1st Mini-Mash Results

So I did my first mini-mash at a brew-in with the local club Sunday morning. This was my third batch, and it is an oatmeal stout kit from Austin Homebrew.

I made a mistake and used twice as much mash water as I should have, so I went into overdrive to drop the temperature. Still had starch conversion. Did a batch sparge (which noone else brewing had heard of!), then added my extract.

Towards the end of the boil, one of the guys took a refraction reading at 18, which he said was equivalent to 1.072. However, when I got home I took a hydrometer reading before pitching the starter, and it showed 1.052-1.053, right on target. Did he mess up his reading?

I came out with about 6 gallons of wort, and I hit my target gravity almost spot on. I guess my extract was more efficient than what the recipe had planned.

I just ordered around 80 pounds of grain and 3 pounds of hops. Time to jump into all grain!

mpetty said:

Towards the end of the boil, one of the guys took a refraction reading at 18, which he said was equivalent to 1.072. However, when I got home I took a hydrometer reading before pitching the starter, and it showed 1.052-1.053, right on target. Did he mess up his reading?

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He must have. If you use mainly extract, It's pretty hard to miss the target by that much. And since you did a full wort boil, it couldn't have been one of these "forgot to stir" errors. Temperature can't be an issue either since the difference is way to big.

Mini-mashes are definitely the best way to get into AG. They teach you how to maintain and step-up the temperature, w/o risking to be way off target if it doesn't work out as planned.

Kai

Did a batch sparge (which noone else brewing had heard of!), then added my extract.

is a batch sparge a 'double mash'where you drain the lauter, then recycle everything back, mix it up, let it sit for 15 min.and drain it again? or is it a 'fly' mash where you do a 'vorlauf',. then drain and add sparge h2o to the top at about the same flow rate as its coming out?

You vorlauf when you batch sparge as well. Here's a good explanation.