What's more accurate? How much to add?

[Izzie1701]

I have both beer smith light and sparge pal I am using. I am trying to figure out how much sparge water and mash water. I'm making an 11.3l batch with 2.15kg of grain. Sparge pal is telling me to use 8.6 litres for the mash. Want a mash thickness of 4l/kg and a sparge amount of 11.8l for a 90 min boil. My confusion is that when I plug these into the boil off tool - the amount for grain absorption of 2.4l I am ending up with a post boil volume of 14.17. This is a over a 3l discrepancy. Am I doing something wrong? Should I only be using 8.3l for the sparge?

 

[Izzie1701]

Sorry there is also a 1.89l mash tun loss but that still about a 1.4 litre discrepancy on an 11l batch. 10% will make a huge difference on my FG number.

 

[tootal]

Instead of worrying about water amounts of the sparge try doing this. I'm not liter literate but for simplicity let's say you're brewing a 10 liter batch. Put 10 liters of water in your kettle and boil for 90 minutes. Now measure how much water is left so you know what your boil off is going to be. Now add that amount of water to the original 10 liters and mark your kettle.

Now mash using the proper water/grist ratio that's required. Have more than enough sparge water ready to go. As you start to drain into the kettle just keep adding the sparge water to keep the same level. When you reach your mark on the kettle stop your sparge and start the boil.

Actually I fire up the kettle fire after about 2 liters of wort is in the kettle and it's close to boiling by the time I'm done sparging.

So don't get excited about the water amounts, just relax and have a home brew!

 

[brewkinger]

Instead of worrying about water amounts of the sparge try doing this. I'm not liter literate but for simplicity let's say you're brewing a 10 liter batch. Put 10 liters of water in your kettle and boil for 90 minutes. Now measure how much water is left so you know what your boil off is going to be. Now add that amount of water to the original 10 liters and mark your kettle.

Now mash using the proper water/grist ratio that's required. Have more than enough sparge water ready to go. As you start to drain into the kettle just keep adding the sparge water to keep the same level. When you reach your mark on the kettle stop your sparge and start the boil.

Actually I fire up the kettle fire after about 2 liters of wort is in the kettle and it's close to boiling by the time I'm done sparging.

So don't get excited about the water amounts, just relax and have a home brew!

I'm not liter literate either, but that was a damn fine example right there.
I'm a true believer in the KISS philosophy.
Make it consistent and then enjoy the brewing part and learn and fine tune all the other steps.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

I prefer to batch sparge instead if fly sparging.

I crunch everything out using my mash calculator, located in sig below.

 

[tootal]

I'm not liter literate either, but that was a damn fine example right there.
I'm a true believer in the KISS philosophy.
Make it consistent and then enjoy the brewing part and learn and fine tune all the other steps.

Fine tune all the other steps! Well said. Once you have procedure down then change your recipe to get what you want and consistency will be a lot easier.