homebrew212
Active Member
Hello,
After a few weeks spent attaining a keg, converting it to a mash tun, and getting some stands built, I finally put it all to the test yesterday during a rain storm here on Long Island. It's pretty ghetto as I don't have a HLT, just a bottling bucket that I fill up with 168 water off the stove to sparge with and place atop a ladder. Also, I don't have a march pump so I just insulate the heck out of my keggle mash tun using reflectix insulation...which actually works quite well according to my Miljoco thermometer that I have mounted into the keg wall. For boiling I have a 10 gal. Megapot but only one burner that gets shared between it and the mash tun.The mash tun has a 13" jaybird false bottom into it with a stainless steel dip tube attached to a ball valve.
Anyway I bought the Surly Furious all-grain kit from Northern Brewer and used 4.12 gallons of water in my mash tun, heating it up to 168 degrees and then mixing in the grains, I did the mash. After mashing for 60 min. at 153 degrees, although I do believe that I was 3-4 degrees above this value, I vorlaufed about 3 quarts until the water was mostly free of grains, afterwards draining the mash tun into the boil kettle. Then I batch sparged using 5.93 gallons at 168 degrees, let it sit for 10 minutes, and did the recirculation and draining procedure once again. This collected ~7.3 gallons of pre-boil wort that I measured using my hydrometer to be 1.030...this is where my questions begin. I know that hydrometers can be inaccurate at higher temperatures so I used the correction tool on BeerSmith to adjust this reading to 1.052 but that seems far too high. Using the following calculations I found my efficiency to be 90% using the adjusted value and only 51% using the measured value.
Grain bill:
7.5 lbs. Canada Malting Pale Ale Malt=((34 ppg*7.5 lbs.) / 7.3 gals. pre-boil volume)=34.9 ppg
3.25 lbs. British Golden Promise=((36 ppg * 3.25 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=16.03 ppg
0.88 lbs. English Medium Crystal=((34 ppg * 0.88 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=4.1 ppg
0.63 lbs. Belgian Aromatic Malt=((34 ppg * 0.63 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=2.93 ppg
0.125 lbs. English Roasted Barley=((25 ppg * 0.125 lbs.) / 7.3 gals)=0.43 ppg
Adding these all up=58.37 ppg and dividing that by 30 and 52 gives 51% and 90%, respectively.
So, what should I go by, 51% or 90%??? Also, my gravity after cooling the wort down was 1.057 or so...the target OG being 1.064
After a few weeks spent attaining a keg, converting it to a mash tun, and getting some stands built, I finally put it all to the test yesterday during a rain storm here on Long Island. It's pretty ghetto as I don't have a HLT, just a bottling bucket that I fill up with 168 water off the stove to sparge with and place atop a ladder. Also, I don't have a march pump so I just insulate the heck out of my keggle mash tun using reflectix insulation...which actually works quite well according to my Miljoco thermometer that I have mounted into the keg wall. For boiling I have a 10 gal. Megapot but only one burner that gets shared between it and the mash tun.The mash tun has a 13" jaybird false bottom into it with a stainless steel dip tube attached to a ball valve.
Anyway I bought the Surly Furious all-grain kit from Northern Brewer and used 4.12 gallons of water in my mash tun, heating it up to 168 degrees and then mixing in the grains, I did the mash. After mashing for 60 min. at 153 degrees, although I do believe that I was 3-4 degrees above this value, I vorlaufed about 3 quarts until the water was mostly free of grains, afterwards draining the mash tun into the boil kettle. Then I batch sparged using 5.93 gallons at 168 degrees, let it sit for 10 minutes, and did the recirculation and draining procedure once again. This collected ~7.3 gallons of pre-boil wort that I measured using my hydrometer to be 1.030...this is where my questions begin. I know that hydrometers can be inaccurate at higher temperatures so I used the correction tool on BeerSmith to adjust this reading to 1.052 but that seems far too high. Using the following calculations I found my efficiency to be 90% using the adjusted value and only 51% using the measured value.
Grain bill:
7.5 lbs. Canada Malting Pale Ale Malt=((34 ppg*7.5 lbs.) / 7.3 gals. pre-boil volume)=34.9 ppg
3.25 lbs. British Golden Promise=((36 ppg * 3.25 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=16.03 ppg
0.88 lbs. English Medium Crystal=((34 ppg * 0.88 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=4.1 ppg
0.63 lbs. Belgian Aromatic Malt=((34 ppg * 0.63 lbs.) / 7.3 gals.)=2.93 ppg
0.125 lbs. English Roasted Barley=((25 ppg * 0.125 lbs.) / 7.3 gals)=0.43 ppg
Adding these all up=58.37 ppg and dividing that by 30 and 52 gives 51% and 90%, respectively.
So, what should I go by, 51% or 90%??? Also, my gravity after cooling the wort down was 1.057 or so...the target OG being 1.064