Help! The more I brew...

The less I know. Anybody feel that way? I have made 20-23 five to ten gallon all grain batches. Some turned out great and other's didn't. I use BS2 to design recipes, have tried to tailor it to my equipment. I can hit the mash temp within 0.5 degree, and match color SRM, but hitting the correct volumes and OG I'm all over the place.

This might have something to do with to many homebrews catching up with me towards the end of the brew day.. IDK

Heh...I kinda notice the same thing, the number of homebrews is definatly a factor in how my brewing sessions end up.

but oh well....relax it's homebrewing

Refining your homebrewing skills is what this website is all about.

The key to successful homebrewing is developing your liver capacity to the point where the homebrews don't catch up before the batch is in the fermentor.

Dan said:

. . . I can hit the mash temp within 0.5 degree, and match color SRM, but hitting the correct volumes and OG I'm all over the place. . . .

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How far off are we talking? I see a lot of folks get all spooled up over being a couple of points off, but given the quality of hydrometers/refractometers a home brewer is likely to have, I'd consider +/- 2 points to be "in the noise" so to speak.

As far as volumes go, it's pretty hard to miss. Once you factor in grain absorbtion and dead space in the MLT, what you put in is going to be what you get out. If you're talking about boil off, I normally just check every 15 minutes or so and see if it's progressing the way I'd like and adjust the gas accordingly.

All that said, the one thing that took me a while to figure out was to account for the expansion of the water during the boil. Water is rougly 5% less dense at boiling temperatures than at 60F, which doesn't sound like much, but adds up to nearly a quart for a 5 gallon batch. Before someone clued me into that fact, I'd always end up a couple of points high at the end of the boil.

Dan said:

The less I know. Anybody feel that way? I have made 20-23 five to ten gallon all grain batches. Some turned out great and other's didn't. I use BS2 to design recipes, have tried to tailor it to my equipment. I can hit the mash temp within 0.5 degree, and match color SRM, but hitting the correct volumes and OG I'm all over the place.

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i'm in the same boat.
While sometimes i can hit everything perfectly. most of the time i'm running off at least .5 gallons-1.5 gallons extra... while using the same calculations and i dont start drinking brews till after the boil. so i know it's not that ... i'll start putting in a gallon less on bigger brews and about a half gal on smaller beers and go from there.. lol

ajbram said:

The key to successful homebrewing is developing your liver capacity to the point where the homebrews don't catch up before the batch is in the fermentor.

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Are you crushing your own grains?

Dan said:

The less I know. Anybody feel that way? I have made 20-23 five to ten gallon all grain batches. Some turned out great and other's didn't. I use BS2 to design recipes, have tried to tailor it to my equipment. I can hit the mash temp within 0.5 degree, and match color SRM, but hitting the correct volumes and OG I'm all over the place.

This might have something to do with to many homebrews catching up with me towards the end of the brew day.. IDK

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1. You will get closer to consistency with more brews. I know I did.
2. With our relatively small volumes, there will be some chaos. Instead of wishing it wasn't there, just embrace it as part of homebrewing, then find a way to correct after-the-fact. For example, if I end up with an OG that is too high, I add water later (works). If it is too low (I measure with a refractometer during the boil), I just boil longer.
3. Cheers to one of my favorite posters here. Good luck.

Thanks for the advice and encouragment everybody and Cheers to you too Passepawn!

I definitely need to brew more often but it's going to be at least two or three more weeks before I have fermenter open. Then again I could just buy another fermenting bucket with the next grain order!

You know....they should just ship the grains in the fermenting bucket and consider the bucket marketing swag.

^----now there is a winning idea!

+1 Nocsimian

Teromous, yep crush my own grain with a Barley Crusher set at 0.035".

Starting to think that getting a refractometer is a good idea, too. It takes forever for our post-lauter wort sample to cool down, even in the freezer, to get a sense of where we are.

Great investment, I don't know if all refractometers have automatic temperature compensation (ATC) but think most do. All you need are a couple of tiny drops of wort to get a quick look at SG

Dan said:

I definitely need to brew more often but it's going to be at least two or three more weeks before I have fermenter open. Then again I could just buy another fermenting bucket with the next grain order!

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I just told my friends I will brew them a beer if they buy the ingredients and the bucket and let me keep 6-12 beers. So far two friends have bought me buckets! I just need to convince them to buy carboys instead. This is a good way to get extra buckets without having to pay. Well I guess the brewing is the pay, but, of course, I enjoy brewing.

That's a great idea Mike.

elvestinkle said:

Starting to think that getting a refractometer is a good idea, too. It takes forever for our post-lauter wort sample to cool down, even in the freezer, to get a sense of where we are.

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Or you could just use a hydrometer and a thermometer and plug it into THIS. Really simple.

Plus, from the refractometers I'm seeing (in NB magazine), they only have a working ATC from 50-86*F. I don't know about you, but my runnings are quite a bit hotter than 86*F.

I think that is around where mine is. But the sample is so tiny it cools off within seconds. Nice link.

nocsimian said:

You know....they should just ship the grains in the fermenting bucket and consider the bucket marketing swag.

Click to expand...

That's a very cool idea.

Those hydrometer corrections get more and more inaccurate the further away from the calibration temperature you get. I really wouldn't trust them above 80F or so.

As for the ATC on refractometers, that corrects for the temperature of the instrument, not the wort. The two or three drops it takes for a sample won't change the temperature of the refractometer too much. If the wort is really hot (boiling), it can take 10-15 seconds to stabilize, but after that, you're good.

elvestinkle said:

Starting to think that getting a refractometer is a good idea, too. It takes forever for our post-lauter wort sample to cool down, even in the freezer, to get a sense of where we are.

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That's why I got one. I got tired of running hot sampled to the freezer, then thawing them because I forgot, just so I knew what the gravity was in the boil kettle.

Hey Dan, Looks like you know what your're doing! Good Job!

Ok, Jan but with each day that goes by I seem to become more aware of my brewing ignorance.

I read up on refractometers and came to understand they are precise at measuring the gravity of unfermented wort but there are differences of opining as to their accuracy when used on fermenting wort.

However, there are software programs available to adjust a refractometer to be used on fermenting or completely fermented wort.

So, with the basic understanding a refractometer accurately measures unfermented wort, I plugged some numbers into BS2 to calibrate my refractometer.

Sorry this is so long, I haven’t learned to make myself understood in few words.. Maybe not even with many words. Haha

BS2’s refractometer tool calibration steps.

1. Measure distilled water with a refractometer. Mine read zero Brix
2. Next step was to measure unfermented wort with a hydrometer and refractometer – I used the dual scaled refractometer for both readings .

Maybe I screwed the pooch doing this? The refractometer has a Brix and SG scale side by side, so under the assumption a refractometer is as accurate on unfermented wort I figured using it would be fine to calibrate the BS2 tool.

Was I wrong in my thinking?

I think I'll leave the brewing to the Brewing Master my husband! He's a good brewer!

Think he will chime in here or am I a lost cause?

I think that you are over thinking the hydrometer bit here Dan. I'm surprised that I'm the first to point this out

Unless you're completely OCD about gravity, I dot know that I'd be upset about being off a couple GUs.

What would get was is coming up short on volume. I like 5 gallons of beer, and when I brew it, I'd better have at least 5 gallons in my fermentor.

I assume that you are keeping to the standard 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash?

Haha.. Yes BB you're probably correct about the OCD thing. I know I need to just chill and not make this difficult. There are times where I make something simple, complicated. My volumes are not always spot on, especially in the last two brews but generally close. I guess I freaked out a bit. Yes, I'm using 1.25 quarts of water per pound of grain in the mash.

Thanks for the reality check BBKing!

Side note, see you are from Canton IL, I was raised in Elmwood IL. Small world!

Well hell Dan, if you come back this way let me know.

If I'm not mistaken didnt Elmwood have a small brewery for awhile? Last I heard they sold most of their equipment.

I just noticed how horrible my grammar was in my first post. Yikes

Hey BB, you are correct again, Elmwood did have a Brewery/Restaurant for awhile, I think it was called Park View as it was located across the street from the central park. I was back home a few times when the brewery existed, not sure if the restaurant is still open. It was a neat place; old turn of the century brick building, downstairs was the restaurant/bar area, upstairs a banquet hall. The ceilings had stamped copper plates. The place was a very nice addition to Elmwood. I guess the locals just didn’t appreciate what they had.

A guy I grew up with opened the place maybe 10 or so years ago. My little brother had his wedding reception in their banquet hall. It’s a shame the brewery shut down. I never even tried one of their beers.

So far as the use of a refractometer on fermented / fermenting beer is concerned, I've found those conversion tables pretty accurate. I use the one from the Morebeer website. That said, I really only use it to gauge when to start a D-rest on a lager. Once I'm sure I've hit FG, I want to have a taste anyway, so I bust out the hydrometer.

So basically, it's good to have both handy. But if I broke my hydrometer tomorrow, I wouldn't get too upset, whereas, if my refractometer was somehow out of commission, I wouldn't brew without a replacement.

Thanks Gr8's!