't thought of that but I think I am going to use it in the future. As for using a pale, that is what I am actually doing atm because I can't get myself to mark up my new paddle from www.mashpaddle.com and I haven't noticed any off tastes. I have actually cooled 5 gallons of boiling wort in on before and it held up fine and didn't affect the taste.

 

[ne0t0ky0]

I tried marking up my own stick, but eventually just brought an aluminium yard stick. Then filled the kettle two quarts at a time and recorded the measurements. As some one already mentioned, hot wort will measure a bit high so you'll have to brew a few times to see how high your target volume is when heated, mine has never been off by more than a quart.

 

[DeafSmith]

I tried marking up my own stick, but eventually just brought an aluminium yard stick. Then filled the kettle two quarts at a time and recorded the measurements. As some one already mentioned, hot wort will measure a bit high so you'll have to brew a few times to see how high your target volume is when heated, mine has never been off by more than a quart.

4 % expansion from room temp. to boiling, so if you want 5 gallons when cooled, you need 5.2 gallons boiling, or just under a quart more than 5 gallons. (Maybe not accurate to 3 decimal places, but "good enough for government work".)

 

[Boy]

I just started brewing and what I have done is to have a legal pad, calculator, and cubic inches to gallons converter open on my laptop. After the first runnings I take a measurement of the height of wort in the bucket and convert it to see what my sparge volume needs to be. Takes about 10 seconds. Since I just finished my paddle though I will mark it off soon as well.

 

[Yooper]

I used an "etcher" to score my long plastic spoon. I have it marked from 3 gallons up to 12 gallons- with a "hole" for the gallons and a mark for the .5 gallons. It works really well.

For my old brewpot, I used pink nailpolish on the outside at each gallon and half gallon level, from 2.5 gallons to 6.5 gallons, and the marks are still there! That's an easy way for it to be permanent.

 

[BrewThruYou]

I marked my stainless steel spoon. I probably didn't need to...6.5 gallons in my 7.5 gal pot is right up to the handle rivets.

 

[Catt22]

I have a conversion factor for each of my kettles which correlates to gallons per inch of depth. I use an aluminum yardstick to measure the depth and a pocket calculator to do the simple multiplication (or division). Obviously, you can use the factor to go in either direction, ie depth to gallons or gallons to depth measurement. Math can be your best friend when brewing if you give it a chance.

 

[samc]

I used an "etcher" to score my long plastic spoon. I have it marked from 3 gallons up to 12 gallons- with a "hole" for the gallons and a mark for the .5 gallons. It works really well.

For my old brewpot, I used pink nailpolish on the outside at each gallon and half gallon level, from 2.5 gallons to 6.5 gallons, and the marks are still there! That's an easy way for it to be permanent.

You ladies have all the advantages, pink nail polish !

I went with bargainfittings.com sight glass or you can go with http://www.brewhardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=36&Itemid=60

either would in the long run serve you well.