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WarEagleBrewer

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So...I brewed my fourth all grain last night. The first two went horrible and tasted horrible so no more about those. The third went well and I'm waiting on it (an Irish Red) to carb now, but my computer went haywire a few weeks ago and i have no notes on it. So here's what I had last night:

Dry Irish Stout (simple right?)

5lbs 7oz Pale 2 Row
2lbs 8oz Flaked Barley
12 oz Roasted Barley
9 oz Caramel 60
3 oz Black Patent
2 oz Acid Malt (from Biermuncher's recipe)
2 oz Kent Goldings @ 60mins
S-04 English Ale Yeast


I mashed with 12qt water @ 152F for 90 mins (I let it go this long hoping for better efficiency). Then, per Beersmith I did a mashout with 7.65 qt @ 204F.
The next part threw me a little. The fly sparge said to use 2.3 gallons of water. I thought this was quite a small amount, but regardless, I fly sparged @ 168-170F until I had 6 gallons of wort. I then added my hops and boiled for 60 mins....and here is what I (and Beersmith) came up with:

I underestimated my boil off rate and ended up with about 4 gallons of wort...
My (measured with hydrometer) pre-boil gravity was 1.041
My (again, measured) post boil OG was 1.052
BeerSmith says I got 74% Mash efficiency (I did it by hand and got 73.7%) , but only 64.1% total measured efficiency.

So, (in my head) I should obtain more wort before boil (7 gallons?). Does efficiency seem ok? 74% with a 90 min mash? Thoughts....PLEASE!
 
Efficiency is fine. What's more important is striving for consistency. I recorded everything such that by my 10th all-grain batch I could do it by memory and get close to my expected numbers. I think one would prefer to always have a low efficiency than one jumping around from batch to batch. The unpredictability would be somewhat unnerving, if you are the sort to worry about such things.
 

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