Basic AG Questions

[zigga]

I want to move on into AG Brewing in a little while and was wondering about a few things. :hmm:

1. How do you calculate how much grain you will need for, let's say, a 5 gallon/23 litre batch of beer?
2. How much strike water do you need for this amount of grain?
3. Do you sparge with the remainder of the strike water to bring the boil kettle to 23 litres (or just over to allow for evaporation during the boil) even if you've extracted every last bit of sugar from the grains or do you run enough through the grain until it's clear then top up the kettle with water for the boil?

I want to build my own 3 tiered system with pumps and tubing all connected (ambitious I know :rofl: ) and it would be great to know the answers to the above so that I can work out the sizes of the drums I will need and how to setup the flow of the liquid through the system eventually to the FV

Thanks a lot

 

[Muddydisco]

Anywhere between 3.5 -6 kg of grain is normal depending on the Og your after.
Strike water is normally 2.5ltr per kilo of grain.
If you have sparged to the lowest you want to go and you are short on volume, you will need to check your gravity in the boiler to make sure you are at the desired level or higher if your higher you can add some more water to bring your volume up and the Og down.

Things like Brewing software help alot with these kinds of calculations. Beersmith do a free trail have a look at them.

But for a normal 23 ltr brew you want to be looking for around 30ltr+ Vessels

Here's a sample of what beersmith show you

01/11/2009 Clean and prepare equipment.
-- Measure ingredients, crush grains.
-- Prepare 34.55 L water for brewing
--
Prepare Ingredients for Mash
Amount Item Type
4.93 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (9.9 EBC) Grain
0.15 kg Wheat, Torrified (3.3 EBC) Grain
0.08 kg Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (157.6 EBC) Grain
0.04 kg Roasted Barley (591.0 EBC) Grain
0.03 kg Chocolate Malt (2088.2 EBC) Grain
0 min
Mash Ingredients
Step: Add 13.05 L of water at 77.4 C
90 min - Hold mash at 68.0 C for 90 min
-- Sparge with 21.50 L of 76.6 C water.
-- Add water to achieve boil volume of 29.32 L
-- Estimated Pre-boil Gravity is: 1.042 SG with all grains/extracts added
Boil for 90
min
Boil Ingredients
Boil Amount Item Type
90 min 19.04 gm Northdown [7.90 %] (90 min) Hops
90 min 22.04 gm Magnum [10.00 %] (90 min) Hops
--
Steep Hops
Amount Item Type
30.00 gm
Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] (30 min) (Aroma
Hop-Steep)
Hops
-- Cool wort to fermentation temperature
-- Add water (as needed) to achieve volume of 23.00 L
-- Siphon wort to primary fermenter and aerate wort.
--
Add Ingredients to Fermenter
Amount Item Type
1 Pkgs SafAle English Ale (DCL Yeast #S-04) Yeast-Ale
01/11/2009 Measure Original Gravity: ________ (Estimate: 1.050 SG)
01/11/2009 Measure Batch Volume: ________ (Estimate: 23.00 L)

 

[phettebs]

+1 on Beersmith and what muddydisco said. I use Beersmith to formulate all of my recipes. It helps you with style guidelines (color, bitterness, abv%, etc) and you basically start plugging in numbers.

Beersmith allows you to enter your equipment and then calculate your strike and sparge water volumes based on the recipe. But I'll be honest; I've never gotten that working. I have another software utility that I got when I first started AG and have come to know and trust it. I use it for all my water volume calculations. Everything else, I use Beersmith.

Get the free trial and see if you like it.

Barry

 

[Aleman]

Don't forget our own recipe designer at the top of the page!!

And there is Brew Mate Or Beer Engine Or Pro Mash

I use Promash but the developer is not developing it further whcih is a shame, it would be nice to see it get a makeover to bring it visually up to date. I am happy to use Either Beer Engine or THBF recipe page to put together quick recipes and sanity check others.

Generally 1Kg of pale malt will yield about (296 * .75) Gravity points which divided by the volume tells me how much grain I'm going to need.

So for 20L (in the FV) at 1.048 I will need 20 * 48 = 960 Gravity points
which is provided by 960/(296 * .75) = 4.3Kg of Pale malt.