Understanding what I'm shooting for in the mash

[JWR_12]

Hi! So I'm a brewer from the early 1990s who fell asleep for thirty years and awoke to an amazing world of information, supplies, and gadgets!

Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading Palmer's How to Brew on the subject.

Here's the thing I don't quite get. I mash, I sparge, I end up with sugary wort ready to boil. But for an all grain batch, should I somehow be shooting to get a mashed wort volume equal to my pre-boil volume? I'm typically shooting to boil 3.5-4 gallons right now. So is that how much wort I should be shooting for by volume? Or do I just get as much as I can out of the lbs of grain in my grain bill, and then dilute up to the pre-boil volume?

Does that make sense?

Background: I tried the countertop mashing strategy recommended at BYO magazine, which is fun. The basic scheme is 4 lbs of grain in a 2 gallon cooler. But the result has been that I've ---way--- missed my OG targets. I've been taking the roughly 2 gallons of wort I get by this method and diluting it up to 3.5 to start boiling. I initially thought it wouldn't matter, because the sugar is all from the grain, and it's not volume dependent (right?), but now I wonder just how profoundly I am confused.

So is it that my mash efficiency is catastrophic -- like 22% or something -- or is it that I'm just profoundly confused?

THANKS!

 

[Zambi]

Good question and the clever guys (m/f) will pitch in.
I can only tell you what I do and that's aiming for gravity, not volume.
I do allgrain, biab.
Sparge if you want.
Boil till right OG. If gravity is too high, dilute. If too low, boil longer.
Don't sweat a couple gravity point. In the end, you don't know what your FG is going yo be, you can only estimate/calculate
Relax

 

[Donoroto]

Hi! So I'm a brewer from the early 1990s who fell asleep for thirty years and awoke to an amazing world of information, supplies, and gadgets!

Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading Palmer's How to Brew on the subject.

Here's the thing I don't quite get. I mash, I sparge, I end up with sugary wort ready to boil. But for an all grain batch, should I somehow be shooting to get a mashed wort volume equal to my pre-boil volume? I'm typically shooting to boil 3.5-4 gallons right now. So is that how much wort I should be shooting for by volume? Or do I just get as much as I can out of the lbs of grain in my grain bill, and then dilute up to the pre-boil volume?

Does that make sense?

Background: I tried the countertop mashing strategy recommended at BYO magazine, which is fun. The basic scheme is 4 lbs of grain in a 2 gallon cooler. But the result has been that I've ---way--- missed my OG targets. I've been taking the roughly 2 gallons of wort I get by this method and diluting it up to 3.5 to start boiling. I initially thought it wouldn't matter, because the sugar is all from the grain, and it's not volume dependent (right?), but now I wonder just how profoundly I am confused.

So is it that my mash efficiency is catastrophic -- like 22% or something -- or is it that I'm just profoundly confused?

THANKS!

Well, at least you're well-rested!

Calculate efficiency before adding water.

Ok, let's say you want to end up with 3 gallons into your fermenter. You must start with more than that. Why?

The grain absorbs some water.
You can't get every drop from the mash tun.
You can't get every drop from the boil pot.
The hops absorb some water.
You lose some water to steam in the boil.
(And other factors, which are less significant. Palmer discusses all of these and more.)

How much? Start by making some educated guesses. Then, using careful measurements, figure out exactly what your equipment does with the water. Once you have that dialed in, you know to start with:

3 + losses = starting volume.

Sparging is like adding water, but you use hot water to rinse the grain a bit. Sparging helps you increase your volume without diluting it as much, since there are still some residual sugars in the grain.

Palmer goes to great lengths to caution to 'not squeeze the grain" but in my experience I get an extra quart of liquid for my 5 gallon batch with none of the side-effects he mentions.

In my case, I start with 8.25 gallons, draw off 2 gallons for the sparge water, then brew with the remaining 6.25 gallons. After all the losses, I end up with 5.5 gallons going into the fermenter. That leaves me just a hair less than 5 gallons of beer when it comes time to put it into the keg.

 

[JWR_12]

Well, at least you're well-rested!

Calculate efficiency before adding water.

Ok, let's say you want to end up with 3 gallons into your fermenter. You must start with more than that. Why?

The grain absorbs some water.
You can't get every drop from the mash tun.
You can't get every drop from the boil pot.
The hops absorb some water.
You lose some water to steam in the boil.
(And other factors, which are less significant. Palmer discusses all of these and more.)

How much? Start by making some educated guesses. Then, using careful measurements, figure out exactly what your equipment does with the water. Once you have that dialed in, you know to start with:

3 + losses = starting volume.

Sparging is like adding water, but you use hot water to rinse the grain a bit. Sparging helps you increase your volume without diluting it as much, since there are still some residual sugars in the grain.

Palmer goes to great lengths to caution to 'not squeeze the grain" but in my experience I get an extra quart of liquid for my 5 gallon batch with none of the side-effects he mentions.

In my case, I start with 8.25 gallons, draw off 2 gallons for the sparge water, then brew with the remaining 6.25 gallons. After all the losses, I end up with 5.5 gallons going into the fermenter. That leaves me just a hair less than 5 gallons of beer when it comes time to put it into the keg.

Thanks very much!

So, just to be clear, you're saying that in mashing I should shoot for a volume of wort that is equal to my target starting volume (which, in turn, is more than what I expect to put, post boil, into the fermenter)?

And, by extension, I should not imagine that this process could work like this: I make a somewhat stronger, more sugary wort, dilute it up to my pre-boil volume and target pre-boil gravity, and go from there?

I guess the 'countertop mashing' concept had me a little fooled, if so, in that I'm not sure how to get ~3 gallons+ of wort (for a ~2.5 gallon in the fermenter beer) out of a 2 gallon cooler with 4 lbs of grain in it.

I may have to get me a bag or another mash tun.

 

[TetersMillBrewing]

So, just to be clear, you're saying that in mashing I should shoot for a volume of wort that is equal to my target starting volume (which, in turn, is more than what I expect to put, post boil, into the fermenter)?

I brew with an HLT, Mash Tun, and boil kettle, but the idea is the same. I mash with a specific mash thickness (liquor-to-grist ratio) in my mash tun, then I fly sparge to my boil kettle. So the wort I end up with after mashing is always less than what I need in the boil kettle. I may have 9 gallons of wort in my mash tun but I will end up with 14 gallons in my boil kettle after sparging. Then after the boil I will have something around 12.5 or 13 gallons depending on the boil time. As I transfer to my fermenter through my coil I will end up with my target fermenter volume, say 10 gallons, with everything else lost in the bottom of my boil kettle, hoses, and coil. So in my example, you can see that I need to have more wort before I boil to end up with the correct amount of cooled wort in my fermenter.

For BIAB, or partial mash, the principle is still the same. You need to adjust everything so you end up with more wort to boil than what you are planning to have in your fermenter. Donoroto covered a lot of the things you need to be aware of when considering the amount of water you need in each step. If you are using BF recipe editor and logs, the software, IMO, does a pretty good job of determining what the gravity of your wort should be in each phase of your brewing process.

To cover the last part of your question, once you are done mashing in your 2 gallon cooler, you can drain off the wort and then run another batch of hot water over the grains to rinse and increase your boil volume.

Hope this helps out a bit

 

[Donoroto]

Thanks very much!

So, just to be clear, you're saying that in mashing I should shoot for a volume of wort that is equal to my target starting volume (which, in turn, is more than what I expect to put, post boil, into the fermenter)?

And, by extension, I should not imagine that this process could work like this: I make a somewhat stronger, more sugary wort, dilute it up to my pre-boil volume and target pre-boil gravity, and go from there?

I guess the 'countertop mashing' concept had me a little fooled, if so, in that I'm not sure how to get ~3 gallons+ of wort (for a ~2.5 gallon in the fermenter beer) out of a 2 gallon cooler with 4 lbs of grain in it.

I may have to get me a bag or another mash tun.

Uhhh, maybe?

Clearly, you can't start with more liquid than your vessel can hold. Indeed, I'd go 10 or 20% less, just to make sure it doesn't overflow. So if you want 3 gallons post boil, wort should be something more than that, and water (total) more than even that.

Exactly how much more depends on your equipment. You'll have to measure that to be sure.

But getting 2 gallons of fairly high gravity wort and diluting it with plain water will work just fine. Of course, your diluted wort will be, well, diluted.

Perhaps, instead of adding plain water, rinse the grain and use those second runnings to add to your boil kettle. It's certainly got more sugar than plain water, even though it's less than your first runnings. It will help your efficiency, too.

That's one way to get 4 gallons out of a 2 gallon pot.

 

[GFHomebrew]

As above.

There are a few easy ways for you to fing your boil off and losses such as dead space at bottom of kettle.

Put a measured amount of water in your kettle drain this out through your pump or bottom valve measure amount. This = your dead space and miscellaneous loss though hosses pump ect. Now measure known amount into kettle boil this for 15 or 30 mins let cool drain measure.
This is your boil off rate

You can plug these into your brewers profile.

Grain absorbtion I've found is 1lt / 1kg grist give or take but it's a good starting point.

I stick with the hop absorbtion rate BF has this can have a big impact if your doing big Dry hops.

Take lots of measurements and notes now going forward brewing.
Use these to adjust your equipment profile and this will make hitting your actual calculated targets alot easier.

Efficiency wise I'd set this 65 - 70%

And if you find your consistently beating these adust up to more inline with your you achieved by altering the % in the calculator to hit what you actually observed.


Good luck.

 

[Box of Rocks]

Dear Mr. Rip Van Winkle, While you were sleeping a number of recipe-builder software solutions were developed. Check out the wonderful recipe-building offering right here on this website. You can put in your equipment profile, grains, hops, salts, yeast, and come up with estimates. Check out the water requirements to see if it all makes sense (losses from grain absorption, hops aborption, boil-off). Assume your efficiency is going to be low to start (55 to 60% maybe?) and adjust to reflect the pre-boil gravity to reflect actual vs. estimated.
When you start getting close to the target numbers, it starts to make more sense. Then, hit the "more" button and start targeting specific styles.
Good luck, have fun!

 

[Minbari]

Hi! So I'm a brewer from the early 1990s who fell asleep for thirty years and awoke to an amazing world of information, supplies, and gadgets!

Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading Palmer's How to Brew on the subject.

Here's the thing I don't quite get. I mash, I sparge, I end up with sugary wort ready to boil. But for an all grain batch, should I somehow be shooting to get a mashed wort volume equal to my pre-boil volume? I'm typically shooting to boil 3.5-4 gallons right now. So is that how much wort I should be shooting for by volume? Or do I just get as much as I can out of the lbs of grain in my grain bill, and then dilute up to the pre-boil volume?

Does that make sense?

Background: I tried the countertop mashing strategy recommended at BYO magazine, which is fun. The basic scheme is 4 lbs of grain in a 2 gallon cooler. But the result has been that I've ---way--- missed my OG targets. I've been taking the roughly 2 gallons of wort I get by this method and diluting it up to 3.5 to start boiling. I initially thought it wouldn't matter, because the sugar is all from the grain, and it's not volume dependent (right?), but now I wonder just how profoundly I am confused.

So is it that my mash efficiency is catastrophic -- like 22% or something -- or is it that I'm just profoundly confused?

THANKS!

what I do is shoot for a specific gravity that I want the OG to be. generally I boil less than full volume and end up with a sweeter than target wort at the end. this allows be to dilute to get the gravity I want. (easier and less time consuming than boiling off more water if it is too thin.)

I ussualy try to get 5 gals out of it, but if I have less or more and it is the correct gravity then it is a success.

 

[JWR_12]

Thanks everyone. I'm getting ready to do a new batch, armed with these suggestions. I've made a few inadvertent session ales (which I like) but I'm going to hopefully hit gravity targets in a mash that are more what I'm aiming for!