Pitching the wort on the lawn

I don't even feel like brewing anymore tonight.

I put 20 pounds of grain in the MLT with 17 quarts of water. I got maybe a gallon and a half of wort out.


Original Gravity of the gallon and a half of wort? Anybody care to guess?



Would you believe 1.070?


Second runnings look like they'll come in at around 1.004. It's not even worth brewing for a single gallon... or doing a 6 hour boil to get two gallons, besides who the heck knows what I'm going to wind up with? I'm gonna throw the grains into the alley and go get drunk instead.... The grains were from Northern Brewer.


Guess a mill is a good investment afterall... if it saves one batch of barleywine and one smaller beer, I should be money ahead.

I don't understand. 20 pounds at 1.25 quarts a pound is 25 quarts for a mash in..why only 17? I would imagine 20 pounds would soak up a good deal of water so getting only 1-2 gallons out of a 4.5 gal mash in wouldn't be unreasonable. Or am I way off...I'm new to the AG realm.

Either way it sucks..I've had those days where nothing went right.


Dan

I was doing a stiff mash. It wasn't the amount of water that was the problem, it was the Original Gravity.

If you figure about 35 gravity points (.035 points of gravity) per gallon per pound of grain, that's 700 points that I should've gotten out of the grain. For 7 gallons, I should have a starting gravity of.... 700 points divided by 7 gallons is 100 points, or an initial gravity of 1.100. That's 7 gallons of 1.100.

I got one and a half gallons of 1.070 and 5 gallons of 1.006 or so.

your lawn will love you... your check book on the other hand. seems like a waste to me
JJ
enjoy the BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Toot said:

I was doing a stiff mash. It wasn't the amount of water that was the problem, it was the Original Gravity.

If you figure about 35 gravity points (.035 points of gravity) per gallon per pound of grain, that's 700 points that I should've gotten out of the grain. For 7 gallons, I should have a starting gravity of.... 700 points divided by 7 gallons is 100 points, or an initial gravity of 1.100. That's 7 gallons of 1.100.

I got one and a half gallons of 1.070 and 5 gallons of 1.006 or so.

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Gotcha..I knew that was low for a barleywine..but like I said, I'm new to this stuff. Still trying to learn. That sucks about the crush. I am hoping to add a grain mill and burner to my arsenal this summer so I don't have to rely on anyone else for anything.


Dan

Actually, it was going to be an imperial stout. And I was going to pitch it on a yeast cake of another stout which is ready for secondary, but now I guess I'll have to change my plans....

I am sufficiently discouraged by this that I will be buying a grain mill with my next paycheck. I just cannot keep paying extra to buy small quantities of grain which aren't even crushed properly. It's ridiculous.

You see, it was going to be an Imperial Stout night. I was actually tempted to crack open a Dark Lord after I finished brewing, but now it's weird... I don't even want to look at theirs...

there is always RUM

That sucks man..well at least you have something to look forward to with your mill! Have a couple beers and relax!



Dan

what kind of mill? Just got a Barley Crusher.... LOVE it
JJ

jaybird said:

what kind of mill? Just got a Barley Crusher.... LOVE it
JJ

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I read something about there being plastic in the Barley Crusher that tends to break? I don't know what the deal is and I'm half in the bag. Maybe a crank and stein. What's the difference?

Toot said:

I put 20 pounds of grain in the MLT with 17 quarts of water. I got maybe a gallon and a half of wort out.

Original Gravity of the gallon and a half of wort? Anybody care to guess? Would you believe 1.070?

Second runnings look like they'll come in at around 1.004.

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Sorry to hear about your bad luck, dude. But that sounds too bizarre to be true. Even with a poor crush you should have done better than that, especially on your second runnings. How can you go from 70 points to 4 on a thick mash? That just doesn't make sense.

With a thick mash like that, how long did you rest for? How well did the grains get wetted and mixed? (Perhaps that was the problem?)

With your first runnings so low, I would have been tempted to do a second rest with my sparge water at saccharification temp.

Sorry man. Did you actually pitch it on the lawn?

I did a 70 minute mash at 156. Pulled one and a half gallons and was happy with that.

Then I took the grav reading as I was heating the sparge water the last few degrees. When I saw the OG was so low, I did exactly what you suggested. I added cold water, dropped the sparge temp to 156, and added it to the MLT and let it sit for 90 minutes. Took the sample, got 1.006 at 130 degrees (I had let it cool for a few minutes). I didn't let the sample cool any more than that. It probably works out to quite a bit more, maybe 1.020 at the normal temp. It was still disgustingly low and I didn't want to hold up the yeast cake waiting for that turd of a beer to ferment, so I tossed it.

Toot said:

I did a 70 minute mash at 156. Pulled one and a half gallons and was happy with that.

Then I took the grav reading as I was heating the sparge water the last few degrees. When I saw the OG was so low, I did exactly what you suggested. I added cold water, dropped the sparge temp to 156, and added it to the MLT and let it sit for 90 minutes. Took the sample, got 1.006 at 130 degrees (I had let it cool for a few minutes). I didn't let the sample cool any more than that. It probably works out to quite a bit more, maybe 1.020 at the normal temp. It was still disgustingly low and I didn't want to hold up the yeast cake waiting for that turd of a beer to ferment, so I tossed it.

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Wow -- what did you do to piss off the brew gods?

Something wasn't working for you, but hopefully you can figure it out (perhaps with some help here) before the next 'big' brew.

It's gotta be the crush. I was surprised by the size of the Fawcett Optic. It did seem to be a noticeably smaller kernel than the other 2 rows. Can anybody verify this?

In retrospect, it should have been milled finer, but, well, I don't have a mill and I thought it was good enough. It looked ok, just not quite as good as the other milled grains I'd gotten. I thought I'd get by with an extended mash and a lower temp sparge if needed.

There's no way around it. I'll buy a mill and then grab two 55 pound sacks of 2-row. At that point, it'll be half paid for. Throw one of those 55 pound sacks into a barley wine, split the other between an Imperial Stout and a smaller barley wine and I'll have recouped half the cost within two weeks.

The Og is always low until you boil it down.
Also the minimum you should have mashed with should have been 1 Qt per pound of grain. you lost a lot from that alone.

boo boo said:

The Og is always low until you boil it down.
Also the minimum you should have mashed with should have been 1 Qt per pound of grain. you lost a lot from that alone.

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Actually, the gravity of the first runnings should be a bit on the high side - you haven't added any sparge water to the mix yet. Once all the wort has been collected after sparging, the pre-boil gravity will be a touch lower than post-boil.

boo boo said:

The Og is always low until you boil it down.
Also the minimum you should have mashed with should have been 1 Qt per pound of grain. you lost a lot from that alone.

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What Yuri said. And I lost water volume, but I should not have lost fermentable sugars. As long as everything is adequately wet and the temperature is right, you're going to get conversion. I had standing water on top of the grain, just a tiny bit, so I know everything was wet.