Well it wasn't a total waste because beer of some sort will ensue, but I wouldn't call it a success either. Yesterday was my first AG brew session after about 10 or so extract with grains sessions. I did a bit of reading and planning and I thought I had everything worked out.
Recipe looks fairly simple.
8# english pale malt
2# carared
.5# 120L crystal
2oz fuggles @60
2oz fuggles @15
1oz fuggles @0
1.4L starter of cal-ale WLP001
I was shooting for a sort of hybrid ESB. I had the WLP001 in the fridge so I decided to use that rather than buy a different vial. In retrospect, I think that was a pretty good idea.
I used beersmith to help with the mash schedule. I started with 13 quarts of 166F water into the MLT to hit 155 strike temp. I came in a little low so I added another quart at about 170F and hit 155 dead on. I mashed for an hour and started draining/sparging. I got up to 6 gallons in the boil pot and took a SG reading. The target was 1.048 and I was at around 1.030. Arghh. Terrible efficiency, I thought. Must have had channeling through the grain bed, although I came up with a reasonably good system to avoid that. OK. First time, I can deal with that. I added 3# dme to the wort and did another reading. I was up to 1.044. Still not as high as I wanted, but in the ballpark.
I went through the boil as always. Nothing interesting to report there. The interesting data comes after I have cooled the wort. Surprise, surprise the specific gravity is around 1.08. The volume was a bit low (around 4 gallons) so I added water back up to 5 gallons and the SG went down to 1.063. I figured that I had enough boil-off to account for the discrepancy in SG, but, of course, a real brewer knows what I did wrong. I took the pre-boil specific gravity reading and didn't adjust for temperature. The extra 3# of dme are going to make the finished product "interesting", but at least it will still be beer.
I hope my mistakes might help the next guy.
Cheers,
Recipe looks fairly simple.
8# english pale malt
2# carared
.5# 120L crystal
2oz fuggles @60
2oz fuggles @15
1oz fuggles @0
1.4L starter of cal-ale WLP001
I was shooting for a sort of hybrid ESB. I had the WLP001 in the fridge so I decided to use that rather than buy a different vial. In retrospect, I think that was a pretty good idea.
I used beersmith to help with the mash schedule. I started with 13 quarts of 166F water into the MLT to hit 155 strike temp. I came in a little low so I added another quart at about 170F and hit 155 dead on. I mashed for an hour and started draining/sparging. I got up to 6 gallons in the boil pot and took a SG reading. The target was 1.048 and I was at around 1.030. Arghh. Terrible efficiency, I thought. Must have had channeling through the grain bed, although I came up with a reasonably good system to avoid that. OK. First time, I can deal with that. I added 3# dme to the wort and did another reading. I was up to 1.044. Still not as high as I wanted, but in the ballpark.
I went through the boil as always. Nothing interesting to report there. The interesting data comes after I have cooled the wort. Surprise, surprise the specific gravity is around 1.08. The volume was a bit low (around 4 gallons) so I added water back up to 5 gallons and the SG went down to 1.063. I figured that I had enough boil-off to account for the discrepancy in SG, but, of course, a real brewer knows what I did wrong. I took the pre-boil specific gravity reading and didn't adjust for temperature. The extra 3# of dme are going to make the finished product "interesting", but at least it will still be beer.
I hope my mistakes might help the next guy.
Cheers,