Strike Water Volume

[brew703]

Gonna be brewing later today. I use Priceless Brewing calculator to get my volume.
For those who BIAB and do full volume mashes, I have a few questions:
-Do you put a value in the sparge volume field? if you do what value do you use?
- Do you leave grain absorption and hop absorption set at default value?
- What value's do you use for kettle losses, packaging losses and mashtun losses?
For the brew today, here are my numbers:
11.85 lb grain
8.75 oz hops
grain & hop absorption left at default
kettle loss .5 gal
packaging loss .5 gal
mashtun loss ?? I used .25/gal
boil off for my system is about 1 gal/hr
60 min boil
with these numbers the calculator shows 8.8 gal total water. If I remove the mashtun loss value then the total strike water drops to 8.51 gal.

When I rack to fermenter, there may be a 1/4 gallon left, if that. So the total water seems about right but I've seen some who use about the same grain bill and use a gallon less of water. My numbers are always close to what they should be, most times a little over meaning gravity is a little higher.
Basically just want to make sure I'm calculating right.

 

[balrog]

I *LOVE* that calculator
I don't sparge so I put zero there.
I leave hop abs what it is, but my experience keeping track over 10s of batches was to change the grain absorption to what I get -- I gravity drip for 5-10m, I don't squeeze, you have to see what you get so at first I just left it alone and dialed it in with time.
I put zero for kettle loss as I literally dump EVERYTHING to the fermbucket.
I put zero for mash tun loss as, well, there aren't any
I have varying amts of packaging loss, just depends on hop/trub/yeastcake amt -- that's where I have 0.3-0.5 gal and I just leave it at 0.5gal

 

[cubalz]

8.8 sounds correct. I have brewed countless of full volume BIAB batches with a similar weight grain bill and I use just shy of 9 gallons of strike water. My recommendation is to go with 8.8 and you can always boil a little longer if necessary to get your required 5 gallons of remaining wort. The next time you make that recipe you can adjust your water or boil time as needed. That is what most of us do as calculators as great but they still may need some tweaking for your system and brewing style.

 

[brew703]

Thanks for the replies. I'll continue to follow what the calculator says.

 

[balrog]

I chased volumes pretty tightly at first and found that getting within a qt here and there was about as good as some measurement got. Brew kettle not quite level on burner, guessing between gallon markings as to liquid level, etc. And it's fine. The main thing is to know what to expect, and repetition is key.