Chef Stress
Member
So I brewed a Rye today and I had some serious temp. and gravity issues. I figured they're related, but I wanted to see if anyone had any advice.
Recently purchased two Blichman Brewmometers fromm Northernbrewer.com, one for the kettle, one for the MLT (a cooler). I calibrated them in the AM in a glass of warm tap water using a digital thermometer (my infant sons).
I hit 164F in the kettle, and transfered a lil over 5 gallons of the hot water to the MLT. At that point the Brewmometer on the MLT read about 145F. I double checked the water temp in each vessel using an instant read meat thermometer. Neither reading matched the Brewmometers. At this point I knew I was effed, so I decided to go ahead and trust the temp readinng o the kettle and doughed in my grist. After 5 minutes, I checked the temp, and decided to add hot water (which was now supposedly at about 180F) 'cause I had decided that I was getting a closer to accurate match with the instant read annd the MLT reading than I was gettinng with the innstant read ant the kettle. I ended up adding enough 180F+ water to get a reading of about 150F in the MLT, after about 15 minutes at around 135 or so. I let that rest for about 30 minutes, and then decided that I would go to the parmacy on the corner and get a bottle of iodine to do a starch test. I did the starch test, and the iodine stayed redish-brown. I did another test, and got similar resullts. So I volarufed (x2) and drained 5 gallons. I then added about 3.5 gallons of 180F+ sparge water to the MLT (to get a total of about 8 gallons) and then started my boil.
When I hit boil, the temp reading on my kettle was pinned against 120F, so I was at least 18F off on all my kettle readings for my mash.
I missed my target pre-boil gravity by 8 points (1.040), and my SG by 8 points too (1.048).
So I guess I have 3 questions:
1) What the eff is up with my thermometers? Anyone have similar problems ever? Is there a specific temp I should be calibrating at in order to get accurate readings?
2) Did I miss my traget gravity because my temps were off? What else if anything could be wrong with this batch?
3) This is sort of an aside, but was doing the Iodine test the right thing to do? I figured cause I got a readinng that I had fully converted Icould go ahead and drain my MLT. If I had waited lonnger might I have gotten better efficiency? I calculated that I got about 56%.
Thanks for any help. This is my 6th AG batch, thermometers have been an issue every time. Though I haven't missed gravity this bad, and my previous batch I hit my gravity dead on.
Recently purchased two Blichman Brewmometers fromm Northernbrewer.com, one for the kettle, one for the MLT (a cooler). I calibrated them in the AM in a glass of warm tap water using a digital thermometer (my infant sons).
I hit 164F in the kettle, and transfered a lil over 5 gallons of the hot water to the MLT. At that point the Brewmometer on the MLT read about 145F. I double checked the water temp in each vessel using an instant read meat thermometer. Neither reading matched the Brewmometers. At this point I knew I was effed, so I decided to go ahead and trust the temp readinng o the kettle and doughed in my grist. After 5 minutes, I checked the temp, and decided to add hot water (which was now supposedly at about 180F) 'cause I had decided that I was getting a closer to accurate match with the instant read annd the MLT reading than I was gettinng with the innstant read ant the kettle. I ended up adding enough 180F+ water to get a reading of about 150F in the MLT, after about 15 minutes at around 135 or so. I let that rest for about 30 minutes, and then decided that I would go to the parmacy on the corner and get a bottle of iodine to do a starch test. I did the starch test, and the iodine stayed redish-brown. I did another test, and got similar resullts. So I volarufed (x2) and drained 5 gallons. I then added about 3.5 gallons of 180F+ sparge water to the MLT (to get a total of about 8 gallons) and then started my boil.
When I hit boil, the temp reading on my kettle was pinned against 120F, so I was at least 18F off on all my kettle readings for my mash.
I missed my target pre-boil gravity by 8 points (1.040), and my SG by 8 points too (1.048).
So I guess I have 3 questions:
1) What the eff is up with my thermometers? Anyone have similar problems ever? Is there a specific temp I should be calibrating at in order to get accurate readings?
2) Did I miss my traget gravity because my temps were off? What else if anything could be wrong with this batch?
3) This is sort of an aside, but was doing the Iodine test the right thing to do? I figured cause I got a readinng that I had fully converted Icould go ahead and drain my MLT. If I had waited lonnger might I have gotten better efficiency? I calculated that I got about 56%.
Thanks for any help. This is my 6th AG batch, thermometers have been an issue every time. Though I haven't missed gravity this bad, and my previous batch I hit my gravity dead on.