Mash Volumes

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Jazman

Fishweide BrauHaus
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I did a brew yestday and had 5 litres to much in my sparge so How the $%^ do get my volumes right i do use promash and my previuos brew was a bit short so uped the water volume in promash and thought was ok

so in promash i had 62 % eff with out the 3 litres lost in trub but with the 3 litres i had 70 % eff


recipe is
4kg of imc munich
1kg hophner pils
1kg hoph rauch amlz


mash in temp 65% with 18 litres

and batch sparge 24 litre total in two sparges


also preboil voilume aroun 34 -35 litres and finished with 28 and using a c/g chiller


any ideas ????????????????
 
Hi Jazman

Not sure exactly what your system is like, but here goes an answer.
This is always an issue until you get everything setup and consistent. It took me a lot of brews and time to get mine right.

The easiest way to start is to make a measuring stick that you can dip into your kettle and your HLT. I filled them up 2 litres at a a time made marks on the stick.

When you are using promash to calculate your efficiency and water required, make sure you setup in the "Water needed" section correctly.

You need to measure how much water is left in your chiller, ketter, mash tun etc as these are critical to getting everything 100%. You evaporation rate has to be worked out as well - I used 18%, some use 12 etc. You need to measure before and after the boil and work this figure out for your system. If you batch sparge, then sometimes it may be better to use too little water until you can judge exactly how much sparge water you need to add - it comes with experience.

Also in Promash, the batch size figure is your total wort size including your losses, not just what you end up with in the fermenter. This does make a difference to your calculations.
Hope this helps
Pedro
 
Don't sweat over efficiencies.

There are two types of efficiency,

1. how much you can extract out of your grain, depends on your crush and how well you sparge

2. how efficient your brew setup is with losses due to wort you loose in the chiller, wort left in the boiler with the hops and break material plus what the dog drank while your back was turned

Work on getting your final sg into the fermenter right, fine tune your brewgear and your brewday techniques, then start thinking about efficiency.
 
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