Skrimpy

Recipes 

Getting ready to boil. Preboil OG should have been 1.050 but mine was 1.03. Couple of questions. I used about 13 gallons figuring for about close to 2.5-3 gallons lost to the grain and to the boil. Right now the kettle looks like it has about 12 gallons in it. Would this account for the bad efficiency? Also, I did a finer crush so maybe that added extra proteins and thus more volume throwing off my gravity reading? I'm going to boil it for a while before adding the first hops addition.

Right now I'm looking at a 2.5% ABV ale. I guess it's quaffable but I was looking for more like 4%.

Any suggestions?

sonetlumiere85

Recipes 

Do you know the boil-off/evaporation rate for your kettle? Otherwise the pre-boil numbers are meaningless. Without knowing how much water you evaporate, you have no way of knowing what to expect for a pre-boil target.

What was the recipe? Water:grain ratio? More information is needed to help diagnose what may have happened.

Skrimpy

Recipes 

13 gallons H2O to 18 lbs of grain. mash temp started out around 158-160 but I reduced it by immersing a jug of cold water into the mash (not adding the water just holding the jug in), down to about 152-153. Left it for 1 hour. Iodine test negative for starch. I assumed (and maybe I assumed too much that my boil off rate would be similar to everyone elses being it's a ten gallon batch and my kettle is a 15.5 sanke. I did the full volume mash with biab. I also steeped the grains for a mashout for 5 minutes at 168, then let the bag hang (slight squeeze).

sonetlumiere85

Recipes 

So you used a ratio of 2.88 qts/lb? Grain usually only absorbs 20% water. Did you measure all your volumes accurately? It sounds like you used too much water or didn't get enough efficiency/extraction. 18 lbs of grain in 10 gallons will only give you about a 1.045 wort, and that's with 70% efficiency. I'd say your recipe is inadequate for your target OG. What is your target OG, anyway?

Skrimpy

Recipes 

Ah that's just it. I didn't do a conventional mash. I did the BIAB where you mash your full volume.
Just got done. Wait for it...
After the boil I had just under ten gallons of wort and it was 1.050+
I hit the post boil grav with just a little less volume than target. SWEET. I need to RDWHH!!!!!!!!!

hts

Recipes 

Skrimpy----so I just gotta ask--saw your post on treasurenet.com the other day. Did you really post a message on a treasure site about this two-row SMaSH just for the heck of it? Or did you have too many homebrews that night and think that you were posting it here on HBT or maybe Tastybrew? LOL! (sounds like something I might do!)

Skrimpy

Recipes 

Nope! I posted it there b/c some people there were intrigued by my profile pic. A buddy and I brewed up this porter....oh boy was it good....and so for the hell of it I posted a pic of the two fermenters, made it my profile pic and got a TON of responses. So, I posted the pic of the grains just to see what kind of response I would get. Didn't seem as welcoming. They ranged from "What are you doing, making meth?", to "So how is this today's finds?". Wasn't nearly like the last one. Oh well.

Maybe I should just say, "Yes, I had too many homebrews". I was pointed in the direction of this forum from T-Net by the way. There's a couple of us here although you might be the first one I've run into.