I have run into this problem before as well. I now stir my sparged wort before I take a pre-boil reading to make sure I'm not getting a biased reading towards the first or second runnings.
Okay so then how is underpitching different than pitching your starter wort with the yeast? The yeast still goes from x amount of cells to y amount of cells in both cases, and in both cases the flavors from that growth are left in the beer.
Well it seems to me that alot of people, me included, pitch the whole starter while it is active and I am wondering if there are, or why there aren't, those off-flavors associated with underpitching.
So underpitching yeast is bad because you get certain estery and diacetyl flavors from the longer growth period the yeast have to undertake until they reach the needed cell count.
Since it is the yeast's growth that produces the off flavors, does that mean that if you don't decant the wort...
I am thinking about building a jockey box with cold plate. I have read that if there is water touching the cold plate the beer will come out foamy. I would like to be able to use this inside, or at least without the drain open all the time, so could I suspend it in the cooler to get around this...
How close is the dryness related to the sweetness? For example, a higher mash temp will give you more unfermentables so it will be a sweeter fuller beer. Is that also what will reduce the dryness?
On another note, could you step the mash to try and get more unfermentables at the end or would...
Thank you for the quick response. I think you solved all my problems. I did not mix it at all and my thief took the sample off the bottom of the pot and probably got my first runnings in it.
I am about to invest in a refractometer. Hope that will eliminate the errors.
Hey guys. Been poking around these forums for a while but I finally felt the need to post. I've been brewing for about four months now and have done four all grain batches.
All my other batches have increased in gravity after the boil, a result of boiling off water. The one I made yesterday did...