liquor to grist ratio

[barrelridebrew]

does this ratio include mash amount and sparge amount?

[gitchegumee]

No. To my understanding it's never done that way. It doesn't include sparge at all. Liquor to grist ratio defines the stiffness of the mash, not the overall grain bill for a given batch size. It is an important variable for many enzymatic reactions, as well as key to determining your strike temperature. Cheers!

[bruin]

liquor to grist

Liquor to grist is a ratio whereby you multiply the grain weight by the ratio to arrive at the measure of water. You must remember to add the grain weight to that result to arrive at the total mash.
For lagers I use 3.5 to 1. That ratio allows easy temperature rises during the mash program. At a lower ratio it is more difficult to raise temp.
For heavier beers, like IPA, I use 2.2 (minimum) to 1. I can't get any looser than that if I want to fill my conditioning tanks fully. It's difficult - at least with my system - to raise temperature on a thick (low liquor to grist ratio) mash.
That said, thicker mashes are more protected from thermal shock.

That's what I've learned so far

[gabewilson50]

Liquor to grist is a ratio whereby you multiply the grain weight by the ratio to arrive at the measure of water. You must remember to add the grain weight to that result to arrive at the total mash.
For lagers I use 3.5 to 1. That ratio allows easy temperature rises during the mash program. At a lower ratio it is more difficult to raise temp.
For heavier beers, like IPA, I use 2.2 (minimum) to 1. I can't get any looser than that if I want to fill my conditioning tanks fully. It's difficult - at least with my system - to raise temperature on a thick (low liquor to grist ratio) mash.
That said, thicker mashes are more protected from thermal shock.

That's what I've learned so far

Just FYI, specifying units might help this person, especially if they were unsure initially if it included sparge water.

[gitchegumee]

Hey Gabe, ratios like this are unitless. It's a weight ratio. kg/kg or lb/lb or unified imperial troy ounce to the same, it doesn't matter. Could be confusing to a newbie, but shouldn't be for long. BTW, why does anyone use English units for brewing? Ridiculous! Go ahead and convert pounds of water to gallons and then to barrels. I'll stick with the simplicity of SI units. Cheers!

[dick murton]

I agree with SI units - the calculations are so simple, especially if you malt extract is expressed as litre degrees / kilo of material. Ok so you might want to express it as dry weight materials rather than "as is", but providing you "as is" specs are reasonably tight, an most maltsters are, then that is fine.

I still havent come to terms with having to use what to me are the completely, rediculously artificial units of Plato - but hey the Europeans know better.

At least you are not quoting brewers pounds per quarter and pounds / barrel SG

Cheers

Dick

[gitchegumee]

No Plato?

C'mon Dick! No Plato? Assuming that Balling, Brix and Plato are sufficiently close to the same thing, what could be simpler? Or less "artificial"? I'll take a solution's solids percentage over how it compares with the weight of water any day. Let's see.... 10 hl of hot water mixed with 130kg of malt at 80% cgdb and 95% mashing efficiency. Easy for me to get an approximation of my OG. Even before my coffee. What do you use? And why?

[Ted Briggs]

Remember to add foundation water to get totol mash liqure. ie:
(500lbs X .33 LtoG) + 20gl foundation = totol mash water.
I use .33 for thinner mashes and .25 for thicker. As in .25= 1 quart per pound of grain.
For a plato prediction you must plug in the totol amount of water including sparge and water loss to grain absorbtion, tipicaly 10%.
Id be happy to switch to metric, but whos buying me new tools?

[gabewilson50]

Hey Gabe, ratios like this are unitless. It's a weight ratio. kg/kg or lb/lb or unified imperial troy ounce to the same, it doesn't matter. Could be confusing to a newbie, but shouldn't be for long. BTW, why does anyone use English units for brewing? Ridiculous! Go ahead and convert pounds of water to gallons and then to barrels. I'll stick with the simplicity of SI units. Cheers!

Unitless would be news to me. I've only seen liquor to grist ratios in L/kg or quarts/lb, and those are different. They'd be a lot closer if non-SI people used pints/lb, but hey they won't change to SI units, so what makes me think they'd change that?

IMO, Brix rocks. If what we're interested in is sugar percent in wort, why isn't everyone measuring in units of sugar percentages? Let's leave SG to the lab rats and mechanics

[gitchegumee]

1 liter of water is defined as 1 kg, so in SI it does work to be unitless. Easy to remember that 10 hl is one metric ton, and 1mg/liter is 1ppm, as well as easy liquor to grist ratios. Now in the convoluted mishmash of arbitrary and capricious English units, one gallon is 8.34 pounds. One quart would then be just over 2 pounds. So quart of water per lb grain is NOT a valid unitless ratio. One pint of water per pound of grain comes close. Any time that a true unitless ratio (like liter water/kg malt, or pound water/pound malt) isn't used, then by all means the units should be specified to be meaningful.