First Brew - all grain. Didn't use enough h2o in the original mash?

Hey,
I am brand new and decided to jump in on an all grain 1 gallon beer. It's a mint chocolate dark beer. recipe amalgamated from 4 different recipes.

I used 16 cups of water and the 3 cups of grain at the start. Then I drained and boiled with hops, chocolate, and mint tea at various times. I filled up 1 gallon carboy about 1/3 of the way up with water, then added the wort.

I took the hydro reading after adding water and it was 1.000.

Did I add too much water? Should I have taken hydro reading before I added wort to water? Is adding water normal?

Should I just 'relax and have a homebrew'?

The spent grain is going to be made into sourdough bread tommorrow - so it won't be a waste!

Did you crush the grain? What was your mash temp?

Crushed with rolling pin. 200 F. (I think - took grains up to 200, then pulled and drained and boiled wort)

I have to question the accuracy of your reading, distilled water is 1.000, even if your wort had a small amount of color to it then it has to be higher the 1.000

elizabeth99 said:

Crushed with rolling pin. 200 F. (I think - took grains up to 200, then pulled and drained and boiled wort)

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200 deg is way too hot to mash. low to mid 150s is about right. above 170 will release tanins.

What grains did you use. You mashed at 200*F? You probably killed all the Enzymes...

Forget tannins, won't that hot just stop all enzymes and you'll get no conversion? Did you take a hydrometer reading? You might not have gotten any sugar out of the grains .

Unfortunately what you did is not going to make beer.

Crushing with a rolling pin is not going to expose much of the starch of the grain. Try crushing at your LHBS next time.
Your mash temperature was way to hot. You want to maintain 150 degrees for 60 minutes to convert the starch to sugar.
You might have an accurate reading of dissolved sugar at 1.000, which means you aren't going to get any beer from this batch.

Read the BIAB sticky if you want to try all grain:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

Extract is much harder to mess up. You might give that a go first.

elizabeth99 said:

Crushed with rolling pin. 200 F. (I think - took grains up to 200, then pulled and drained and boiled wort)

Click to expand...

Well, that's way too hot so you didn't get any sugar out of the grain. That's why your reading is the same as pure water.

Throw it out, and start over.

Next time, use a scale so you can weigh your grain. Make sure you use two-row malted barley, run your recipe by the forum so they can tell you if you have the right ingredients to convert.

Use 1.25- 2 quarts of water per pound of grain. Add the water to the grain when the water is 165 degrees, and stir well. You want to target a mash temperature of 150-155 for an hour. After an hour, lift out the grains and then pour 170 degree water over it up to your boil volume. If you want to end up with 1 gallon, you probably need to start with two gallons of liquid. Then start your boil, adding hops at the correct time.

That's all there is to it!

Sorry, double post .

Oh noes! That's sad news! I see what I did - combo of extract and grain recipes and I missed a crucial piece of info! Thanks for the replies!

There's lots of info here and plenty of people that want to help, so ask questions. I bet your next brew comes out great.

Yooper said:

Next time, use a scale so you can weigh your grain. Make sure you use two-row malted barley, run your recipe by the forum so they can tell you if you have the right ingredients to convert.

Use 1.25- 2 quarts of water per pound of grain. Add the water to the grain when the water is 165 degrees, and stir well. You want to target a mash temperature of 150-155 for an hour. After an hour, lift out the grains and then pour 170 degree water over it up to your boil volume. If you want to end up with 1 gallon, you probably need to start with two gallons of liquid. Then start your boil, adding hops at the correct time.

That's all there is to it!

Click to expand...

That is pretty damn concise - well done!

Urgh! I redid this and ended up with OG of 1.02. I did the mash properly this time (1 hr at 150)
Foiled again?

I really don't wanna go to a kit/extract. Sad face!

Nothin' wrong with extract brews. Add some steeping grains and you can make a lot of different beers. There are a lot of good quality extracts available to home brewers nowadays.

Gary

List for us what grain types and quantity you used. It is way more important than you think.

1 cup ale malt
1/2 cup biscuit malt
1/2 cup roast barley
1/2 cup chocolate malt

Thanks for all the replies!
I want to avoid extract because it's counter to the way that I cook and I have strong feelings of such things! but maybe I'll use some to ease into this! I kinda jumped with both feet!

I guess ale malt is pale ale malt right? Is it very light in color? I know for a fact that your crush is the biggest problem. You can't really effectively crush base grains with a rolling pin. The bigger problem is that you're not using enough malt at all. A cup of barley malt weighs less than half a pound but even if you round up to half a pound per cup, you used 1.25 pounds of malt in a 1 gallon batch. Given the coarse crush, and limited use of an enzymatic base grain would be perfect reasons why you got 1.020 SG. Try using the same ingredients with 4 cups of ale malt. Besides, that recipe is crazy heavy on the choc and roast.

Made this again. Adding extra 2 cups of ale male and extra 1/2 cup of biscuit malt.
SO not i's 4 cups light in colour malt and 1 cup dark malt.
Crushed in a coffee grinder.

Hydrometer still 1.02

Any ideas?