All-grain effeciency complete fail

This Saturday I brewed a 5 gallon centennial IPA est. OG at 1.066 which turned out to be a centennial APA at 1.055. I was wondering if yall could help me trouble-shoot my process.

11 lbs Pale 2 row
1 lbs C40

Centennial additions of: .75 @60, .66@20, 2@0

Mashed in 10g Igloo at 152 for 60 mins with 18.20q water. Hit 152 with no adjustments.

Mashed out with 8.40g of boiling water for 10 mins.

Drained at 1.060 which was dead on beersmiths estimate.

Then added 3 gallons of 168 for batch sparge and drained after 10 minutes.

This is the X factor --> the new propane tank from Home Depot had no gasket in it so the propane was leaking. In an effort to not blow up my house I had to move my brew day to the kitchen, so the sparge may have been more like 15 minutes. Also, the first runnings cooled while I was moving my operation, but only to around 160.

After that, took the sparge runnings up to 7.25 gallons and took a reading and it was only at 1.045 (beersmith estimate was at 1.051) so I decided to boil off some of the wort to get it the OG up. After 30 minutes of boiling on the stove it was at 1.050 so I started my boil. I did the 60 minute boil and cooled. As I was putting the wort into the bucket I took a final sample(@80 degrees) and the OG was only at 1.055.

So I ended up with 5.75 gallons of 1.055 wort, vs. the expected 5.5 gallons of 1.066 wort.

Im totally confused, help please. My usually efficiency is around 75%. Is this beer gonna suck or just be a very hoppy APA?

It seems odd that your pre-boil reading was within one point, but you were 11 points off after the boil. That would imply a bigger volume discrepancy than the .25g you gave. So, a couple of questions:

1. Did you adjust your gravity readings for temperature?
2. Are you sure you were supposed to have 5.5g into the fermentor and not 5.0? (I'm not familiar with kits - was this a kit?)

Most hydrometers are calibrated for 60°F. Assuming yours is as well (and you didn't correct the reading for temp), 1.055 @ 80° = 1.057 @ 60°. Also, 5.75g of 1.057 would be 1.066 (rounding up to the next point) @ 5.0g.

You say it's 5 gallon batch and you ended up with 5.75 gallons?

After i got the kids to bed I sat down with beersmith and started plugging away trying to figure out what the hell went so wrong. Ive got it.

Evidently I had accidentally set my equipment profile for an old setting (ive since gotten a new mash tun and a new brew kettle) yet I was using the calculations for my old setting and beersmith had gotten the impression that my boil size was supposed to be 7.37 instead of the usual 6.33 preboil volume I usually shoot for. I basically made a watered down IPA.

So, now that I know the problem, what should I suspect the beer to taste like? I guess it will be a very hoppy, not so malty APA. I cant fathom there is any way to fix this, probably just give growlers to all my friends.

Well, glad to hear you figured out where things took a wrong turn. As far as the finished product goes, tastewise, it should be fine. A little weaker on the ABV than you were planning, but I'd expect it to have all the same maltiness as a typical APA. After all, at 1.055 it's still too big to be considered a session beer, so how bad can it be?

bacchusmj said:

Mashed in 10g Igloo at 152 for 60 mins with 18.20q water. Hit 152 with no adjustments.

Mashed out with 8.40g of boiling water for 10 mins.

Drained at 1.060 which was dead on beersmiths estimate.

Then added 3 gallons of 168 for batch sparge and drained after 10 minutes.

Click to expand...

If I read this right I get roughly 15 gals total through the mash???? I must be reading incorrectly. Even if it is the 18-ish quarts of mash and 8-ish gallons of sparge this seems like a lot for a 5 gallon batch.

two_one_seven said:

If I read this right I get roughly 15 gals total through the mash???? I must be reading incorrectly. Even if it is the 18-ish quarts of mash and 8-ish gallons of sparge this seems like a lot for a 5 gallon batch.

Click to expand...

I think it's 8.4 quarts for the mash out, so that's more reasonable. I think it's just a typo.

Thanks Yoop......I was in the weeds there.....lol.

"So, now that I know the problem, what should I suspect the beer to taste like?"

Um.... beer. The problem you have is not really a problem at all. You made beer, and from everything I've learned over the past 10 years of brewing, the one simple truth to all of it is simply that... beer... is... good.