Total Volume of Water

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Hops_and_Dreams

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Evening all,

I've just taken delivery of my shiny new electric boiler to go AG BIAB.

Just wanted some opinions on the total amount of water I'll need to end up with 20ltrs of wort?

Brewtoad suggests about 30ltr, but that's based on many assumptions.

If it helps, i'll have around 5kg grain and 200g hop pellets. I also have no thermostat, so it will be on full pelt for 60min.

I guess I'll get to know it after a few brews, but wanted to avoid being too far out to begin with.

Thanks.
 
30 litres might be a little high if you want to end of with 20 litres post-boil. I have the standard Peco boiler which works fine without a stat for maintaining a really good rolling boil. But of course, you do lose a few litres from boil-off.
With my latest BIAB I used bottled water. I aim for 23 litres to go into the FV, and found that 30 litres didn't quite make it. I added about a litre of water from another bottle. 31 litres of water used resulted in 25 litres left in my boiler at the end, and around 23 litres of wort strained into the FV.

Do you plan to do a full BIAB - perhaps with a mash-out? Or a separate sparge? For what it's worth, I dunk sparge in a separate vessel and use the sparge water to top up the boiling wort as it reduces.

With BIAB I guess it largely depends on how much you squeeze out of the bag as you'll find the grain bag will hold a lot of water (maybe as much as 8-10 litres out of 25 litres when you just lift it out) so you need to make quite an effort to strain the bag, and then give it a good squeezing (for which I definitely recommend some rubber gloves as it'll be hot, even at mash temp!).
 
30 litres is probably not far off. I would start the boil with about 26 litres, because you will lose about 4 - 5 litres (as an estimate) to evaporation, and maybe 2 litres to hops and trub. You will also lose about 5 litres to grain absorption in the mash, so 31-32 litres sounds about right to me. But I'm guessing from afar without seeing your brewing equipment etc. If you try 30 litres, you may end up short, but you can top up to 20 litres with cold water. And adjust your water quantity accordingly next time.
 
Thanks for the replies chaps. I normally used bottled water too as I find it easier, so i'll just get some extra in case I need it.

Obviously it would be better to add a little than overshoot and end up with a weaker, less hoppy beer.

Guess the first few brews will be a bit trial and error, but I will still end up with some decent beer at the end of it!
 
This used to confuse the hell out of me when I first got my 30L Burco :oops:

Spent ages trying various calculations and surfing forums for figures. In fact, caused me a fair bit of delay trying to work out exactly how much water I needed.

In the end I just picked a figure and measured/wrote everything down so I would know exactly next time.

I had a 23L recipe and went with 32L total water. Ended up with about 22L in the FV. Lost about a another litre in BIAB grain drainage because I wasn't paying attention to what the big bag of grain in the colander perched on my coolbox mashtun was actually dripping off <sigh>

No matter, I now know exactly what I lose to grain absorption and boil off and 32L is what I need from now on for a 23L batch.

Good luck :thumb:
 
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