Munich Dunkel II overshot amount of spague water

Aksarben

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Recipe link is here: https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/569726/vern-s-munich-dunkel-ii I was shooting for about 3 1/2 gallons of kettle volume, but ended up with 5 gallons, and I dumped out some of the lower part of the runoff from my home made mash tun. I used 3.3- 3.5 gallons of water in the mash, got up to temp of 163 and added the total of 7 lbs of grains. Stirred well and left it sit for about 90 minutes. It has a very slight blue hint with the iodine, so I took out about 3 quarts or so and boiled it for about 10 minutes and added back into the mash, rising the temp doing so. Then ate supper.

After supper I tried the wort and no blue at all. I opened the valve and started draining and got a LOT more on the first drain than I had with my other round cooler mash tun. This one is a new cooler, 52 quart rectangular with a depression in the center for draining the cooler. I installed a SS ball valve and about 18" of 3/4" SS screen and made it attached to the bottom on the far end with a C hook. Seemed like it drained more efficiently and thoroughly giving me more product on the first drain. Then I added hot water using my new sprinkler can, and read somewhere that you should sparge with the amount of water you wish to end up with in the fermentor. Well, the bucket got pretty full and I measured the Brix at 9.75 corrected for 70 deg. That figures out to 1.039 S.G. Now boiling to reduce the amount of water. I probably should have used a whole lot less water. Is there a way to figure efficiency with this reading, and amount of grain and final volume?

Just how much water SHOULD I have used? Perhaps I should have checked the S.G. on the first drain to get an idea on where I stood with sugars in the solution.
 
Efficiency won't change: You get a given amount of sugar from a mash. That only is reduced by wort "left" somewhere like dead space or in grain or hops. Efficiency measures that amount of sugar. If your volume is high, your gravity will be reduced and vice versa. As to how much water you should have used, you can estimate this way: Take the final volume of wort. Add any "dead space" in your mash tun, lines, etc. If you don't know it, use about a quart. Add the amount of water boiled off: If you know the boil off rate, multiply that times time. Then add any dead space in the kettle, wort you can't drain or siphon off. If you dump, it's zero. Then add about 0.5 quarts for each pound of grain. Hops absorb about 0.15 quarts/ounce of hops. Add all that up and that's the amount of water you need. Losses for samples and such, I use about 0.5 qt, add that too.

I like to know how the software is calculating whatever it calculates so I can know if I'm getting a weird result. It's good to do it by hand once in a while to know what's happening.
 
The first batch I made using the recipe and water calculator resulted in too much sparge water also. I think the default values in the equipment set-up assumes a low efficiency. Like Nosybear said, I had to change my MLT dead space closer to one quart. Also take a look at the amount left in your BK as compared to your equipment setting. In addition I had to boil more vigorously to hit the BK evaporation target. After a few batches you should be able to dial in your system. Good luck and cheers.
 
The first batch I made using the recipe and water calculator resulted in too much sparge water also. I think the default values in the equipment set-up assumes a low efficiency. Like Nosybear said, I had to change my MLT dead space closer to one quart. Also take a look at the amount left in your BK as compared to your equipment setting. In addition I had to boil more vigorously to hit the BK evaporation target. After a few batches you should be able to dial in your system. Good luck and cheers.

Agreed! Either this rectangular Mash Tun works so much better or I added too much water. All I know is it drained beautifully, and the amount of depth of wet grain was easy to add sprinkled water to. with the 3/4" SS drain "tube" that was 18" long seemed to be extra nice, as it went into a depressed grove in the bottom of the cooler near the valve. The amount of "juice" left behind was minimal because of this groove.

I also made a thin piece of Styrofoam 21" X 10" with little poly string handle,that I used to "Float" on top of the mash. This keeps more of the heat into the mash without dissipating into the dead airspace above.

Nosybear: you said" Add any "dead space" in your mash tun, lines, etc. If you don't know it, use about a quart." with the wording "dead space" are you saying this is the area in the mash tun that you cannot get drainage from, and has left over liquid? With this setup, I scooped out the wet grains, and there was maybe 1/2 cup of liquid in the bottom. It really drained well.

I did boil it back up to 1.052 SG on the stove with 2 kettles. Really humidified the house!! Smelled good ;) Added the one kettle into the big kettle that has the valve at the bottom, at the end of boiling (all combined) , for rapid chilling. After settling a few minutes I drained out the wort and left a small amount in the bottom of the boil kettle that looked like green/brown crap. maybe a bit more than a quart there. Looks like I ended up with about 3.3 gallons in a 5 gal fermenter.
 
Let's also hope I can learn to spell better too !! Spague?? Sheesh!!
I almost got out my red pen.... Answer on "dead space": Exactly, Any wort you lose because you can't get the liquid out. By the way, that's the only way you can lose extract (sugar), by losing wort.
 

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