my first all grain batch

I recently brewed my first all grain beer. Had a few hang ups. I didn't get any rice hulls for the mash, I had a stuck mash, yeah that was fun. Once I finally got everything under control I got about 6 gallons for my boil, was hoping for 6.5. When my boil was done I had 4.5 gallons left. My OG was 1.062. The recipe called for 1.050 to 10.57. My question is, after the boil should I have topped of my fermentor with water to get 5gal to bring the gravity down? Kind of like you would for an extract brew.

Just curious what you brewed. Most of the time you dont need rice hulls unless your dealing with a lot of wheat or something that make the mash sticky (oats, flaked barley ect.). How did you go about the sparge and what kind of false bottom are you using?
As for the gravity thing I wouldnt worry about it too much stronger is better IMO . If you wanted to drop the gravity topping it off would work though.

It was an Oktoberfest lager. I have PVC with slots cut on the bottom. To sparge, I removed the PVC and placed a steeping sock between the grains and the outlet hole. It was a mess. It was slow, but it worked. I'm not to worried about the OG its fermenting nicely.

You could have topped off to get to the recipe OG, but just 0.1 to 0.05 off isn't going to change the characteristics of the beer enough to really affect the beer. You are going to have slightly more ABV, a bit more body, and slightly more IBUs, but it's really going to be just a shade off from the intended recipe, not a significant change.

Just remember next time that you probably boil off more than you think you do, so you need about 0.5 gallons more preboil water volume, be it starting mash water or sparge water, if you sparge.

hophead44 said:

It was an Oktoberfest lager. I have PVC with slots cut on the bottom. To sparge, I removed the PVC and placed a steeping sock between the grains and the outlet hole. It was a mess. It was slow, but it worked. I'm not to worried about the OG its fermenting nicely.

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ok I see. Probably should have left the PVC in, sounds like that would work better than a grain sock. I have the same thing for my false bottom except its made out of copper with slots. Ive never had any problems with the sparge works great. Mabe next time try it with the PVC, might make life a little easier.