Help!!

Ok, maybe not that big an emergency, but help would be appreciated...

I finally got around to the Sleeman Steam Beer clone I wanted to make from Clone Brews book. Recipe was as follows:

6lbs lager malt
12 oz caparils
1lb flaked rice

4aau Mt.Hood for 45 min
4aaus hallertau for 15 min

Use 2.5 gal for mash, then 3 gal for sparge, boil down to get a 5 gal batch.

Well, I wanted to make a little more than 5 gal, so I increased everything by 15%. Problem was, I ran out of milled lager malt, only had a little over 5lbs, and I needed almost 7. So I added 2 lbs of some poorly milled-by-hand malt, and mashed for 2 hours instead of 90 min, hoping this would help.

Well, looking in my fermentor, I seemed to have boiled down to about 4.5 gal, much less than the 5.75 I was targetting. And even at this reduced volume, the OG is only 1.036, target was 1.048...

Without actually going to my HBS to mill some more malt, what can I do? I've got about a pound of DME. I'm thinking of adding about a gallon of water and the DME, but not sure what that'll do to my OG. Any Promash people do a quick calc for me and tell me if this will cut it?

(sigh) Or do I have to go get more? How much more DME do I need to fix this?

Thanks...

Entering the numbers into ProMash, it looks like you got about 59% efficiency. Possibly worse....I only added an extra pound for your "poorly milled" stuff.

If you add a pound of DME, that should get you right at 1.046. But adding a gallon af water with it brings you back down to 1.038. So, I'd boil it in as little water as you possibly can and put it in. This will probably make your beer darker than what you wanted, but beggars can't be choosers at this point, eh?

Best of luck!

You could also add corn sugar if you wanted to lighten the color and body... I'll bet you have some laying around. I know I'll get knocked for saying this but 1/2 lb or less of regular table sugar won't generate any off flavors either.. at least it hasn't in any brew I've made though I don't usually make lighter beers.

Sure you didn't sparge too fast? 1 quart per minute or less.. did you check the gravity of the runnings periodically? What was the sparge temp.. 170 - 175 is ideal IMO but certainly no hotter than 175 and no cooler than 165.

As everyone always says (and I've found them to be correct) relax and have a homebrew, it'll turn out fine.

did you pitch yeast yet? just ferment it and chalk it up to experience. you didn't have enough water with 2.5 and 3 gallons you posted above. you should aim for about six and a half gallons in the boil kettle to get 5.5 gallons or so to ferment. the grain holds on to a fair bit of water.

t1master said:

did you pitch yeast yet? just ferment it and chalk it up to experience. you didn't have enough water with 2.5 and 3 gallons you posted above. you should aim for about six and a half gallons in the boil kettle to get 5.5 gallons or so to ferment. the grain holds on to a fair bit of water.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought the amount of water seemed low. So how much water should I assue I need to begin with? 6.5 gal in the boil, so how mush for mash and sparge then? 7.5?

As for this batch, I did already pitch the yeast. I ended up adding the pound of DME I had and about half a gal of water. Looks to be about 5 gal now, so I guess that'll do.

Thanks for the help guys...

Mash with 1.5 qt per lb of grain.. then sparge to achieve the rest of the volume. You could mash with as little as 1 qt per lb or as much as 2 qt per lb. The thicker the mash the faster the starch conversion - it may be as short as 30 min in a very thick mash. Thicker mashes also produce thicker/fuller bodied beers (less fermentable sugar). Mash temperature also affects the beers body. Higher mash temps in the range of 155 - 160 result in less fermentable sugar and thus fuller body. Honestly, in practice I don't know how much any of this matters. I mash with roughly 1.5 qt per lb and then sparge till the pot is about full.. then hopefully I have a SG in the 5 or 6 range - this has worked for me thus far.

edit: Actually my OG has been higher than anticipated in both of my ag batches so I've been watering it down to the 1.06 or 1.055 range..

Lost said:

The thicker the mash the faster the starch conversion - it may be as short as 30 min in a very thick mash. Thicker mashes also produce thicker/fuller bodied beers (less fermentable sugar). Mash temperature also affects the beers body. Higher mash temps in the range of 155 - 160 result in less fermentable sugar and thus fuller body.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... interesting points, didn't know this.

I guess I just need to find a good way to determine when I'm done sparging. I think Palmer suggests stopping your sparge when your runnings hit 1.008 gravity. But that doesn't say anything about volume. If you have really poor efficiency, that could only give you 4 gal of wort. And then if you add your hops for 5 gal batch, it screws it all up...

Conversely, you could keep sparging until you hit a certain preboil volume, but that doesn't consider your efficiency so your OG could be all over the place. And I'd need to find a good way to measure volumes in my pots (I split me wort into two identical pots). Maybe a calibrated dipstick... hmm, thats a good idea... I should make one of those...

What do all you AG brewers do? How do you decide when to stop sparging? And then do you correct either issue (volume or OG) if it isn't at target? How?