Water volumes with kits on Grainfather

[tigertim]

Hello all, I did a lot of brewing around a decade ago with a classic plastic three pot setup but the pressures of life got in the way slightly and brewing took a bit of a back seat, scaling down to extract brews only and finally no brewing at all - horrific, I know! However, I'm now in a place where I should have time and space to brew properly again and have managed to acquire a Grainfather G30.

To start me off as a brewing refresher, before investing in a lot of grain and hops and to get familiar with the equipment, I decided to do an all-grain kit brew but it has immediately raised some questions with regard to the mash/sparge volumes and I was wondering if the wise minds here had any advice.

The 23 litre recipe states :

For "standard" set up, mash for 90 minutes at 65C with 2.5l water/kg (as there is 4.725g of malt, that would be 11.8 litres). Then sparge at 77C to a volume of 26L. This is the method I'm familiar with.

However, it also states :

For "Brewmeister", mash for 60 minutes at 65C with 23 litres. Raise to 77C for 10 minutes and then top up to 27L (i.e. apparently no sparge?)

If I enter the recipe into the Grainfather App, it suggests I should mash with 16.26 litres of water and then sparge with 17.02 litres of water. This gives a total of 33.28 litres but I guess the total volume of wort will be less because of liquid trapped in the spent mash.

I've a mind to ignore the recipe and do what the Grainfather app suggests but would appreciate any recommendations. Sorry for being a noob again!

 

[Slid]

Hello all, I did a lot of brewing around a decade ago with a classic plastic three pot setup but the pressures of life got in the way slightly and brewing took a bit of a back seat, scaling down to extract brews only and finally no brewing at all - horrific, I know! However, I'm now in a place where I should have time and space to brew properly again and have managed to acquire a Grainfather G30.

To start me off as a brewing refresher, before investing in a lot of grain and hops and to get familiar with the equipment, I decided to do an all-grain kit brew but it has immediately raised some questions with regard to the mash/sparge volumes and I was wondering if the wise minds here had any advice.

The 23 litre recipe states :

For "standard" set up, mash for 90 minutes at 65C with 2.5l water/kg (as there is 4.725g of malt, that would be 11.8 litres). Then sparge at 77C to a volume of 26L. This is the method I'm familiar with.

However, it also states :

For "Brewmeister", mash for 60 minutes at 65C with 23 litres. Raise to 77C for 10 minutes and then top up to 27L (i.e. apparently no sparge?)

If I enter the recipe into the Grainfather App, it suggests I should mash with 16.26 litres of water and then sparge with 17.02 litres of water. This gives a total of 33.28 litres but I guess the total volume of wort will be less because of liquid trapped in the spent mash.

I've a mind to ignore the recipe and do what the Grainfather app suggests but would appreciate any recommendations. Sorry for being a noob again!

The GF deals very well with a grain bill of this sort of size. You want to mash with 2.7L for each kg of grain and add on 3.5L, as that is how much water fits under the grain basket, so 16.26 L is fine, but "anywhere between 16 and a bit and 16 and a half" is what it means.

As regards the sparge, I aim for 25L in the FV and would go for around 36L of water in total, so if you aim for 23L, then a total of 34L is consistent with my trial and error stuff. So you heat up 17-18L of sparge water to 75L, sparge slowly and on you go!

 

[peebee]

Water calculations take into account "dead-spaces" and other such volumes that are peculiar to the equipment. So for you the Grainfather app should be closest.

But there are other "tweaks" like grain absorbency, mash "thickness, and so on that you may tweak (or not) as you get experience with the equipment.

 

[tigertim]

Perfect, that's exactly what I wanted to know - thanks both for responding so quickly! I hadn't considered the extra 3.5 litres of extra space under the grain basket - things I never had to think about before with a Campingaz cooler mash tun :)