KiwiBrewer
Apprentice
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
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I am preparing for my first brew, and I am jumping right in going all grain with 5 gallon batches.
I need clarification on a few things.
1)
The first is water volumes. I have designed a 5 gallon, 7.5ABV beer in beersmith. My mash tun holds approximately 24-25 liters (~6.5 gallons) including 3 litres ( 0.8 gallons) dead space below my sieve.
The beersmith mash profile states I should mash with 19.4 liters (which includes 3 extra for dead space) and sparge with two 7.3 liter additions after draining.
It seems with all this water added (~33 liters, although the grain should absorb ~6 litres) I will get too much water out into my boiler pot. To add to this I will also make a 2 liter starter. My primary fermenter only holds 22 litres ( I have attached a large 1 inch dia blow off tube to account for the small airspace)
Am I right in thinking that with all these water additions I will end up with a too large volume rather than the intended 5 gallons/19 liters final batch volume?
Would I be better to mash with the 19.4 liters and then continuous sparge until I reach the required volume out into my brewpot- being the Batch volume plus the losses to boiling/trub etc minus the starter volume (e.g. 18.93+5.78 (boil off, trub loss, cooling loss) - 2 (starter volume) = 22.71 liters in the pot before boiling which would have the 2l starter added)
Beersmith has set:
Boil off = 2.04l
Cooling loss = 0.91l
Trub loss = 2.84l
Can I consider these reasonable good estimates of losses? I will be cooling the wort with a copper immersion chiller if that changes anything.
2)
I was reading about how I can re-use yeast from the primary fermenter trub and store it for up to 2 months. If I don't plan to use the yeast for several months can I perpetuate it by making starters and harvesting yeast sediment every couple months? Liquid yeast is expensive here in NZ so I would like to be able to re-use any yeasts I buy several times but I would like to have several types of yeast at any one time and probably will only brew once a month or so.
3)
In Beersmith I have set my Tot efficiency to 72%, is this reasonable for a first time brewer?
Sorry for the long winded first post
Any advice would be highly appreciated.
Josh
I need clarification on a few things.
1)
The first is water volumes. I have designed a 5 gallon, 7.5ABV beer in beersmith. My mash tun holds approximately 24-25 liters (~6.5 gallons) including 3 litres ( 0.8 gallons) dead space below my sieve.
The beersmith mash profile states I should mash with 19.4 liters (which includes 3 extra for dead space) and sparge with two 7.3 liter additions after draining.
It seems with all this water added (~33 liters, although the grain should absorb ~6 litres) I will get too much water out into my boiler pot. To add to this I will also make a 2 liter starter. My primary fermenter only holds 22 litres ( I have attached a large 1 inch dia blow off tube to account for the small airspace)
Am I right in thinking that with all these water additions I will end up with a too large volume rather than the intended 5 gallons/19 liters final batch volume?
Would I be better to mash with the 19.4 liters and then continuous sparge until I reach the required volume out into my brewpot- being the Batch volume plus the losses to boiling/trub etc minus the starter volume (e.g. 18.93+5.78 (boil off, trub loss, cooling loss) - 2 (starter volume) = 22.71 liters in the pot before boiling which would have the 2l starter added)
Beersmith has set:
Boil off = 2.04l
Cooling loss = 0.91l
Trub loss = 2.84l
Can I consider these reasonable good estimates of losses? I will be cooling the wort with a copper immersion chiller if that changes anything.
2)
I was reading about how I can re-use yeast from the primary fermenter trub and store it for up to 2 months. If I don't plan to use the yeast for several months can I perpetuate it by making starters and harvesting yeast sediment every couple months? Liquid yeast is expensive here in NZ so I would like to be able to re-use any yeasts I buy several times but I would like to have several types of yeast at any one time and probably will only brew once a month or so.
3)
In Beersmith I have set my Tot efficiency to 72%, is this reasonable for a first time brewer?
Sorry for the long winded first post
Any advice would be highly appreciated.
Josh