So I decided to take Edworts Kolsch recipe and incorporate it for my first AG. Knowing that my efficiency would not be as good as his, I upped my grain bill from a total his 9.5# to 12#. I have not yet built a hot liquor tank with a draining valve so I decided to batch sparge. I dumped 170F water into my MT, I calculated that I should be using 3.7 gallons of mash water, I kinda eyeballed that amount which could be my main problem, I think I was short. Anyway, I got the mash to 151/150F and put the lid on it for 60 minutes. I came back, stirred the mash (maybe I should not have done that?) and ran a gallon or so until it cleared up then drained it all into a bucket. I only ended up with about 1.5 gallons of wort from the initial mashing. Then I refilled the MT with more 170F water (I did not check the temp once teh water was mixed with the grain) and drained that into the bucket until I had 7.25 gallons of wort. Then I boiled as usual. I ended up with about 6 gallons of wort at the end of the boil, next time I will probably use 7 gallons preboil wort or maybe even less.
So the target OG was 1.052, and I ended up at 1.030. So I'm looking at a beer that will finish in the 2% abv range....ugh. Is there anything I can do to up the abv% to this beer even though it is already fermenting?
I'm sure I made quite a few mistakes but just want you all to take a look at it and tell me where I can improve my technique. I may switch to fly sparging soon but I'd like to get batch sparging figured out first. Thanks for any advice.
So the target OG was 1.052, and I ended up at 1.030. So I'm looking at a beer that will finish in the 2% abv range....ugh. Is there anything I can do to up the abv% to this beer even though it is already fermenting?
I'm sure I made quite a few mistakes but just want you all to take a look at it and tell me where I can improve my technique. I may switch to fly sparging soon but I'd like to get batch sparging figured out first. Thanks for any advice.