What Have I Done?

I brewed extract kits for several years in the mid 90's and I started back a year ago. Thanks to this forum I finally got it together and brewed my first all grain today.
I bought the Dry Dock Urca Vanilla Porter from Northern Brewer http://tinyurl.com/ay9toz2. I built a MT from an Igloo Cube based on info found on this site. With plain water I leave 1 quart in the bottom. Added the 16 qts of 168d water and hit 156d right on the money. After an hour the temp was 154d. I recycled about 3 quarts back into the MT and then ran it all into my brew kettle. Then I added another 16 quarts at 180d for 10-15 min, recycled 3 quarts, and ran that into my brew kettle. I had to add about 6 quarts of water to the brew kettle to get to 6.5 gallons. I pulled a SG from the per-boil wort and it reads 1.052@70d.

So, now the question...what have I done? I thought that the per-boil SG would be much lower. Boil is almost finished, I'll post the OG when I get it down to pitching temp.

Oh...and I'm not worried...I'm having a Home Brew!

You got really good efficiency!

The water that you added probably did not get mixed in when you measure gravity. It is not critical, I am curious to hear what your gravity is after boil.


It may be beneficial for you to research fly sparging.

I think you are right cfonnes. I must not have mixed the additional water well because my SG when I pitched the yeast was 1.046@72d. I'll looked into other sparging methods also. Overall my first AG went well. Thanks for the replies.

BashD said:

I brewed extract kits for several years in the mid 90's and I started back a year ago. Thanks to this forum I finally got it together and brewed my first all grain today.
I bought the Dry Dock Urca Vanilla Porter from Northern Brewer http://tinyurl.com/ay9toz2. I built a MT from an Igloo Cube based on info found on this site. With plain water I leave 1 quart in the bottom. Added the 16 qts of 168d water and hit 156d right on the money. After an hour the temp was 154d. I recycled about 3 quarts back into the MT and then ran it all into my brew kettle. Then I added another 16 quarts at 180d for 10-15 min, recycled 3 quarts, and ran that into my brew kettle. I had to add about 6 quarts of water to the brew kettle to get to 6.5 gallons. I pulled a SG from the per-boil wort and it reads 1.052@70d.

So, now the question...what have I done? I thought that the per-boil SG would be much lower. Boil is almost finished, I'll post the OG when I get it down to pitching temp.

Oh...and I'm not worried...I'm having a Home Brew!

Click to expand...

I'm no expert on this system as I BIAB but why would you add this water to the brew kettle instead of doing a second sparge with it to collect any extra sugars you could?

Talk about not an expert...I the ultimate non- expert, but everything I've studied here and other places says to put the first runnings into the brew kettle, then calculate how much water you need to get to your book volume and rim it through the MT at 180d.

If I'm off here someone enlighten me please.

BashD said:

Talk about not an expert...I the ultimate non- expert, but everything I've studied here and other places says to put the first runnings into the brew kettle, then calculate how much water you need to get to your book volume and rim it through the MT at 180d.

If I'm off here someone enlighten me please.

Click to expand...

I think this would be called a second sparge, you know how much water you need to get in the boiling kettle and you know that your grain in the mash tun has absorbed all the water it can and your dead space (the water you can't recover because it is below the outlet) is full so you just heat up the amount of water needed, dump it in the mash tun, stir, and drain. You should have all the water needed in the boiling kettle and you will have picked up a little more of the malt sugars in the process.

Well I guess I did something right along the way. It's been in the keg for a week now and it turned out fantastic! The only issue is the amount of foam I'm getting. It's like a rich light-brown whipped cream that stays on top to the last sip. I am going to increase my dispensing line from 5' to 10' and see if that helps.