Did my “shortcut” cost me? I am pretty sure I know what went wrong yesterday. I just wanted somebody to verify my troubleshooting. I took a “shortcut” yesterday when batch sparging and believe this is the cause of the huge efficiency hit I took. I was about 15 points UNDER my expected gravity and am pretty sure I did it to myself in an effort to save time. Here’s my grain bill and a couple particulars of my brew day:
Style – American Pale Ale
6# 2-row
3.25# Vienna
2.25# Munich
0.5# 60L crystal
0.5# 20L crystal
About 38 IBUs, all Cascade
- With my usual low efficiency (65%), I was expecting in the neighborhood of 1.053 FG on 5.5 gallons (confirmed by both BeerSmith and hand calculations)
-Mashed with 1.5 qts per pound of grain
-Nailed my expected mash temp of 152
- Mash pH was 5.4 (confirmed at 10 and 30 min into the mash).
- At 55 min into the mash, an iodine test confirmed starch conversion
I collected 7 gal of pre-boil wort. Temperature adjusted, the pre-boil gravity was about 1.034 (well short of the 1.041 I was expecting). Things only got worse post boil. I had approximately 5.5 gallons of wort and break material at the end of it all. My final gravity was 1.038. I certainly expected to gain more than 4 points in the boil off. And like I said above, I came in a full 15 points under my anticipated final gravity.
I double-checked my hydrometer reading with a refractometer and got just shy of 9 brix. This seems to confirm that I was not mis-reading the hydrometer.
So what did I do? I jacked with my normal batch sparge process. With a 10-gal cooler as a mash tun and only 12.5# of grain with 5 gal of water, I had a huge amount of headspace in the mash. So I did no first running and put all but a gallon of my sparge water in with the mash and mash water. Here’s my usual process vs. the process I tried yesterday:
Usual –
1. At end of mash, recirculate for clarity and completely drain mash tun before adding any sparge water
2. Add 50% of my sparge water, stir like a madman, recirculate and drain (grain bed is usually just north of 160F after this step)
3. Add remaining 50% of my sparge water, stir like a madman, recirculate and drain (I shoot for 7 gallon since I do a 75 min boil)
Yesterday –
1. At and of mash, I added 3 gallons of sparge water, stirred like a madman, recirculated and drained (with my system’s grain absorption, this resulted in 6 gallons in the kettle. Grain bed was 161 after this step)
2. Added 1.25 gallons, stirred the much thicker bed this time, recirculated and drained. This got me to 7.1 gallons with the numbers as listed above.
Everything else being as expected, the only thing I can think I did was to leave a significant amount of sugar behind in the grains by trying to short-circuit the batch sparge. It’s pretty hard to swallow, but it appears that I am looking at about 47% efficiency instead of my usually, already low 65%. Any input is much appreciated
It’s fermenting now. Here’s to a really light hoppy beer. Good thing it’s summer I guess. This is going to be a new take on the term “lawnmower beer”.
Style – American Pale Ale
6# 2-row
3.25# Vienna
2.25# Munich
0.5# 60L crystal
0.5# 20L crystal
About 38 IBUs, all Cascade
- With my usual low efficiency (65%), I was expecting in the neighborhood of 1.053 FG on 5.5 gallons (confirmed by both BeerSmith and hand calculations)
-Mashed with 1.5 qts per pound of grain
-Nailed my expected mash temp of 152
- Mash pH was 5.4 (confirmed at 10 and 30 min into the mash).
- At 55 min into the mash, an iodine test confirmed starch conversion
I collected 7 gal of pre-boil wort. Temperature adjusted, the pre-boil gravity was about 1.034 (well short of the 1.041 I was expecting). Things only got worse post boil. I had approximately 5.5 gallons of wort and break material at the end of it all. My final gravity was 1.038. I certainly expected to gain more than 4 points in the boil off. And like I said above, I came in a full 15 points under my anticipated final gravity.
I double-checked my hydrometer reading with a refractometer and got just shy of 9 brix. This seems to confirm that I was not mis-reading the hydrometer.
So what did I do? I jacked with my normal batch sparge process. With a 10-gal cooler as a mash tun and only 12.5# of grain with 5 gal of water, I had a huge amount of headspace in the mash. So I did no first running and put all but a gallon of my sparge water in with the mash and mash water. Here’s my usual process vs. the process I tried yesterday:
Usual –
1. At end of mash, recirculate for clarity and completely drain mash tun before adding any sparge water
2. Add 50% of my sparge water, stir like a madman, recirculate and drain (grain bed is usually just north of 160F after this step)
3. Add remaining 50% of my sparge water, stir like a madman, recirculate and drain (I shoot for 7 gallon since I do a 75 min boil)
Yesterday –
1. At and of mash, I added 3 gallons of sparge water, stirred like a madman, recirculated and drained (with my system’s grain absorption, this resulted in 6 gallons in the kettle. Grain bed was 161 after this step)
2. Added 1.25 gallons, stirred the much thicker bed this time, recirculated and drained. This got me to 7.1 gallons with the numbers as listed above.
Everything else being as expected, the only thing I can think I did was to leave a significant amount of sugar behind in the grains by trying to short-circuit the batch sparge. It’s pretty hard to swallow, but it appears that I am looking at about 47% efficiency instead of my usually, already low 65%. Any input is much appreciated
It’s fermenting now. Here’s to a really light hoppy beer. Good thing it’s summer I guess. This is going to be a new take on the term “lawnmower beer”.
