Calculating strike water

[Croni486]

Hi,

Right or wrong I've decided to jump straight into AG brewing. I've spent the last few months getting my equipment together and should be finished very soon. My question is when calculating the amount strike water do i also add the dead space in my mash tun and the amount of water that would be in the HERMS to the total amount needed?

Sean

 

[strange-steve]

For the mash no, you don't need to count the dead space just use around 2.5L/kg of grain. The HERMS volume should be fairly small and mash thickness has very little effect on the finished beer so I would ignore it too.

If you are batch sparging you do need to know the dead space, so you know how much to top up and how much water to use for the second batch. If you're fly sparging again you can ignore dead space, just sparge till you have collected your pre boil volume.

HERMS for your first brew? Brave man. I used HERMS for a while but stopped, it was too much faff and it's not really necessary imo. Now I like to keep everything as simple as possible.

 

[Croni486]

Thanks for the heads up, always one to jump in at the deep end and the phrase "all the gear but no idea" has been used by my wife a few times.

 

[strange-steve]

Thanks for the heads up, always one to jump in at the deep end and the phrase "all the gear but no idea" has been used by my wife a few times.

I was exactly the same, all or nothing!

 

[Croni486]

She nagged that much about all the things i'd bought i had to appease her and bought a kit that is currently fermenting now.

 

[geetee]

I usually use about 2.7 Kg/litre but you can go up to 3 if you have lots of roasted grains. You will have to take into account the amount that is retained by your grain when calculating a volume for batch sparging, usually about 1litre/kg