Water quantity for this recipe

[maxlavio]

Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to brewing and I found a nice recipe.

However, there's no water qty (mash & sparge).

How do I know the right qty (in liters) to add at mash & sparging??? I don't have any program.

Here's the recipe:
Ingredients (All Grain, 6.5 gal)

19 lbs American 2-row
1 lbs Belgian Cara-Pils
.45 lbs Crystal Malt 40°L
.45 lbs White Wheat Malt
1.75 lbs White Table Sugar (Sucrose)
1.25 oz Chinook - 12.0 AA% pellets; boiled 90 min
2 oz Warrior® - 16.4 AA% pellets; boiled 90 min
1.1 oz Simcoe® - 12.0 AA% pellets; boiled 45 min
1.25 oz Columbus - 12.3 AA% pellets; boiled 30 min
1.1 oz Northern Brewer - 9.0 AA% pellets; boiled 15 min
1.65 oz Centennial - 10.4 AA% pellets; boiled 1 min
1.1 oz Simcoe® - 12.0 AA% pellets; boiled 1 min
2.7 oz Columbus - 12.3 AA% pellets; added dry to primary fermenter
1.65 oz Centennial - 10.4 AA% pellets; added dry to primary fermenter
1.65 oz Sterling - 12.0 AA% pellets; added dry to primary fermenter
1.1 oz Chinook added to the mash. - (omitted from calculations)
2 oz Cascade added with hopback at end of the boil. - (omitted from calculations)

White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Mash at 153 for 90 minutes. Boil 120 minutes. Ferment at 67. Add dry hops to primary when airlock bubbles are 15 seconds apart.

Original Gravity: 1.099 Final: 1.018

 

[TheHappyHopper]

A couple of things you will need to know:
- The dead space for your mash tun
- Your boil-off rate

You have 20.9 pounds of grains, and you want to end up with 6.5 gallons after the boil, so the equation is:

Final Volume + Water absorbed by grain + dead space of mash tun + boil off volume = total water

The average water absorption for grain is 0.15 gallons per pound.
Without knowing your system, I am going to assume 1 gallon dead space and 1 gallon/hr boil off, so the equation becomes:

6.5 gallons + (0.15 gallons/pound)*(20.9 pounds) + 1 gallon + (1 gallon/hr)*(2 hrs) = 12.77 gallons total

Then to figure out what portion needs to be mash water, you need to know your water to grain ratio. Most people do 1.25 to 2 quarts per pound. I will assume 1.5 quarts.

Mash water = (1.5 quarts/pound)(20.9 pounds of grain) = 31.35 quarts = 7.84 gallons

I like to use numbers to make the volume measuring easy, so I would go with 12.75 gallons of total water, with 8 gallons being mash water and 4.75 gallons being sparge water.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot that you wanted liters. So that would be approximately 48 liters total, 30 liters being mash and 18 being sparge.

 

[maxlavio]

Very Very appreciated and precise.

Many thanks!!

 

[kh54s10]

Boil off rate is important here. My system boils off almost 2 gallons per hour so I would need a lot more to start.

When I started all grain, and creating my own recipes, I got a copy of Beersmith. IMO it is well worth the $$. You can download a trial copy. When learning how to use it look at all the instructional videos at least a couple of times.

 

[pwnshop]

I use the beersmith app on my phone for this stuff and its spot on. It costs 8 bucks. You can also save all your recipes and tweak all sorts of stuff. It is quite handy, I like to tinker with it on the bus and try to come up with recipes etc.

Also to give an idea of boil off - my boil off rate is only about half a gallon an hour compared to kh54s10's 2 gallons per hour.

You can get an idea of your boil off rate by boiling 6 gal pot of water (maybe you don't need to use this much? I did but you probably don't have to) for 60 minutes and then measuring what you have after the boil.

Then once you have beersmith (or some other tool) you can put in your boil off rate and what you want your mash thickness to be and it will give you the strike water amount and how much total wort you need at the start of the boil. You would do your mash, collect first runnings, then sparge until you've collected your preboil amount!
i.e your first runnings produces 3 gal of wort, beersmith (or some other tool) says you need 6.25 in your boil kettle so you would sparge with 3.25 gal.