How to Calculate Water Volumes for Brewing

[@Styv93]

OMG! I spent a week reading forums and articles trying to figure out this volume calculation and I finally understood in 10 min of your video! Thanks a lot!!!

[@matthewrs7]

Great work, Fisher

[@nijatmammadov7355]

Same. Lots of calculators, but it is very simple here.

[@craiggambetta]

Thank you Thank you, finally someone who explains in basic terms and even better in metric, i was over everything being in imperial. Your a god sent. Cheers mate, from a new brewer in Melbourne.

[@vaunt_design]

I never comment on KZbin videos, but you've just answered a query I've been struggling to find the answer for bloody ages. Thanks man

[@aorakiboydog]

I have been all grain brewing for years and your explanation is the best I have seen.....good stuff old chap 👍

[@1966ReptiDude]

Thank you so much for explaining this in the simplest way possible! I was so confused about all the water calculations and that's what kept me from going to all grain, but now I've watched your videos a few times and looked up more info and figured everything out. Going all grain thanks to your videos, thank you!

[@mashhacks]

+1966ReptiDude Great to hear! If you have any questions feel free to let me know. Cheers :)

[@housepark]

Totally, im with 1966reptidude. thanks so much Ben. This has to be the simplest way to explain the water brewing calcs. Do you have a recipe database somewhere on the web?

[@mashhacks]

No problems :) Most of my recipes can be found on brewtoad here: www.brewtoad.com/groups/tboda/recipes

[@diyhomebrewguy4586]

Very good information. I haven't met very many people who can describe the calculation procedure this well.

[@straywasp]

Thanks for this video. I've been struggling to wrap my head round these calculations but you've made it super simple here! Cheers

[@nicoleneethling60]

Hi there. So if you are brewing in a bag, would you still sparge? Or would you just add the "sparge volume" to the strike water amount? Thanks so much for your videos?

[@mmoseleywpi]

Awesome. Doing my first BIAB/PM batch this weekend. I like this way of thinking of it. Appreciate you converting to imperial as well!

[@mashhacks]

Marc Moseley glad I could help :) Let me know if you run into any problems and good luck with your brew!

[@muzguz7276]

Great info. Helps heaps. Haven't started all grain just yet but doing up a Herms and also a lot of learning.

[@jamessquire1]

Confused hell out of me at first because I'm not very bright but I get it now. Like working backwards on two sides and meeting in the middle! This helps me greatly as I'm about to embark on my first full grain beer and was worried about the water amount needed. Thanks heaps.

[@mashhacks]

Glad I could help :) Let me know if you get stuck, and also let me know how your first all grain beer goes. Good luck!

[@Food_D]

me too, I think for me it's a matter of learning as I go i.e. I'll do as much research as I can and make my first batch then when I see it all in action I think it will sink in...and I can start boring my mates with it too!

[@jamessquire1]

First couple of batches have been pretty ordinary (thought they taste great on the SG test) but it's more to do with my equipment than your lesson. Your lesson stacks up beautifully. Just done my third brewski and I was supposed to have 25L for a 20L batch. Got it on the nose.

[@mashhacks]

mark allender beautiful, I'm glad it helped. For me, great beers always are the product of well treated yeast. Hit those temps!

[@johnjeong4340]

oh my god all i needed was this video. thank you for making this.

[@saner385]

This truly is a magnificent tutorial.

[@fleshboundtobone]

Does this approach assume a regular grain bill or the 1.2-1.3X bill which some BIAB recipes use? To hit a specific pre-boil gravity, how do you factor the sparge water addition in to know *when* to sparge? i.e. for a target pre-boil gravity of 1.060, can you take the other variables here (strike volume, grain weight & sparge volume) to calculate a pre-sparge gravity which would result in 1.060 *after* the sparge? Really useful video BTW, thank you.

[@kunalvanjare]

Okay so I want to start homebrewing and would preferably begin with a small batch.. like a 1 Gal or 5 Liter batch. I don't know the evaporation rate, grain retention or the trub losses. How much grain should I be working with? And is there a safe range for the strike volume & sparge water? Or do you only learn these things out of first-hand experience?

[@uniikkiz]

I have 17L and 5L pots.(I do ~20l batches) I usually count the total malt weight(kg) and subtract it from 17L(size of the pot Im mashing it in) to get strike water volume. After mashing I just rinse the malt bag in the fermenter bucket with the amount of water that allows me to fill my both pots with wort(that is 22 liter pre boil volume). After boil and little cooling I add cold water to hit my batch size target(usually 20L) to make up the evaporation loss and at the same time cool the wort more. Works perfectly...expect one time I forgot to add the water and got one hell of a strong porter which turned into tasty poison. Some people say that partial boil requires longer hop schedules and boils but I think that is only true if you like VERY hoppy beers.

[@mashhacks]

+uniikkiz awesome! You'll find that by doing the calcs, you're pretty much following the guidelines anyway, just forcibly by pot size :) Agreed with the point about hops. There's not a huge amount of difference.

[@reddogales9029]

Absolutely brilliant.. Very helpful. Your videos are really good. So easy to follow as you are thorough with your words. Bank holiday here in England this weekend. I feel a SMaSH coming on. Now to look for a good recipe. 🍺

[@andrEsmeraldo]

Quick question concerning the sparge water, should we take into account a second amount of absorbtion by the grains? Or will they be already to "full" to absorb any amount worth considering? Thanks for the great videos, they have been very helpful and I'm gonna try my first BIAB soon!

[@dougaitken7420]

Hey mate, Kiwi in Czech here. Not quite the same as an Aussie in Belgium, but both antipodeans in lands where they know how to brew. Thanks for the vid - it's pretty useful and a good way to work it out in your head. Your grain absorption rate for BIAB seems quite high. In my brew yesterday I had 34 litres of strike water volume and a pre boil volume of 29 litres, so I lost just 5 litres overall at a rate of 14.7%, but you have a rate of 33% which seems a tad on the high side. What's your process for milling and squeezing the grain? I squeezed my grain bag til it died and got it double milled, but as a new brewer and wanting to know how things work I was interested to know what was your process for this? Cheers and keep up the good vids, Doug

[@mashhacks]

Haha "Antipodean", thanks for teaching me a new word :) Not sure what you mean about the grain absorption, I typically see a 1:1 ratio, 1 litre water absorbed per kilo of grain. My process for milling is to use a very fine crush (0.03inches / 0.75mm) and mill just once (because the gap is so small it doesn't need twice). And I squeeze the bag a little, but mainly just to speed up the draining of the wort. Cheers :)

[@dakinsvibe]

This is fantastic, logically explained for once!

[@StevePetty]

Excellent explanation of water volumes, thanks for the help Ben. Also, when are you coming back with more videos!?

[@franciscoabanto8143]

Hi there, Thanks for the video, it helped me a lot. I just want to double check something with you. In case I wanted to assume bigger losses before reaching my final batch size, should I then use just more sparge water? Would that affect the gravity/alcohol content in my final beer? Thanks in advance.

[@jackkerouac8439]

A little confused with calculation. If I want to make a total of 2 gallons of beer, how much water would I start with and how much sparge water would I need? Also, do you have any idea how much grain to use approximately per gallon? I'm thinking two.

[@RX50]

Hi Ben. I'm about to start brewing in the kitchen with minimal equipment. I want to brew my first batches with the help of a thermomix (or bimby) since I can control the mash temp whit it. My questions are: 1) What size batch can I brew whit a 2L mash tun 2) What size have to be my boiling pot counting the massive evaporation that can happen from boiling a small volume for one hour? 3) Is that any problem with having the blades of the thermomix slowly rotating during the mashing, like releasing to mutch flour from the grain and turning the wort to cloudy, or is actualy good? Thank you ;)

[@mashhacks]

Hmm, 2L is probably too small to make any meaningful batch, but if you want to give it a try, I'd be curious to see the result. 1) It really depends. You might be able to do multiple mashes with the same grain and pull out a larger volume. It'll really depend on your boiling pot. 2) As big as your stove / heatsource can handle. This will determine your batch size. You can always keep topping up the pot until probably 10 mins from the end of the boil. You could also probably get away with boiling for less time too. 3) depends how fast they go? It shouldn't really matter though if you're going to use a Brew in a bag bag to separate the wort from the grain. You don't have to worry about cloudyness here as you'll be batch sparging which involves stirring up the grain each time. Have a good look at the brew in a bag process and let me know how you go.

[@bellbellbell00]

Great video. However I've always been under the impression that if you don't have a big enough kettle to reach your desired pre boil volume, you can always boil less and liquor back to get to your desired batch size? What are your thoughts on this?

[@mashhacks]

You can indeed however there are a couple of differences. Firstly, your hop calculations will be slightly different as it's more difficult for the hop oils to "dissolve" in less wort, so overall you'll have slightly less bitterness. Second, since the concentration of the wort is higher, it can lead to increased/different malt profiles since the maillard reaction kicks in earlier. You just have to watch out you don't scorch things :) Also, if you're topping up your wort after the boil, be sure to also boil the top up water. You don't want to accidentally contaminate your wort.

[@jodygallant2356]

I may have missed something, but are these calculations dependent on the amount of grain being used? Be it pounds or kgs? Thanks

[@BenCull]

Yep, right at the 5:00 mark, you can see grain absorption is 1 litre per kilogram, or 1 pint per pound. Hope that helps!

[@winstonlee5382]

Thank you for the video. Is there no absorption loss from the sparge?

[@fleshboundtobone]

I had the same thought but thinking about it, the grains must come out as saturated as they're going to get (minus whatever small amount you squeezed from the grains themselves - in any case they're still full of water) so I imagine not really

[@Mike-nj4qw]

Best video I've seen thanks man everyone else complicates it.keep it up

[@wood4me]

G'day mate. Is there a problem in starting your boil with only 10 litres of water, and once done boiling add 12 litres of cold water to cool the brew down more quickly? Is that innitial 10 liters not enouch to hold the grain? Cheers.

[@mashhacks]

+ausiewood it's best practice to make sure all water that goes into the beer has been boiled at some stage, to avoid infecting it with something in the water. Having said that you probably won't have much trouble adding cooled water after, just make sure there's no chlorine in the water. As long as the water to grain ratio is above about 2:1 you should be fine in the mash.

[@roskildefestival77]

Thanks for the explernation on the water calculation

[@jesselee.]

why is the ideal homebrew ratio 3:1 mash to water and how did you arrive at this number? cheers. awesome video by the way

[@mashhacks]

At first it was just a convenient ratio recommended by my local homebrew store. After doing some more research it turns out it's a nice piece of the mashing puzzle. There's a bunch of research that's gone into trying to determine the most efficient mash thickness, but as with most things, it's pretty nuanced and there's multiple factors. Check out this article from 1999! byo.com/aging/item/1110-managing-mash-thickness

[@csabanemeth6139]

Do you have a printable version of your water calculation chart ?

[@davidcorr6204]

Do you recommend adding in dead space from the false bottom of the mashtun in the calculation for the strike water volume?

[@BenCull]

+Dayton Dave Yep, it's definitely a good idea, but the important value is how much you can drain from your mash tun (first runnings). Adjusting your mash thickness to compensate for the false bottom is great, but just take note of your first runnings and adjust your sparge volume to make up the correct pre-boil volume.

[@matti3866]

Hi! Nice video! I have a question about batch size. You define it as fermenter volume - Trub loss. In many other places it is defined as fermenter volume only. If I have a recipe for let say a batch size of 20 litres, is that after bottling or before? Regards Matt

[@BenCull]

Hey Matt, I'm sure this way too late for you, but for everyone else reading, batch size should be after bottling. It's the amount to go down your throat effectively :)

[@lafamillecarrington]

Hi - how does the strike volume affect the extraction of fermentable sugars in BIAB? I just feel that it would be easier to maintain the correct temperature with a larger volume (I am using small volumes - a 5 to 6 litre batch size).

[@mashhacks]

Strike rate mostly just helps have the best ratio of enzyme to grain and water so it can convert quickly. There's no problem using the full water volume straight up, it might just take longer. In your case full is fine and probably easier :)

[@lafamillecarrington]

@@mashhacks That makes sense - and I assume that you get quite a lot of sugar out when you sparge. So many different things to try!

[@Mike-nj4qw]

Any chance you could do a video on calculating grain.now that i have perfect recipes I sure everyone would be very keen to see how to make their own and what to watch out for and so on

[@mashhacks]

Great idea :) Will try to get to this soon.

[@charlesmurphy7607]

You gotta equalize your volumes my dude - either we can barely hear you, or we get EAR BLASTED by the intro sting!

[@Sarconthewolf]

Yeah, hold on now let me turn you up, and wipe the blood off my ears from the intro.

[@DrtERotinBasstrd]

That is very helpful info to know. Thank you for the education. Cheers!

[@jauld360]

3:40 Strike water (Litres) = grain weight (Kg) * 3 ....... Grain absorption = 1L per Kg of grain (1 pint / pound ) 5:33 Batch size calculation

[@richardwilkinson77]

Brilliantly explained. Up until now I've just been using the same volume of strike water, as dictated by a youtube tutorial, for all my recipes as I had no other way of knowing how much to use. Not anymore! One question though, I do BIAB (therefore no sparging), so is the total amount of water at the start simply the strike volume plus the sparge volume?

[@StratBeer]

Nice job on the calculations. Cheers

[@yanpicompi]

Very good resource. Thanks!

[@Wind_Ninja_Jubei]

very helpful and easy to understand.

[@g0ste]

Good video, however, that rainbow explanation was actually very confusing for me on the first view. I found it easier to break them up into separate calculations: pre_boil_volume = (grain_kg * 3) - grain_kg post_boil_volume = batch_size + (trub_loss + kettle_loss + evaporation_loss) sparge_volume = post_boil_volume - pre_boil_volume

[@DarySLO]

I don't understand, the video was more clear that this

[@Schaschlik345]

Love this video and all your other videos! Hope you make many more videos like this :)

[@lakesidebc]

Awesome explanation! Love it!

[@jannielsen9893]

Thanks for making a highly informative video that is easy to follow and understand! Keep it up!

[@stuartfreeman2427]

Very well explained, thanks.

[@brassjc]

Really informative, thanks for the video!

[@colinete]

Peeeerfect explanation, thanks, good job!

[@Mr24Acdcfreak]

I have one question. so, I've figured out I should have about 6.5 gallons pre-boil. My strike water should be 3 gallons, and after grain absorption, I'll be left with 2 gallons. Therefore, my sparge water should be 4 gallons. Now, my question: is 4 gallons of sparge water too much? that seems like a lot, and it's more than you're adding in this video.

[@mashhacks]

+Footballfreak66 this seems ok to me. If you post the recipe I can double check, but the figures you've given seem fine. You can take some water from the sparge and add it to the strike if you think the mash is too thick though.

[@Mr24Acdcfreak]

www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/allgrain/AG-DryIrishStout.pdf This link should pull up a PDF of an Irish Stout. It's just a beer kit that I was thinking about buying, I just wanted to make sure that I was doing the math right. Much thanks!

[@oibal60]

Thanks for this.

[@dusanstevanovic5494]

Hi can you explain to me how come for brewdog punk ipa's recipe they need only 4.5kg of malt for the 20l batch... it should be like 6 kg of grains, right ? brewdogrecipes.com/recipes/punk-ipa-2010-current

[@themechanic99]

Thanks. Very clear.

[@chrissbenitez]

thanks a lot ! it helped me so much

[@rakeortry]

in your simplest all grain brew day video you mention second runnings but this isn't listed in at all.

[@mashhacks]

+rek moany Ah good point, thank you for pointing that out. The "second runnings" is basically just the sparge water after it's been through the grain. So in this calc video "sparge volume" and "second runnings" are essentially the same thing.

[@cornishpiglet1024]

Great video many thanks

[@gam0t0]

Great vid, thanks ben

[@grahamlewis4884]

Very useful thanks

[@alfonsoespinosar]

Great video!!

[@hedgerowpete]

very helpfull

[@ARCSTREAMS]

" doesn't matter if it's all grain or brew in a bag" err are they not the same?

[@tube4waldek]

Thanks for your effort :-)

[@chrisfry7915]

I appreciate this video. Thanks!

[@meyogy2414]

Well that explains where the seemingly random water volumes come from . Thanks

[@highaspectfoiling]

Hello, I have pretty much the same setup as you, but it's my first time brewing on this scale with my new ssbrew kettle! I'm going to start with this beer: www.themaltmiller.co.uk/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=611 I'm really struggling to find my strike water vol.. The batch is 19L and post-boil is 26.85L. My guess would is 36.85L, as my grain bill is 5kg so times that by 3 gives me 15L - 5L G/Absorption. Does that sound about right?! Sorry to ramble, just struggling with this maths! Hope you can help, and great videos please keep them up. Ol

[@mashhacks]

+Ollie Harris Hi Ollie, Taking a look at the recipe site, it mentions 26.84L Pre-Boil, 21.84 Post-Boil, for a 19L batch. Regardless of these figures, your strike water should usually be about 3 times your grain weight. I would do a 15L strike, leaving you with 10L first runnings. Since your pre-boil is ~27L I would sparge with 17L (10L + 17L = 27L). Hopefully this helps!

[@highaspectfoiling]

+Mash Hacks thank you so much for your reply. I've been doing some research over the last few days, finally starting to get my head round it! Trying not to use Beersmith for my calculations... Thanks again, those numbers make sense :) cheers

[@pewpewpew6846]

nice graphics

[@wormfighter1]

Volume control!! It went from, I can barely hear you too, OMG my ears are bleeding. Please put a bit of time into audio volume.

[@mashhacks]

Sorry :) I promise it gets better in more recent videos.

[@midnightmover2329]

Too little strike water,too much sparge water.

[@hydroman99]

BIAB is all-grain

[@Toekneepowers]

Speak American dang it haha thanks for the imperial saves me a lot of google searching.Just doesn’t make sense why America stuck with it.

[@ARCSTREAMS]

bahh a bunch of math based on mostly speculations and assumptions ,,i say just go with the flow and you get what you get ,just add back your loses during the sparge and boil

[@CanadianBrewingChannel]

More confused then before!