IPA - How much sparge water?

[PagodaBrewingCo]

Hey there all!

I know this is my first post and I should be introducing but i'm on a tight schedule right now, and will when I get home.

Anyways,

I'm brewing an IPA tonight (6 gallons, 16lb grain bill) and the calcs' I looked at say 5.5 gallons mash and 5.5 gallons sparge.

I don't really want to sit around and watch 5 gallons boil off so I figured something might be wrong?

Thanks in advance,
-Alex (pagodabrewingco)

 

[lestershy]

I don't know the calculation, but 16lbs of grain is going to absorb a lot of the initial 5.5gal. However, that sounds like a lot of water. Where are you getting your calculations?

 

[TripHops]

Hi PadogaBrewingCo...

Normally, you can expect about .125 gal per pound of grain will be absorbed. So with 16 lbs of grain you should expect about 1.92gal of water being absorbed with the grain. Additionally, if you are using loose /fresh dry hops, they will also absorb some of the water but less than the grain. Finally, you can expect that you will get between 15% to 20% evaporation from the boil per hour, depending on your relative humidity.

The answer is not as simple as you might think. A lot depends of what method sparge you are going to use, fly or batch. For fly sparge, you keep sparging until either you reach your kettle full volume or the SG of your sparge water get to 1.010 then stop. If you batch sparge, you measure the amount of your tun run-out and subtract that from your kettle full volume and use that difference to batch sparge your grains.

I am not sure if this helped but good luck in your brew.

Trip

 

[bannonb]

Use a brewing software to do this for you...

I use Beersmith and a 5.5 gallon fermenter full of beer starts me out with about 9.5 gallons (for single infusion 1.3 qts per gal batch sparge and 60 min boil profile).

I mash in with 4.5 gals for an hour, then add 1 gal of 170 degree water, drain, then add the remaining 4 gals and drain.

Hope that helps...but get software that will allow you to tweak things and calculate your water consistently.

 

[PagodaBrewingCo]

Thanks for all the quick replies.

They all helped quite a bit. I didn't really think about grain/water absorbtion and it really did take up a good amount of volume.
All in all I used 11 gallons of water and ended up with 6-6.5 gallons of wort.
OG was 1.060 but I didn't check the temp of the wort or stir so I imagine it's a bit higher.

Thanks again for the quick and helpful replies

PS,
I was using beer calculus as my brewing calculator.

 

[TripHops]

In response to bannonb's question regarding brewing software, I use a little recipe calculator from Learn to Brew:

http://www.learntobrew.com/store/category/a0a3/Computer_Programs.html

It works pretty well for me.

Trip