mtarrant
Member
After many years of extract/grain brewing I finally made the foray into AG with a converted 3 Gallon Rubbermaid cooler to make a 3 Gallon batch. I was looking great through the pre-boil gravity. However, after siphoning the cooled wort into the carboy and adding the gallon or so of water (I do this because I have a 3 gal pot, so while I'd like to do a full boil I don't have the room) to come to the 3 gallons total, I mixed the two with some carboy swirling and had a gravity of 1.040 when I should have had a 1.053. Since I started with a BeerSmith Brewhouse Effeciency of 73% (first time so went with this number), my poor results essentially brought me down to 55%. I'm not sure how I could make it so good till late in the game and than slip so awfully. I left some wort in the bottom of the pot, as there was a lot of trub (it looked like a human brain was sitting down there)- but it couldn't have been more than a quart. Any ideas? Any advice would be appreciated.
One lingering thing that I'm having trouble getting an answer on is the initial strike temperature of the mash. I preheated the mashtun as I've often read to do, and through BeerSmith added 7.59 quarts of water at a strike temp 165.9F to get a mash temp of 154F. First I added the water to the preheated cooler, than stirred in the 6.07 lbs of grain. I than measured the temp of the grain & water and came up with 141F - way short of 154F. I had an equipment profile with the mashtun, is there anything I can do to adjust it to get closer to the target? Do you know any reason why it might be that off?
Thanks!
Mike
One lingering thing that I'm having trouble getting an answer on is the initial strike temperature of the mash. I preheated the mashtun as I've often read to do, and through BeerSmith added 7.59 quarts of water at a strike temp 165.9F to get a mash temp of 154F. First I added the water to the preheated cooler, than stirred in the 6.07 lbs of grain. I than measured the temp of the grain & water and came up with 141F - way short of 154F. I had an equipment profile with the mashtun, is there anything I can do to adjust it to get closer to the target? Do you know any reason why it might be that off?
Thanks!
Mike