lone_wolf
Well-Known Member
Brethen, after mucking around with a handful of partial mashes I rustled up my first AG batch last night.
So everything went relatively smoothly - technique-wise I use what you could describe as a stovetop-stepmash - to explain:
Ingredients:
Pale 2 row - 4.5 pounds
Wheat - 0.8 pound
Roasted barley - 0.3 pounds
Chocolate Malt - 0.5 pound
Vienna Malt - 2 pounds
Mash Process:
30 minute mash of Pale, Vienna and Wheat in 10 litres @ 145f
30 minutes mash of Pale, Vienna and Wheat in 11 litres @ 155f
then add the Choc Malt and Roasted barley and mash the lot for 30 mins at 160f
"Lautering"
dump the grain bag into 8 litres of 180f degree water and leave it for another 20 minutes, drain the lot into boil kettle (I'll admit to applying a little pressure to the grain bag)
I ended up with 4 gallons of wort and reserved a little of that and let it cool overnight to 20c celcius for the OG test
And that was the interesting part - I get: 1070
based on my J Palmer PPG figures driven manual calculation that equates to 95% efficiency does it not??
I simply cannot/will not believe this - I expected something like 70%.
My assumption is that some overnight evaporation might have increased the OG sample a little - but surely not by a margin of 15 - 20%??
Is my hydrometer lying?
I appreciate that my mash schedule is relatively long - is in in fact possible to get this sort of efficiency with my caveman methods??
It would be great if someone could challenge my math before I quit my day job
thanks!
So everything went relatively smoothly - technique-wise I use what you could describe as a stovetop-stepmash - to explain:
Ingredients:
Pale 2 row - 4.5 pounds
Wheat - 0.8 pound
Roasted barley - 0.3 pounds
Chocolate Malt - 0.5 pound
Vienna Malt - 2 pounds
Mash Process:
30 minute mash of Pale, Vienna and Wheat in 10 litres @ 145f
30 minutes mash of Pale, Vienna and Wheat in 11 litres @ 155f
then add the Choc Malt and Roasted barley and mash the lot for 30 mins at 160f
"Lautering"
dump the grain bag into 8 litres of 180f degree water and leave it for another 20 minutes, drain the lot into boil kettle (I'll admit to applying a little pressure to the grain bag)
I ended up with 4 gallons of wort and reserved a little of that and let it cool overnight to 20c celcius for the OG test
And that was the interesting part - I get: 1070
based on my J Palmer PPG figures driven manual calculation that equates to 95% efficiency does it not??
I simply cannot/will not believe this - I expected something like 70%.
My assumption is that some overnight evaporation might have increased the OG sample a little - but surely not by a margin of 15 - 20%??
Is my hydrometer lying?
I appreciate that my mash schedule is relatively long - is in in fact possible to get this sort of efficiency with my caveman methods??
It would be great if someone could challenge my math before I quit my day job
thanks!