clonebrews recipe question

[tomguest]

Hi

I'm trying to follow the Grolch receipe in the book Clone Brews by Tess and Mark Szamatulski and have a question about water volumes.

If I follow the all-grain method given it doesn't give the volume of water I need for my mash or how much I should have pre-boil. Am I being stupid here? Is there some easy way of working it out?

Cheers

Tom

[jubby]

There are ways of working it out tom, but it would be much easier to download one of the free brewing programs. Click on 'hints and tips' then 'calculators' then 'Grahams beer engine'. I have never used it, but If you need advice on how to use it, I am sure someone could help.

[tomguest]

Cheers jubby

I think I've worked it out.

For 4.8kg of grain and a 19l brew - I'm going for 12.45 l of water for mash and then 15l for sparge
top up to get 23l boil.

Tom

[jubby]

Sounds about right. Depends on your losses, but you won't know these if it's your first brew. However, you are only allowing 4 litres to boil losses. I lose a gallon (4.5l) per hour. So for my set up, I would need to allow a 7 litre loss for a 90 min boil. If you are boiling for 60 mins, you might be ok. If you have space, it's always best to have a bit of treated water spare just in case. I normally do this by adding a few extra litres for sparging.