lots of liquid lost

Hi guys, I'm new here; we did our first all grain brew today. The recipe called for 23 liters of water, but we only ended up with 12 liters in the fermenter. What could have happened? We definitely used the right amunt of water, but could the grains and hops have sucked up so much liquid?
OG ended up being 1083 whereas the recepe planned it to be 1056, so something definitely went a different way.

Cheers

Fred

Just go to the {Vols} button in you Beersmith2 recipe. There you will find grain aborption, trub loss, and boil off. You should be able to determine what you need to do for your next brew. Your boil off may be higher than expected if your boil roll was aggressive. I always have 1 gallon extra HLT water for every 5 gallons brewed, just in case I need it.

Hi Fred,  it is always wise to check your gravity prior to boil and right after boil as well to see if you are going to need to fix any issues.  Grain can hold a good deal of liquid.  Was there allot of fluid remaining in the base of your mash tun when you cleaned it out?

Read this to get your equipment parameters set up in BeerSmith:  http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php/topic,5140.0.html

Thanks guys, there was not much liquid left in the mashtun, I think I understand what I did wrong now; I did not anticipate losses of liquid through absorbtion of the malts, hops and boil...
The remaining 12 litres should be pretty strong I guess...