It seems to be telling me to heat 3.13 Gallons of strike water to mash 12# of grain. After figuring in grain absorbtion (1.4 gallons), I’ll be left with less than 2 gallons of wort in the foundry when I pull the grain basket out. Is this how ya’ll are doing it? Sparging with like 5 gallons of water?
In the past, I’ve just heated my pre-boil volume + grain absorbtion (1 - 1.25 gallons more depending on grain bill), and then sparged back up to pre-boil after pulling out the malt pipe. Not sure where I got this method from.
I like to start at the end and work my way to the beginning to figure water requirements. I don’t have your system but on my system I want 5 gal in a keg and I loose half a gal below the fermenter spigot, to blowoff, and to yeast/trüb so I ferment 5.5 gal. I loose 1 gal in my boil kettle below the spigot, to hop absorption, and to trüb so I want my post boil volume to be 6.5 gal. I boil off a gal so I want 7.5 gal pre boil.
The water absorbed by the grain will vary with the specifics of the grain bill, the type of malt and adjuncts and their moisture content, but an average value of 0.50 quarts per pound (1.04 L/kg) has proven to be a very reasonable assumption in most cases. (Ref: BYO)
For 12# grain, grain absorption is ~1.5 gal and I loose a bit in my pump and hoses. I don’t loose much if any in my MLT. So I start with a total volume of 9 gallons of water.
I like to try to even out my 1st and 2nd run (batch sparge) so I take the 7.5 gal I want to end up with in the brew kettle (pre boil) and split it in half. So my sparge will be ~3.75 gal.
9 gal total volume required - the 3.75 gal sparge (half the pre boil volume) = the rest of the total volume as strike water (5.25 gal). The 5.25 gal strike - the 1.5 gal grain absorption = 3.75 gal (equal runs).
I hope this helps you figure out your system. These are my avg loses, YMMV. It’s very system and process specific.
I agree with BrewBama. Also I wanted to point out that the minimum amount of strike water is 1.25 qts/lb of malt/grain. You’re close to 1 qt/lb which will make it hard to properly wet the grains. I like to stay above 1.5 qts/lb.
You can do whatever you want in terms of mashing in, provided you have enough water to cause immersion of the grain, but the Anvil Foundry instructions show the recommended water for strike and sparge based on mash method…see pp. 4-6 on the link below:
Yes, this clears things up. Thanks for taking the time to walk me through it! It would probably help my effort if I would find a single recipe to keep brewing with but I’ve been trying a lot of different things due to flash sales and curiosity so my process is usually different every batch.
I don’t get a great boil on my Foundry so I only seem to loose about .75 Gal in a 60 minute boil. It seems to get closer to a gallon if I don’t have a lot of intermediate hop additions or don’t use the hop spider (really cuts down on gunk though, especially if I want to harvest the yeast). The chiller also usually kills my boil and takes another 10 minutes to get going again so the volumes I’ve tried to use in the past have kinda ended up sideways. I’ll start this batch out at 8.75 gallons total water using this:
5.0 Gal in keg
0.5 Gal fermenter loss
1.0 Gal kettle trub loss
0.75 Gal 60 min boil loss
1.5 Gal grain absorbtion (12# @.125 gallons/lb)
So If I have this correct, I would halve my 8.75 total vol (not pre boil) leaving about 3.6 gals for sparge and 3.6 gal for strike but then add the 1.5 gal for grain absorbtion back into the strike volume?
Ok, taking a look at this chart though, Anvil is recommending (for 12# grain bill) 7.1 gal of strike water and 1 gal for sparge? Am I reading that correctly? Seems like there’s at least a half gallon or so missing somewhere.
Yes, that is correct. Kettle trub loss is minimal with the pickup tube used in its system. With a gentle boil, the boil off rate will be less than Anvil states - it contemplates a vigorous boil for an hour. I push back the power to about 75-80% once I reach the boil and my boil off rate is closer to a half gallon. There are a lot of variables, so try the written instructions and adjust from there.
+1. Great advice. I am sure they’ve taken into account most if not all the calculations for you in the instructions.
Once you dial in your system, which it looks like you are beginning to do, your only variable(s) should be recipe dependent (water vol, absorption, water chemistry, etc).
Don’t change your processes every batch. IMO the techniques a brewer chooses does not matter nearly as much as consistency.
I think what matters most is: do the same thing the same way at the same time every time. Apples to Apples. It can be a complicated process. Breaking the entire process into smaller tasks enables control.
If tasks are measured and repeated, adjustments can be made. Control creates consistency and confidence which in turn creates a calm, relaxing experience.
If the variables change every brewday there’s no control. Chaos will ensue, consistency will suffer, and confidence will erode.
The Anvil numbers came out dead on. I heated 7.3 gals for strike and ended up with 6.25 gals after mash out (gravity was 1.047). The Anvil link above says “After boil, volumes should be 2.75 and 5.5 gallons to compensate for losses during brew day.” so with a .75 gal boil-off I would have ended up at the 5.5 post-boil as they state. I did end up sparging with .5 gallons of 170F water to get my pre-boil around 6.75 because I wanted to make sure I would end up at 6. It was super close. The graduations on the Foundry just take some imagination when between markings. I should put some notches on my brew spoon to use as a depth gauge.
So, Is it really neccesary to sparge when using the recirc pump during the mash? Can I just add .5 gals (I used to sparge with) to the strike volume and call it good? The sparge water just goes through so fast I don’t see a benefit. But, then again my AG batches seem to be coming out around 50% efficiency (according to brewersfriend) so maybe I still need to change how I do things.
One possibility: If you are doing step mashes with infusions of hot water and your mash tun has limited space for the batch, the infusion volumes could take you beyond your mash tun capacity. Starting with a thicker mash such as .75:1 you can add more volume in the form of infusions later. After all the infusions you would end up with a thinner mash.
I use a measuring tape. If the distance between two gallon marks is 1.5” for example, I’d I end up between marks at say .5” from the top of the liquid to the next mark, I know I have X.66 gallons.
I throttle my pump to X gpm. That way I know how long it takes for the entire mash volume in gallons to recirculate thru the grain bed. Recirculation is one technique to improve efficiency. pH, recipe design, grain crush, and temperature are a few others.
Gotcha on that. The foundry comes with a clamp to throttle the flow but haven’t tried to measure the gph. I just make it look close to what Short Circuited Brewers uses on his Foundry video
It’s on my todo to address the other efficiency variables. I know they are there and maybe working against me but it seems I should get my boil volumes repeatable with a recipe I like as a baseline and go from there. I learned I’m getting about 55% efficiency right now, judging by what brewersfriend shows me. I didn’t realize the recipe I picked is setup for 75%. So, that was the subject of some education last night.
PH and water treatment is something else I need to look at. Not sure the water I use needs a campden tablet, or epsom salts, or other additions. I just haven’t dove into it yet. I did check PH because it seemed to be the most important. I have those strips because, well, I just didn’t have the spare cash for one of those electric gizmos. The strips seem to always come out at 6. I tried adding a 1/4 cup of lemon juice once to an extract kit to see if it really lowered the PH and it seemed to bring it down from 6 to 5.5. I’m not sure they are meant to be that accurate though. Incidentally, I’ll bet the lemon juice should be added to the strike water before mashing because why would the enzymes care about PH afterwards?
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” — Squire Bill Widener of Widener’s Valley, Virginia Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
chapter IX
I like the priorities you have. Volumes are a great start. First things first.
