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Calculating lauter tun losses

ross

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I'm new to BeerSmith and am really looking forward to giving it a whirl. I used Pat's and Steve's excellent guides to configure my equipment profile, but still have a question about lauter tun losses.

My mash tun is a 10-gallon round cooler with a domed false bottom (12"). Using water, I've measured the dead space of this vessel to be approximately 0.7 gallons. After allowing all recoverable water to drain, the false bottom is still completely submerged.

In a mash, it seems that any unrecoverable wort above the surface of the dome will have already been accounted for by our grain absorption coefficient. So this leads me to believe that the lauter tun loss figure really needs to be the volume below the dome.

Am I thinking of this correctly? And if so, what's the correct way to calculate volume below a domed false bottom? I'd think this number would be pretty small, so maybe it doesn't matter. Just wanted to see what other folks think.

EDIT: Or maybe my lauter tun loss really should be 0.7 gallons, since the grain will have already been fully saturated during the mash (i.e., my lauter will still finish with the same amount of unabsorbed, unrecoverable wort above the dome).
 
Greetings Ross - the space under the false bottom would be considered a loss. So you can put a few gallons of water in the tun, then open the drain. When it stops running, close the drain and pour out the remaining water into a measuring pail of some kind. That would be your loss.

I preheat my mash tun with 135 degree water, then let it drain out just before adding my grain. So, as a result, I have no loss. Seems to work okay and I have little or no heat loss when I add my grains and strike water.

Hope this helps!!

Good luck!
 
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