Calculating Mash Water Volume ::: Brew365: “The amount of water absorbed by the grain during the mash can vary from system to system due to crushing methods, stirring practices, etc. Ray Daniels provides a constant of roughly 0.2 gallons of water absorbed per pound of grain. Denny Conn, in his great article on Cheap and Easy Batch Sparging provides an estimate of 0.1 gallons of water absorbed per pound based on his brewing system. As you can see, these vary greatly and can make a big difference in the total water added. The best thing to do is for you to note the volume for your particular system over several brew sessions, and keep a table of pounds of grain to water absorbed for your system.”
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These folks don’t seem to account for water lost in the bottom of the tun — under the false bottom, for example. Could that explain the variation?