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Mash/Sparge H2O Amounts

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foxbrew:
hey all - i'm a fairly new AG brewer and i'm having some problems trying to calculate how much water i should be using in my mash and during my sparge process ... would really appreciate your input as to what i'm doing wrong.

for my next 5 gallon brew, i have a total of 20 lbs of grain (plus 1 lb of candi sugar).  i also have 11 quarts of dead space in my mash tun.  how much water should i be using for my mash?

also, with that same brew, how much water should i sparge with?

thanks very much in advance!

denny:
Batch sparging or fly sparging?

foxbrew:
fly sparging

i calculated that i'll need the following:

MASH - 7.5 Gallons (plus 11 Q dead space) = 10.25 Gallons of water

SPARGE - ??  I was told 2Q water per 1 pound grain ... that equals 10 gallons, which seems like way too much.

am i anywhere close?

a10t2:
Your large amount of dead space is really going to shoot you in the foot here. If you don't want to mash any thicker than, say, 1.0 qt/lb in order to be able to work with the mash, you'll infuse 20*1 + 11 = 31 qt = 7.8 gal. And you'll be able to recover 7.8 - 20*0.12 - 2.8 = 2.6 gal. You could then sparge with 3.9 gal if your pre-boil target is 6.5 gal, for example.

Sparging until the runnings hit a target gravity (3°P or whatever) probably won't be an option due to the deadspace, unless you're willing to start with a very large pre-boil volume - 12.6 gal if you used 2 qt/lb for sparging.

hokerer:

--- Quote from: a10t2 on January 30, 2013, 05:33:42 pm ---Your large amount of dead space is really going to shoot you in the foot here.

--- End quote ---

'large'?  That's more like gigantic, or enormous, or even ginormous :)

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