Mash and sparge water amounts advice for a hop bomb in a Grainfather

[hammer]

Hi all
I'm quite new to brewing, only just brewed 2 beers from recipes so far. I think it's a lot of fun though, so I got myself a Grainfather and I'm now working on a recipe for my 3rd beer. It's quite inspired by asha23's Verdant Putty clone (link to that here), but using a some different hops and grains.

Here's what I'm planning:
Grain
5kg Golden Promise
1kg Maris Otter
1kg flaked oats
1kg cane sugar

Yeast
London Ale III

Hops
50g Simcoe - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Mosaic - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Citra - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius

50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 0
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 0
50g Citra - dry hop, day 0
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 0


50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 7
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 7
50g Citra - dry hop, day 7
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 7

Bottle at day 14.

Question
My recipe should be for a 25 L batch, based on other recipes I've seen. But I can't seem to find any information as to how much water to use while mashing, and how much I'll need when sparging to come up to 25/27 L. Any advice? Would love to hear any input!

 

[Zephyr259]

The Grainfather has it's own water calculations.

Mash Volume = 2.7 L per kg grain + 3.5 L
Sparge Volume = Target Pre-Boil - Mash Vol + 0.8 x kg grain
Target Pre-Boil = Batch Volume + 2 + 3 per hour boil

So, you want 25 L in the FV, 1 hr boil means you need 30 L pre-boil which is going to be brim full and a bit risky. 7 kg grain gives 22.4 L strike water and 13.2 L sparge. With that much grain your efficiency is likely to suck, you could run a thicker mash (2.3 L/kg) which moves 2.8 L from mash to sparge and will help a bit but the mash is sometimes very thick when I do that.

Have you seem the Grainfather online recipe calculator? It has the water formulae embedded and they actually seem to work after the last overhaul. It often seems to get a bunch of criticism but always seems to work fine for me.

Good luck.

 

[foxy]

Hi all
I'm quite new to brewing, only just brewed 2 beers from recipes so far. I think it's a lot of fun though, so I got myself a Grainfather and I'm now working on a recipe for my 3rd beer. It's quite inspired by asha23's Verdant Putty clone (link to that here), but using a some different hops and grains.

Here's what I'm planning:
Grain
5kg Golden Promise
1kg Maris Otter
1kg flaked oats
1kg cane sugar

Yeast
London Ale III

Hops
50g Simcoe - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Mosaic - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Citra - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius

50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 0
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 0
50g Citra - dry hop, day 0
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 0


50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 7
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 7
50g Citra - dry hop, day 7
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 7

Bottle at day 14.

Question
My recipe should be for a 25 L batch, based on other recipes I've seen. But I can't seem to find any information as to how much water to use while mashing, and how much I'll need when sparging to come up to 25/27 L. Any advice? Would love to hear any input!

I think you will be wasting the "0" day hops, try day 3.

 

[hammer]

The Grainfather has it's own water calculations.

Mash Volume = 2.7 L per kg grain + 3.5 L
Sparge Volume = Target Pre-Boil - Mash Vol + 0.8 x kg grain
Target Pre-Boil = Batch Volume + 2 + 3 per hour boil

So, you want 25 L in the FV, 1 hr boil means you need 30 L pre-boil which is going to be brim full and a bit risky. 7 kg grain gives 22.4 L strike water and 13.2 L sparge. With that much grain your efficiency is likely to suck, you could run a thicker mash (2.3 L/kg) which moves 2.8 L from mash to sparge and will help a bit but the mash is sometimes very thick when I do that.

Have you seem the Grainfather online recipe calculator? It has the water formulae embedded and they actually seem to work after the last overhaul. It often seems to get a bunch of criticism but always seems to work fine for me.

Good luck.

Thanks Zephyr, my brewday was actually yesterday so your reply came at the perfect time! I ended up using 22,5 L for mashing, and then I just sparged with enough water till I had 28,5 L. My OG ended up at 1082 and that's pretty much in the range that I was hoping for. So it seems everything went fine.

I made a starter for the yeast (also the first time I did this) and pitched it around 18:00, and a bit before midnight I already had bubbling going on in the airlock.

 

[Zephyr259]

That's good timing and glad everything went so well.

 

[hammer]

I think you will be wasting the "0" day hops, try day 3.

Hm, sad I didn't see this before I brewed, somehow I got a notification with Zephyr's reply but not yours. I brewed yesterday and added in the hops right away. Crossing my fingers that it'll still turn out alright! Could you elaborate on why the hops might be wasted? The goal is to achieve biotransformation which, based on my limited understanding, happens when the hops are added while the yeast is active. As far as I can tell, the yeast is definitely already active, so why wait till day 3?

 

[foxy]

Late addition hops at flame out and too early is apparently a waste of hops. The sparging CO2 during the early stages of fermentation takes with it all the unwanted volatile's plus the wanted ones (hop aroma) There is a really good article in the current BYO magazine, also Peter Wolfes Thesis on dry hopping also covers the same theme. There are conflicting ideas but for myself I have found that a dry hop in the secondary works better for me.

 

[hammer]

Late addition hops at flame out and too early is apparently a waste of hops. The sparging CO2 during the early stages of fermentation takes with it all the unwanted volatile's plus the wanted ones (hop aroma) There is a really good article in the current BYO magazine, also Peter Wolfes Thesis on dry hopping also covers the same theme. There are conflicting ideas but for myself I have found that a dry hop in the secondary works better for me.

Oh that actually makes sense. Thanks for the heads up about the article, I'll try to look it up.

I'm currently planning to add another round of dry hops on Sunday and keep it in the fermenter an additional 7 days after that. Would you recommend I do something different?

 

[foxy]

Oh that actually makes sense. Thanks for the heads up about the article, I'll try to look it up.

I'm currently planning to add another round of dry hops on Sunday and keep it in the fermenter an additional 7 days after that. Would you recommend I do something different?

Have a read through this. You can download the PDF by clicking the download button on the left of the screen.
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/rx913t14h

 

[hammer]

Have a read through this. You can download the PDF by clicking the download button on the left of the screen.
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/rx913t14h

Thank you so much! Based on the abstract alone it seems like a super interesting read. I'll dive into it later today.

 

[foxy]

 

[Keruso]

Hi all
I'm quite new to brewing, only just brewed 2 beers from recipes so far. I think it's a lot of fun though, so I got myself a Grainfather and I'm now working on a recipe for my 3rd beer. It's quite inspired by asha23's Verdant Putty clone (link to that here), but using a some different hops and grains.

Here's what I'm planning:
Grain
5kg Golden Promise
1kg Maris Otter
1kg flaked oats
1kg cane sugar

Yeast
London Ale III

Hops
50g Simcoe - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Mosaic - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Citra - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius

50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 0
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 0
50g Citra - dry hop, day 0
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 0


50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 7
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 7
50g Citra - dry hop, day 7
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 7

Bottle at day 14.

Question
My recipe should be for a 25 L batch, based on other recipes I've seen. But I can't seem to find any information as to how much water to use while mashing, and how much I'll need when sparging to come up to 25/27 L. Any advice? Would love to hear any input!

Hi, I did my first few brews manually, using the mash and sparge calculations and a spreadsheet. Moving on to use the online recipe builder and the app makes a big improvement. Not only does it calculate mash and sparge water for you, it runs your brewday, gives you a permanent recording of what you did, you can add notes etc. and change any of the ingredients or other parameters if required. You need to download the latest version of the app.

 

[hammer]

Hi, I did my first few brews manually, using the mash and sparge calculations and a spreadsheet. Moving on to use the online recipe builder and the app makes a big improvement. Not only does it calculate mash and sparge water for you, it runs your brewday, gives you a permanent recording of what you did, you can add notes etc. and change any of the ingredients or other parameters if required. You need to download the latest version of the app.

Hi Keruso. Yeah I actually did that, the recipe is on the Grainfather app and I ran it through there. I just couldn't trust the water calculations because it included the cane sugar as a fermentable, so the water amount was calculated based on an 8 kg grain bill. Also, I was just a bit uncertain if I could trust the water calculations at all, but now I know that I can!

 

[Keruso]

Hi Keruso. Yeah I actually did that, the recipe is on the Grainfather app and I ran it through there. I just couldn't trust the water calculations because it included the cane sugar as a fermentable, so the water amount was calculated based on an 8 kg grain bill. Also, I was just a bit uncertain if I could trust the water calculations at all, but now I know that I can!

Hi the app is wise enough to know whether a fermentable requires mash water or not. Adding sugar will increase the weight of the fermentables, as it should, but it doesn’t alter the mash/sparge water volumes.

 

[Keruso]

Hi all
I'm quite new to brewing, only just brewed 2 beers from recipes so far. I think it's a lot of fun though, so I got myself a Grainfather and I'm now working on a recipe for my 3rd beer. It's quite inspired by asha23's Verdant Putty clone (link to that here), but using a some different hops and grains.

Here's what I'm planning:
Grain
5kg Golden Promise
1kg Maris Otter
1kg flaked oats
1kg cane sugar

Yeast
London Ale III

Hops
50g Simcoe - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Mosaic - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius
50g Citra - 30 mins hop stand/whirlpool @ 80 degrees celsius

50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 0
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 0
50g Citra - dry hop, day 0
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 0


50g Simcoe - dry hop, day 7
50g Mosaic - dry hop, day 7
50g Citra - dry hop, day 7
50g Nelson Sauvin - dry hop, day 7

Bottle at day 14.

Question
My recipe should be for a 25 L batch, based on other recipes I've seen. But I can't seem to find any information as to how much water to use while mashing, and how much I'll need when sparging to come up to 25/27 L. Any advice? Would love to hear any input!

One thing to note is grainfather define batch size as the volume into the fermenter not the amount of beer you can package ( the yield ). A batch size of 25 litres will assume 2 litres of loss in the fermenter, to hops and trub. It is only a guide. I build my recipes for a batch size of 22 litres which means I get roughly 20 litres, enough to fill a keg with little if any wastage.

 

[hammer]

Hi the app is wise enough to know whether a fermentable requires mash water or not. Adding sugar will increase the weight of the fermentables, as it should, but it doesn’t alter the mash/sparge water volumes.

Sadly it wasn't in this case, but I think that's just because I had to add the cane sugar as a custom fermentable. I wasn't able to find the variant amongst the premade ones that existed in the app. In the Grainfather app it's telling me to use 24,66 L to mash for my recipe, which is the correct number if you're using 8 kgs. But next time, when I'm brewing without any "custom" sugar, I'll know that I can use the number in the app. Thanks for the heads up!

Edit: Actually 24,66 L is not the amount of water to use for an 8 kg mash, I don't know how it arrived at that number...

 

[Keruso]

Sadly it wasn't in this case, but I think that's just because I had to add the cane sugar as a custom fermentable. I wasn't able to find the variant amongst the premade ones that existed in the app. In the Grainfather app it's telling me to use 24,66 L to mash for my recipe, which is the correct number if you're using 8 kgs. But next time, when I'm brewing without any "custom" sugar, I'll know that I can use the number in the app. Thanks for the heads up!

Edit: Actually 24,66 L is not the amount of water to use for an 8 kg mash, I don't know how it arrived at that number...

Ah ok, that probably explains it, I’ve never added a custom fermentable. You did make me think I should go and check, I tried adding some corn sugar / dextrose to a recipe and it didn’t change the mash or sparge volume thankfully.

 

[Zephyr259]

If you use the custom fermentable option there's a box which you can switch from mash to steep, extract or late addition, the options other than mash remove it from the mash water calculation.

Odd you couldn't find sugar, typing it into the search for fermentables gives several types include table sugar (sucrose) and cane (beet) sugar, which is a bit of an oxymoron. You just have to scroll past about 100 different candi sugar options.

 

[hammer]

Just a quick follow up in case anyone was interested.

I ended up with about 24 L in the fermenter, and I just measured FG and bottled on monday. I ended up with an FG of 1012, so I landed at about 9,5 % alcohol. Had a quick taste when I bottled and it was crazy bitter. I expect that it needs a few weeks in the bottle to settle a bit.

In total, I've ended up with barely 19L of beer bottled. I think that's a big loss from the 24L in the fermenter. I lost a lot due to the yeast cake at the bottom, and a big load of dissolved hop pellets floating on top. For my next brew I think I'll use hop bags to avoid this, but I don't think I can avoid losing a lot of beer to the yeast. Any pointers? Does it sound like a reasonable amount to lose?