New to brewing - Am I understanding the sparge volume correctley?

[Mister clark]

Hi all,

Newbie here hoping for some hand holding/reassurance!!!

I've been looking at recipes on beersmith and decided I would like to brew this DIPA for my first attempt:

http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/17432/citra-double-ipa-clone-kern-river-brewing-company-cybi-podcast-version

So, I've selected my equipment profile (20L Braumeister) but I'm a bit concerned with the sparge water volume and I'm worried I've messed something up.

Beersmith is telling me to use 19 liters of sparge water - from reading I've done that sounds like a hell of a lot - does that sound right?

The recipe is calls for approximately 7.50KG of grain.

Many thanks in advance!

 

[MastersBrewery]

On the phone so can't link but you need to have a good read of the dedicated braumeister guide thread in gear and equipment. But straight up 20L BM won't do 7.5 kg of grain without a lot of buggering around. Your probably biting at the bit to knock out some awesome beers. You will but ease up on pushing the limits till you get used to the routine of using the machine first
MB

 

[danestead]

Id start with a tried and true recipe like the Dr Smurtos Golden ale or Little Creatures Bright Ale Clone in the recipe database before jumping into a DIPA for your first attempt. You are just going to waste a lot of hops and malt trying to attempt a high alcohol beer like that for the first attempt. Im sorry but you are much more likely to brew a great tasting beer by trying one of the recipes I suggested above.

 

[danestead]

In relation to your braumeister, I mash in with 27L and I use 0.5L per kg of grain as the grain absorption. I get 3.1L per hour evaporation during the boil. Ive used 7kg in the malt pipe before however the efficiency drops off quite a bit and you need to stir it often. Id stick with a max of 5-5.5kg to start with. I use 80% efficiency for a brew with about 5kg of malt. My sparge water is usually about 3 or 4L for a 25L post boil volume and a 5kg grist. Hope those figures help.

 

[Droopy Brew]

What is your starting water to grain ratio Mr C? This along with your total kettle volume will dictate how much sparge water you need.
Danestead's figures above surprised me but then I realised that a BM is more similar to a BIAB than a 3V in that it is more or less a full volume mash with only a little sparge. So assuming he is using 5kg of grain then at 27L he is mashing at 5.4L/kg. Most 3V use about 2.5-3L/kg.


So you can manually work out your volumes to be sure you sparge is correct.
Start by how much finished wort you want in the FV- say 20L.
Then add how much loss there is to trub and what is left in the kettle. In my system it is usually 4L = 24L
Then add evaporation. I lose about 6L per hour in mine =30L
I also add about 0.5L for volume loss to cooling (wort shrinks) so total in the kettle of 30.5L

So the amount of water you need to use = 30.5L plus loss to grain absorption plus sparge loss (what is left in the bottom of the mash tun after draining). You wont have sparge loss as you are single vessel. Again interested that Dane uses 0.5L/kg, I work with 1L/kg but he may squeeze grains to reduce this- I dont know.

So my total water will be 30.5L + 5L (using a 5kg grain bill) + 2L (sparge loss) = 37.5L

Now if I do a single mash at say 65C at 3l/kg that is 15L.
I work out how much boiling water I need to infuse to get to mash out temp, lets say 8L (again, you wont infuse, you will just ramp the temp so you dont need to account for this). I have used 23L out of the total of 37.5L
The rest is my sparge- 14.5L.

It is a good practice to do some of the maths manually rather than relying on the brew programs, just so you have an understanding of the process and can pick up if something is amiss in the program (usually from entering a wrong figure).


OK so making some assumptions* on your figures then to have 19L sparge you would need something like this:
FV= 20L
Cooling loss= 0.5L
Trub loss=4L*
Evap loss (60min)= 3L*
Total kettle starting V= 27.5L

Grain (7.5kg) absorption @ 1L/kg = 7.5L*
Total water volume = 35L
Sparge= 19L

Means your mash in water volume is 16L which is about 2.1L/kg. I think that may be a bit thick for a BM?

Also +1 to doing a 5kg grain bill as your first brew.

 

[MastersBrewery]

What is your starting water to grain ratio Mr C? This along with your total kettle volume will dictate how much sparge water you need.
Danestead's figures above surprised me but then I realised that a BM is more similar to a BIAB than a 3V in that it is more or less a full volume mash with only a little sparge. So assuming he is using 5kg of grain then at 27L he is mashing at 5.4L/kg. Most 3V use about 2.5-3L/kg.


So you can manually work out your volumes to be sure you sparge is correct.
Start by how much finished wort you want in the FV- say 20L.
Then add how much loss there is to trub and what is left in the kettle. In my system it is usually 4L = 24L
Then add evaporation. I lose about 6L per hour in mine =30L
I also add about 0.5L for volume loss to cooling (wort shrinks) so total in the kettle of 30.5L

So the amount of water you need to use = 30.5L plus loss to grain absorption plus sparge loss (what is left in the bottom of the mash tun after draining). You wont have sparge loss as you are single vessel. Again interested that Dane uses 0.5L/kg, I work with 1L/kg but he may squeeze grains to reduce this- I dont know.

So my total water will be 30.5L + 5L (using a 5kg grain bill) + 2L (sparge loss) = 37.5L

Now if I do a single mash at say 65C at 3l/kg that is 15L.
I work out how much boiling water I need to infuse to get to mash out temp, lets say 8L (again, you wont infuse, you will just ramp the temp so you dont need to account for this). I have used 23L out of the total of 37.5L
The rest is my sparge- 14.5L.

It is a good practice to do some of the maths manually rather than relying on the brew programs, just so you have an understanding of the process and can pick up if something is amiss in the program (usually from entering a wrong figure).


OK so making some assumptions* on your figures then to have 19L sparge you would need something like this:
FV= 20L
Cooling loss= 0.5L
Trub loss=4L*
Evap loss (60min)= 3L*
Total kettle starting V= 27.5L

Grain (7.5kg) absorption @ 1L/kg = 7.5L*
Total water volume = 35L
Sparge= 19L

Means your mash in water volume is 16L which is about 2.1L/kg. I think that may be a bit thick for a BM?

Also +1 to doing a 5kg grain bill as your first brew.

Good numbers, but the overall point was max grain bill for a 20L BM is 6 kg, and doing so reduces efficiency. Now I'm sure you could make the beer linked by the OP; how ever you would need to reduce the batch size to a 5-5.5kg grain bill. The BM has a standard water mark for strike, fill to this, mash, and sparge till pre boil gravity is hit. I have a BM clone my malt pipes are much bigger, one is enormous triple batches with ease. The trick with these systems is a balance of grits to water in the malt pipe as well as covering the elements with liquid; anything bellow 2.7L/kg is asking for trouble, 2.5L/kg is just wasting grain, 2.1L/kg and you wont be recircing, in fact you'd end up binning it.

 

[Droopy Brew]

Agree the OP's grain bill was too optimistic for the equipment but the question was about the sparge volume and whether it was calculated correctly.
Based on the 19L sparge and the resultant mash water, the mash was definitely too thick, which I guess does lead back to the grain bill being to hefty.

 

[Mister clark]

On the phone so can't link but you need to have a good read of the dedicated braumeister guide thread in gear and equipment. But straight up 20L BM won't do 7.5 kg of grain without a lot of buggering around. Your probably biting at the bit to knock out some awesome beers. You will but ease up on pushing the limits till you get used to the routine of using the machine first
MB

You are quite right, I totally did not even think about the volume of grain, thank you!

 

[Mister clark]

In relation to your braumeister, I mash in with 27L and I use 0.5L per kg of grain as the grain absorption. I get 3.1L per hour evaporation during the boil. Ive used 7kg in the malt pipe before however the efficiency drops off quite a bit and you need to stir it often. Id stick with a max of 5-5.5kg to start with. I use 80% efficiency for a brew with about 5kg of malt. My sparge water is usually about 3 or 4L for a 25L post boil volume and a 5kg grist. Hope those figures help.

Thank you for your advice; I'm certainly going to take it on board and scale it back quite a bit - I guess I love big hoppy IPAs so wanted to emulate that without really thinking it though.

I'll scale back accordingly and see if I can find something that takes my eye

 

[Mister clark]

What is your starting water to grain ratio Mr C? This along with your total kettle volume will dictate how much sparge water you need.
Danestead's figures above surprised me but then I realised that a BM is more similar to a BIAB than a 3V in that it is more or less a full volume mash with only a little sparge. So assuming he is using 5kg of grain then at 27L he is mashing at 5.4L/kg. Most 3V use about 2.5-3L/kg.


So you can manually work out your volumes to be sure you sparge is correct.
Start by how much finished wort you want in the FV- say 20L.
Then add how much loss there is to trub and what is left in the kettle. In my system it is usually 4L = 24L
Then add evaporation. I lose about 6L per hour in mine =30L
I also add about 0.5L for volume loss to cooling (wort shrinks) so total in the kettle of 30.5L

So the amount of water you need to use = 30.5L plus loss to grain absorption plus sparge loss (what is left in the bottom of the mash tun after draining). You wont have sparge loss as you are single vessel. Again interested that Dane uses 0.5L/kg, I work with 1L/kg but he may squeeze grains to reduce this- I dont know.

So my total water will be 30.5L + 5L (using a 5kg grain bill) + 2L (sparge loss) = 37.5L

Now if I do a single mash at say 65C at 3l/kg that is 15L.
I work out how much boiling water I need to infuse to get to mash out temp, lets say 8L (again, you wont infuse, you will just ramp the temp so you dont need to account for this). I have used 23L out of the total of 37.5L
The rest is my sparge- 14.5L.

It is a good practice to do some of the maths manually rather than relying on the brew programs, just so you have an understanding of the process and can pick up if something is amiss in the program (usually from entering a wrong figure).


OK so making some assumptions* on your figures then to have 19L sparge you would need something like this:
FV= 20L
Cooling loss= 0.5L
Trub loss=4L*
Evap loss (60min)= 3L*
Total kettle starting V= 27.5L

Grain (7.5kg) absorption @ 1L/kg = 7.5L*
Total water volume = 35L
Sparge= 19L

Means your mash in water volume is 16L which is about 2.1L/kg. I think that may be a bit thick for a BM?

Also +1 to doing a 5kg grain bill as your first brew.

Hey Droopy, thanks for taking the time to write this, really appreciated.
A lot of it makes sense but some of it not quite as clear, I guess I need to more reading and go with a 'tried and tested' beer before I get too adventurous!
I've got a copy of 'How to Brew' coming so hopefully that will help, I'm pretty much learning everything from books/you tube/ forums so posts like this really are appreciated, thank you!