Help ....1st all grain brew

[bambam26]

Ok so today I brewed my 1st all grain batch and I was doing a mirror pond clone, I did all the calculations using the sparge pal app. I used a lot of water and followed the calculations but still only came up with 8 gallons for a 10 gallon batch? My boil was approx 12.5 gallons and I had about a gallon of leftover crap that I didn't put into the fermentor. I still had a ton of fun and hit my OG right on the nose! I sparged at approx 170 degree and my mash was at 153 to start and I let it go 90 minues. I know that as time goes on I will get better but geez I wanted 10 gallons!!! LOL

[Ozwald]

Ok so today I brewed my 1st all grain batch and I was doing a mirror pond clone, I did all the calculations using the sparge pal app. I used a lot of water and followed the calculations but still only came up with 8 gallons for a 10 gallon batch? My boil was approx 12.5 gallons and I had about a gallon of leftover crap that I didn't put into the fermentor. I still had a ton of fun and hit my OG right on the nose! I sparged at approx 170 degree and my mash was at 153 to start and I let it go 90 minues. I know that as time goes on I will get better but geez I wanted 10 gallons!!! LOL

Congrats & welcome to the world of AG. There's a lot of variables that could come into play, and as you'll find out moving from extract to AG is like learning all over again. My first guess is that an overly viGorous boil combined with the recipe not being matched to your system would account for most if not all of the loss. I wouldn't worry about volume too much, as you tackled one of the hardest parts - nailing the OG. Your efficiency isn't going to match up, but it's something you'll get in time. Get some good brewing software (or BeerSmith... many swear by it & it's probably good software, I just personally won't use it) and you'll start to dial in your system and get all those other numbers down. Enjoy the learning curve, AG is a blast.

[TheDarkSide]

1st all grain and a 10 gallon batch. Nice work.

I have to agree with the overly vi-ger-ose boil. I used to boil the crap out of my wort until I heard Jamil say you need a nice, roiling boil. Life has been much happier since then.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

First, relax. It gets easier.

Second, I agree with the vi-ga-rous boil theory as well. Next time back off on the heat.

Congrats, brotha, on moving to all grain. Time to throw out everything you knew and start all over again.

[bambam26]

Wow that a lot lost during boil, I did have a rolling boil so I guess I will dial that down. I dont have a sight window either so I am going to mark some measurment lines on the outside so I have a better idea of how much I am losing during the boil as well as to know how close I am to the correct amount to start. I thank everyone for your comments and advise....

[Afterlab]

Wow that a lot lost during boil, I did have a rolling boil so I guess I will dial that down. I dont have a sight window either so I am going to mark some measurment lines on the outside so I have a better idea of how much I am losing during the boil as well as to know how close I am to the correct amount to start. I thank everyone for your comments and advise....

For all grain brewing one of the fundamentals and possibly the most straight-forward variable to get a handle on is accurately measuring your water volumes and boil off intensity. While both of these may be different for each individual system, they are simple to hone in on after a few batches on new equipment.

I try to ignore any crazy tenths or hundredths in decimal points that my brewing program tells me and just round up or down to the nearest .25 of a gallon. Makes my brew day much easy if I need to make adjustments on the fly. For example if it says use 3.63 of sparge water I will just round up to 3.75 gallons. So here are some simplified volumes I use for my 5 gallon setup during a 60 min boil. I use a 16 gallon kettle with markers every half gallon.

Preboil Volume: 7.5 gallons
Postboil Volume: 6.5 gallons (including trub material)
Boil off Volume over 60 min: 1 gallon (roughly 14%)
Clean wort available for the Fermentor: 5.5 gallons

So if I'm boiling off .5 gallons every 30 mins I make sure to look in my kettle every 30 minutes to see if I have lost .5 gallons. On a 60 minute boil if I'm not down to 7 gallons after 30 minutes then I know I need to adjust the flame up or down on my burner so that I can get down to 6.5 gallons at the 0 minute mark.

Also if I'm making a quadruple IPA or something stupid and hoppy I will make sure to give myself a little extra volume to account for all of the liquid lost to the hops. Or if I'm using whole leaf hops I will give myself even more volume. Hope this helps!

[Ozwald]

Definitely make lots of measuring marks. When I get a new kettle, I pour a half gallon at a time in & visually make a note of the level. I used to use a dipstick, but since my latest BK is a converted keg, it's really easy to estimate. Also the only thing I don't measure is my sparge water. I just sparge until I hit my desired volume in the BK. With a well designed recipe you don't have to worry about over sparging at the 10 gallon level. With all the others I just use a gallon jug marked off in quarts & estimate. Like for x.32 gallons I'll go a touch above the .25 mark. If I find I'm brewing a recipe frequently or a few recipes use the same fraction of a gallon, I'll take the time to measure out the .32 & give it it's own mark on one of the other sides of the jug.

[brewinhard]

Don't be afraid to add back water during your boil, if you sense that you are boiling too much off. After a few more brews on your system you will get the hang of how your system works with regards to efficiency and boil-off from evaporation. The best thing you can do now, is just keep on brewing to dial it in!