Reverend JC
2500 gallons year to date
When i first started AG brewing i would use a glass candy Thremometor for the strike, rest, and sparge water and a meat Thermometor for the mash. I would always get a really high strike, always miss my target termp and have to add cold water to get it to the proper temp.
Then i started just using the meat Thermometor and without even thinking about it i began hitting my temps and I thought, man i have this down!!!
At that point i started missing my normal Eff. of 75-82% range. I started getting into the 60 to 65% range. And i would always get my beers down to 1.010 or 1.09 and i would think, wow, uh, this is supposed to have some residual sweetness. oh well, goes down good.
My Eff. was suffering because my sparge temp was always around 164 and not hot enough to really loosen up those sugars and help get them into the wort. The beer was always dry because my supposed 152 temp was always around 146.
For eveyone who has not calibrated your thermometors i suggest you do so, it is the easiest thing to ensure a constant factor to rely on in the brewing process. None of my beers were bad, they just were not as good as they could have been.
Then i started just using the meat Thermometor and without even thinking about it i began hitting my temps and I thought, man i have this down!!!
At that point i started missing my normal Eff. of 75-82% range. I started getting into the 60 to 65% range. And i would always get my beers down to 1.010 or 1.09 and i would think, wow, uh, this is supposed to have some residual sweetness. oh well, goes down good.
My Eff. was suffering because my sparge temp was always around 164 and not hot enough to really loosen up those sugars and help get them into the wort. The beer was always dry because my supposed 152 temp was always around 146.
For eveyone who has not calibrated your thermometors i suggest you do so, it is the easiest thing to ensure a constant factor to rely on in the brewing process. None of my beers were bad, they just were not as good as they could have been.