So I did my second AG yesterday. Everything went okay, but it definitely could have gone better. I hit my mash temp right on the dot and it held for the entire 60 minutes. Again I collected ~2gal less wort from the mash than I mashed with. I'm not so much concerned about this after searching some posts on this forum. I have been losing the expected .12-.13qt/lb so that seems to be in line. My issue comes with the collection of my sparge water when batch sparging. I have come up between .5-.7 gal short both times. I've heard you should get pretty much no loss when sparging. I'm wondering if this amount seems reasonable? I still had some hot water left over in the kettle so I just ran ~1gal through it and collected the .5gal I needed. I think I'll just add .5gal to what the brewing software says to use for sparging.
My next problem is with my boil off. I collected 6.5 preboil and once I got a sample cooled down took a reading. It was 1.063 which is only 1 pt lower than it was predicted. After my boil I only collected ~4.9gal so I had to top off to get to my target of 5.5gal going into the fermentor. After chilling that sample I took a reading and it read 1.063. That reading was actually 10pts lower than it should have been and it makes no sense to me how the reading could be the same with less volume. As far as my boil off, the previous batch I maintained a rolling boil but this time it was a bit more vigorous and it was about 104°F out. So I'm thinking that's why I had such a high loss. I went in to my brewing program and increased my boil off rate some since I came up short both times. We'll see if those changes help get it dialed in. If any one has any advice on how I can straighten this out it would be greatly appreciated.
My next problem is with my boil off. I collected 6.5 preboil and once I got a sample cooled down took a reading. It was 1.063 which is only 1 pt lower than it was predicted. After my boil I only collected ~4.9gal so I had to top off to get to my target of 5.5gal going into the fermentor. After chilling that sample I took a reading and it read 1.063. That reading was actually 10pts lower than it should have been and it makes no sense to me how the reading could be the same with less volume. As far as my boil off, the previous batch I maintained a rolling boil but this time it was a bit more vigorous and it was about 104°F out. So I'm thinking that's why I had such a high loss. I went in to my brewing program and increased my boil off rate some since I came up short both times. We'll see if those changes help get it dialed in. If any one has any advice on how I can straighten this out it would be greatly appreciated.