New to All Grain .. Please help!

I’ve got several extract brews under my belt and I’m really wanting to get into all grain. But I have a few questions that I can’t seem to figure out. #1 - I plan on continuing with brewing 5 gallon batches. Where or how do you go about figuring out the volume ratios of strike water/mash volume/sparge water? Is this specified in the recipe? Or do I need to use some sort of brew software? #2 - Where is the best place to find recipes to get my feet wet in all grain?

:cheers:

[quote=“jpc6774”]I’ve got several extract brews under my belt and I’m really wanting to get into all grain. But I have a few questions that I can’t seem to figure out. #1 - I plan on continuing with brewing 5 gallon batches. Where or how do you go about figuring out the volume ratios of strike water/mash volume/sparge water?
This is really up to you and system dependent. An easy figure is use 1.25 qts / lb of grain. For sparging figure about 1/2gal per lb of grain. These are rough figures so you might have too much or too little.

Is this specified in the recipe? Or do I need to use some sort of brew software?
it can be specified in recipes but as I mentioned, you may find your system works better at a certain mash ratio. Using brewing software is great for this because you will input data that is specific to YOUR system (i.e. MT dead space, HLT dead space, boil off, etc.). Beersmith 2 is what I use.

#2 - Where is the best place to find recipes to get my feet wet in all grain?
our host sells many tried and true recipes. They can also come pre-milled so you don’t have to fork money over for a mill while you learn the intricacies of AG. .
:cheers: [/quote]

Great to hear all grain is a lot of fun. There are plenty of software and apps to help you figure out volumes and temps. I use Brewers friend. But basically you add 1.25 to 1.5 quarts water per pound of grain. The water should be heated to about 10 deg warmer than you want your mash temp. For example heat your water to 160 if you want to mash 150. There are calculators God strike temp also.After you drain the grain you just sparge the exact amount you are short to get your boil volume. Are you doing biab or are you going with a tun. Some people make it more complicated than it has to be.

If you batch sparge following my instructions at www.dennybrew.com, you simply mash with whatever ration you like. I usually use in the neighborhood of 1.66 qt./lb. Then sparge with whatever amount gets you to your boil volume.

Thanks for the help! Just ordered my all grain equipment. Should be getting started soon!

I’m retro fitting a 10 gallon cooler as a mash tun. I wanted to try my hand in batch sparging and eventually fly sparging. Besides, I get to add some extra equipment to my setup … :smiley:

That’s how I started. If you follow this forum you will notice everyone has their own style, that’s what makes this a fun hobby. Everyone trying to improve on the mouse trap. :cheers:

Trying to get my head around the process. It seems to make sense for the most part, but not sure about the water volume.

With extract kits, I measure out my water, whatever size boil, and then top off to get to the 5 gallon batch after the boil. With all grain/ BIAB, i’m gathering that you have to add water volume for the grain soaking up, so when/if you sparge, are you doing that with “fresh” hot water (liquor, right), or are you sparging with the “runnings” from your wort? So if I follow some of the examples, you have the grain bag hanging above the brew kettle, do you sparge with liquor until you have your wort volume where you want it pre-boil, or just top off to the desired level pre-boil?

I guess that’s why the larger kettle is helpful. If you want a 6.5 gallon pre boil volume, with all the grains added in it’s probably tight in a smaller 30 quart kettle.

edit: just read through Denny’s page on sparging. seems to make more sense now.

I’ve used Denny’s method of mashing & batch sparging for many years. You will typically spend 4 hrs. +/- on a brew day, all grain. This is the most efficient and fastest way I know of that typically works for me and many, many others. Check out his web site, there’s lots of very good info.

[quote=“ChuckVug”]Trying to get my head around the process. It seems to make sense for the most part, but not sure about the water volume.

With extract kits, I measure out my water, whatever size boil, and then top off to get to the 5 gallon batch after the boil. With all grain/ BIAB, i’m gathering that you have to add water volume for the grain soaking up, so when/if you sparge, are you doing that with “fresh” hot water (liquor, right), or are you sparging with the “runnings” from your wort? So if I follow some of the examples, you have the grain bag hanging above the brew kettle, do you sparge with liquor until you have your wort volume where you want it pre-boil, or just top off to the desired level pre-boil?

I guess that’s why the larger kettle is helpful. If you want a 6.5 gallon pre boil volume, with all the grains added in it’s probably tight in a smaller 30 quart kettle.

edit: just read through Denny’s page on sparging. seems to make more sense now.[/quote]

You had it right the first time. You sparge with fresh hot water (usually around 170*-180* if I’m not mistaken), not with the runnings from your original wort collection. There are two type of sparging methods, batch and fly.

From the all the things I’ve read, batch sparging seems to be the easiest. Once you have recirculated the wort from your original mash to settle the grain bed (after 60 min mash), you collect your first runnings from the mash into your boil kettle. Then you introduce your sparge water (liquor) and stir to rinse the remaining sugars still in the grain bed. You need to use enough sparge water to get to your boil volume. Then recirculate again and collect those runnings.

Fly sparging is where instead of stirring your sparge water into the grain bed, you trickle your sparge water from a hot liquor tank through a sparge arm. This gradually rinses the settled grain bed at the same time you are collecting the runnings. Again, sparging until you hit your target boil volume.

Not really sure, but I don’t think you want to top off your wort with just plain water to hit your target boil volume. I’m sure that would dilute your end product. You will need a boil kettle to handle the full volume. I brew 5 gallon batches and I just an 8 gallon MegaPot 1.2 for my brew kettle.

Hope that helped. I’m still pretty new to the process as well. :cheers:

Makes sense, and the sparging increases the efficiency, which means it gets the most flavor/fermentables/etc from the grain into the wort, right?

So BIAB seems like a simple way to make cleanup easy, and if I set up a mashtun with a cooler like Denny, I could fairly easily do a batch sparge with a BIAB. I’d just need a brew kettle large enough for the mash water volume, and then a kettle large enough to heat the sparge/hot liquor volume, and then can use the initial brew kettle boil the wort.

Just trying to understand the process so I can figure out what items I already have, and will need to get. Christmas is coming.

I’m retro fitting a 10 gallon cooler as a mash tun. I wanted to try my hand in batch sparging and eventually fly sparging. Besides, I get to add some extra equipment to my setup … :smiley: [/quote]

Uh, why would you not want to stick with batch sparging? I’ve made 490 batches over the course of 16 years like that and have no desire to do more work for no gain! :wink:

With a traditional BIAB there is no sparge. Many have started to do a pseudo sparge by reserving some of the strike water and pouring it over the grain as it hangs, dripping back into the BK. I use BIAB on my 2.05gal test batches and have discovered this works perfect.

If you want to do biab just a boil kettle is needed. Get a ten gallon pot for 5 gallon batches. If you go with a tun and sparge you will probably need another 8 gallon pot for sparge water. With biab you can use any old soup pot for the pour over rinse.

I concur with Denny. Work smarter not harder and batch sparge.

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Following this thread - helpful for me since I’m relatively new to all grain brewing. I have a 1-gallon kit and the latest batch i brewed yielded 2/3 the final volume as my other batches. Mash volume was 1 gal and after (batch) sparging I had 1.5 gallons for the brew. The only difference is that I took the first 1/2 gallon of the initial mash runnings and boiled that separately to get a more nutty/candy flavor. Once the boiled runnings were at about a 1/4 gallon I added it back into the brew pot at 40 minutes. I assume that’s what accounted for the lower volume at the end. Any other thoughts? I was thinking next time going with a 1/2 gallon more for the brew volume and adding more grains in the mash to account for that additional 1/2 gallon

With small batches I’m sure you have to be more careful with your boil rate. On. 5 gallon I can boil off 1 gallon of 1 1/2 depending on how hard I boil. Or if I boil longer before I add my hops

FWIW I currently brew BIAB. Started out with Extract, then partial mash, then all grain. After a bunch of research I plan to go to batch sparging. This is an excellent method and actually saves time over BIAB and I can easily brew 11 gallon batches. I think the methods I outlined are (at least in my opinion) the evolution of many home brewers. I have a friend whom I was speaking with yesterday and he is an award winning brewer. He only does batch sparging and swears by it. The cost to get into batch sparging is minimal I already have an Igloo Cube and a huge marine cooler that will be good for double or even triple batches. Even if you don’t have a cooler the square ones (better IMO for a mash tun) are very cheap. Also manifold design is pretty simple from a braided hose to a fancy copper one. I plan to use CPVC and make slits in the pipe with my band saw. I’ll post my results in a couple of weeks.

I did one extract that came free then I did fly sparge then batch sparge. Now I do biab. Never did a partial Mash doesn’t make sense really if your going to mash just mash why bother with extract.

The partial mash is what made me interested in full mash. I agree once you go to full mash you would probably never want to do a partial mash. I think the whole purpose of partial mash is to actually get the brewer started on the path to full mash.