Hello! I am hoping someone can help me out. I consistently end up with too much wort for my 5 gl batches in a 10gl pot. Working on a bigger pot, but would still like to figure out wtf is going on.

Yesterday I brewed a barleywine and mashed in with 28.5 qts. Sparged with 4.5gls. The sparge amount was lower than projected by Beersmith. I'm using a 13gl coleman cooler to batch sparge. I ended up with about 3gls over the 9.19 or so projected for pre-boil volume.

Help?

Ask any questions ya like, I just wanna know an easy way to get the water right so I'm not boiling for eternity

beersmith should get it right for you..... otherwise just use less sparge water? if you have a gallon too much then add a gallon less next time...should be as simple as that..

you basically get out a couple gallons less than you put in due to absorption and loses to equipment...Since you have beer smith it makes it much easier to correct this..

usually I use around 9-9.5 gallons of water to make 5 gallons of clear beer...this just depends on the size of the grain bill...and the loses in the mash tun..

Understood - however, if I'd gone by the numbers projected by Beersmith I'd have had even more wort to boil my way through. I can manually drop the water amount on sparge, but I'd rather get it right beforehand.

Thoughts?

you are missing a setting in Beersmith then....Beersmith is fully adjustable to your equipment...just need to brew a few times and carefully keep track of your volumes(what you put in and what you get out) and adjust Beersmith accordingly..

Look for an archived podcast with Denny Conn about batch sparging. Very good advice. He keeps it so simple. After the first draining of the mashtun, measure your wort volume. Calculate how much more you need in boil. That will be the exact amount of water to add to mash for second sparge. All that can be absorbed has already been absorbed.

Now that makes sense... WIll have to look that one up, thanks!

Also, check to see what the water-to-grist ratio settings are on your BeerSmith. You may have it set too high. ??