Help with first biab please.

[Banjo-guy]

I'm struggling with water volume.
I tested my 9 gallon pot filled with 3.5 gallons of water.
It took 30 minutes to come to a moderate boil on my electric stove top.
I boiled for 60 minutes,let it cool to 80 degrees and was left with 2 gallons and 1.25 cups of water .
I lost 22.75 cups or 1.42 gallons.
This seems like a lot of loss. Is my kettle too large?

The recipe that I am making has 9.025 lbs of grain.
The batch size is 2.5 gallons.

I have no idea how much pre boil water to use.

I know I will have to adjust the water volume according to my setup but what a good place to start?

I downloaded Beersmith but I need to study it to figure out how enter my equipment profile.
Thanks for any help. I'm trying not screw up totally on my first try.

[Brewbirds]

I'll get BB2 to look at it for you and see if he can help. It took a while for us to get BeerSmith dialed in.

One thing I remember is that he had me measure, top to bottom and around, as well as weigh the pot empty, did you do that?

We also discovered that the markings on our pot were slightly off which might be fine for cooking but will mess up a brew day.

Were you ever able to get past a moderate boil and into a rolling boil?

I can't remember if you have said that your stove is the glass top kind in another post. The pot should not be larger around than the burner by very much on the glass top style, it does something to the efficiency, I think it is the many warnings in the owners manual ( but of course lawyers wrote those ).

If you want to send a PM of your test to Brewbirds or BB2 we will try to help you get set up.

[Banjo-guy]

I have a 9 gallon kettle. Stainless steel.
It has a diameter of 14.5 inches and it's 13.25 inches high.
My scale won't go beyond 5 lbs , it weighs more than 5 lbs.
I'll send a PM thanks for the help.

The heater element on my ceramic glass top stove measures 11 inches.

[BlackDuck]

Regarding your boil off rate: I don't think that's too much of a loss. I have a 10 gallon kettle and my 60 minute boil off rate is 1.55 gallons.

[Banjo-guy]

I plugged these numbers into this online calculator:

Grain-- 9.025 lbs
Hops-- 1.3 oz.
Boil time --70 minutes
Boil off per hour--1.42
Finished beer-- 2.5 gal.
Trub-- .25 gal.
Kettle Diameter--14.50
Mash temp.---152
Grain temperature--???

What is grain temperature ?

Here is what I get from these numbers without any value for grain temp.

Mash water 7.81 in --- 5.58 gal
Pre-boil 6.23 in--4.45 gal
Post boil 3.91 in.---2.80
Transferred ---2.75 gal.

What do the inch numbers mean?
Is my mash water volume 5.58 gallons?
If I rinse the grain after the mash should I deduct that amount of water from the mash water vol. of 5.58?

If I squeeze the bag wouldn't that give me more water in the boil than the number calculated (4.45 gal)?
If that is the case shouldn't I start with less water in the mash?

Sorry for all the questions.
http://www.simplebiabcalculator.com

[philm00x]

Take a thermometer and measure the temp of the grains, and plug that in. It's usually same or close to room temp if u store them in the room and not a fridge.

[Chuck N]

As far as boil off is concerned I know I'm going to lose at least a gallon and a half in a 60 minute boil. So what I do - and this is very unscientific - I do 3 gallon batches, so I add a gallon and a have to that. Then I multiply the weight of the grain bill by .075. That gives me an approximation of the amount of water that the grain is going to absorb. In addition to all of this I boil another gallon of water in a separate pot to make up for the loss due to hot/cold break and to bring the volume in the fermenter up to about three and a quarter gallons.