I am making a 2.2 gallon American Brown Ale because I wanted to test this beer out first before I made 5 gallons. Anyway, I am using a 10 gallon home depot mash tun. I heated my water to about 180 and left it in the mash tun to heat it up. I opened the lid about 10 minutes later to find it at 170ish. I then waited a few minutes for the temp to go down but this cooler is real good at holding temperature. After around 10 minutes the temp was like 168 and I got impatient so I through in all the grains hoping that would bring it down to around 155. I wanted to mash at 153. To my chagrin the temp was like 160. It didn't get to around 155 for at least another 15 minutes. I then let is mash for around an hour.
After sparging and doing a second running I collected all my wort. I added a little tap water to bring my volume to around 3.2 gallons before boiling. I took a gravity reading after doing a temperature adjustment and adjusted for wort volume. I saw that I was at 1.033. I was hoping for 1.060. That is way off! My calculations were correct with my malt bill.
76% Efficiency
3.75 2 row (80% of total grist)
.66 Brown Malt (10%)
.25 Caramel 60 (5%)
.14 Special B (2.5%)
.12 Wheat (2.5%)
My question is did the initial 15 minutes with the high temperature prevent proper sugar conversion? How could I be so low? I then decided to add some DME at around .75 pounds to build up the alcohol. After boil, I took a reading at room temp with a 2.2 gallon wort and it was like 1.072. Wow! Now it is too high. What went wrong?
After sparging and doing a second running I collected all my wort. I added a little tap water to bring my volume to around 3.2 gallons before boiling. I took a gravity reading after doing a temperature adjustment and adjusted for wort volume. I saw that I was at 1.033. I was hoping for 1.060. That is way off! My calculations were correct with my malt bill.
76% Efficiency
3.75 2 row (80% of total grist)
.66 Brown Malt (10%)
.25 Caramel 60 (5%)
.14 Special B (2.5%)
.12 Wheat (2.5%)
My question is did the initial 15 minutes with the high temperature prevent proper sugar conversion? How could I be so low? I then decided to add some DME at around .75 pounds to build up the alcohol. After boil, I took a reading at room temp with a 2.2 gallon wort and it was like 1.072. Wow! Now it is too high. What went wrong?