fredthecat
The original homebrewer™.
i used this site a ton, and have been learning from it over the past long while. i would say my first all grain batch was definitely successful, not amazing but far from bad. the main problem is a fairly low efficiency and i ended up with about 80% of the total amount of wort i expected! especially when my total grain bill was 14.5 lbs for a 5 gallon plan..
i didnt use a mash tun, mashed in my 7.5gallon pot, but mashing temps were very consistent i found, after grain hit the 160degree water it went down to just over 150, as i planned, i kept the lid shut and covered and one hour later it was in the mid 140s, then mashed 15 mins more. first mash's og was 1.06
emptied out this wort into other pots, and sparged grain in the 7.5gallon pot (im equipment deficient ) with amount of water that would total 7 gallons for boiling. unfortunately forgot to check the og of this wort
boiled this wort for 60 mins with timed hop additions. it was an irregular boil though i was trying to keep it at a "low rolling boil" as i saw suggested on this site so many times.
i cooled it in the kitchen sinks, alternating between them as each got too warm, fairly quickly for just a waterbath cooling, about 40 minutes at the most. i checked the final og before bottling it and temperature corrected it was only 1.055, which seems to me that i had a really low efficiency, because with 14lbs of grain most online calculators suggest that even at 60% efficiency i'd have a higher og than that
thankfully its going just fine, but im sad that it only seems like ive got about 14-15 litres out of my planned 20+
was it a heavy boiloffs fault?
i didnt use a mash tun, mashed in my 7.5gallon pot, but mashing temps were very consistent i found, after grain hit the 160degree water it went down to just over 150, as i planned, i kept the lid shut and covered and one hour later it was in the mid 140s, then mashed 15 mins more. first mash's og was 1.06
emptied out this wort into other pots, and sparged grain in the 7.5gallon pot (im equipment deficient ) with amount of water that would total 7 gallons for boiling. unfortunately forgot to check the og of this wort
boiled this wort for 60 mins with timed hop additions. it was an irregular boil though i was trying to keep it at a "low rolling boil" as i saw suggested on this site so many times.
i cooled it in the kitchen sinks, alternating between them as each got too warm, fairly quickly for just a waterbath cooling, about 40 minutes at the most. i checked the final og before bottling it and temperature corrected it was only 1.055, which seems to me that i had a really low efficiency, because with 14lbs of grain most online calculators suggest that even at 60% efficiency i'd have a higher og than that
thankfully its going just fine, but im sad that it only seems like ive got about 14-15 litres out of my planned 20+
was it a heavy boiloffs fault?