Brewed First AG yesterday....how did I do?

I used Deathbrewer's Easy Stovetop AG thread as a guideline, but did a 7+ gal boil since had a large pot and was using a gas burner. My stove won't boil 3 gals.

The recipe was BierMuncher's Cream of Three Crops, adjusted as follows for a 5.5 gal batch:

6# Pale Ale Malt
1# Crystal 10L
2# Flaked Maize
1.75# Minute rice
1.5 oz. Hallertau @ 3.9% for 90 minutes
Safale US-05

Technique:
Mashed in the bag in the pot with 3.25 gallons of water at about 152 degrees for 90 minutes. Temp had only dropped to 140 when I removed the grains. Iodine test confirmed conversion.

Used ProMash for the first time for help with the volumes. It said my pre-boil wort size should be 7.1 gallons. I sparged with about 4 gallons at 166+/- degrees including grains for 10 minutes.

Next, I added my 2+ gals after absorption from the mash, then topped off to 7+. Added the hops. Used soft rolling boil for 90 minutes to get to 5.5 gallon volume, with Irish Moss addition the last 15 minutes. Chilled to 73 degrees in no more than 15 minutes, poured into primary and pitched yeast. Before pitching, my gravity was 1.06 at 60 degrees (ran cold water over the outside of my hydrometer sample).

Note: I mention temps and gals above in "about" terms because my two thermometers read differently (+/- 2), and I did not do a good job calibrating my pots (+/- 0.5 gal at half full, okay at full).

Here are my questions:

If I am interpreting ProMash correctly, this SG range for this "style" is 1.042 to 1.055, and my ingredients are equivalent to 1.056. Since I am focusing on this recipe instead of cloning something or competing, I am assuming the style range does not matter right now. I used 1.056 as my target gravity. Was this the correct approach, or should I have shaved off some of the grains or added more water? There wasn't much difference this time, but could be next so I want to know what to do.

You saw above that I finished with 1.06...high. Not much, but want to know for next time. How did I get there with my grain bill at 1.056? My ProMash numbers are based on 75% efficiency. I just "picked" 75 when I was setting up the recipe. Does the higher SG simply mean that I got better efficiency?

I was only going to use 1oz of hops, but they did not smell as fresh as usual, so I kicked in another half ounce. I am not a hoppy person, so hopefully the extra 5 or 6 IBUs won't bother me. I tend to like the 18 to 22 max range in summer beers; this is at 29 with the extra half ounce. I forgot to check this before adding them.

So my airlock is busy now and I guess time will tell how it is going to be. I think I did a good job reaching my temp and volume goals, and close to the gravity target, while learning about and working with all of the things that are new to me. I borrowed info from all of you, so thanks for the help! I do not have enough experience to be able to look at the results and get an idea of how the final beer is going to be, but maybe some of you can tell me.

Thanks to everyone who posts on this forum...this is how we learn.... and to you more experienced guys who tutor us.
Chris

I didn't know Minute Maid made rice now

Looks good, although dropping 12 degrees during your mash is something you probably want to look at fixing. I think most people check their mash temp every 15-30 minutes and adjust temp as needed to keep it within +-2 degrees.

Thanks for catching that whatisitgoodfor and for responding. I LOL'd when I read that. I got my breakfast juice mixed up with my go-go juice.

431brew said:

If I am interpreting ProMash correctly, this SG range for this "style" is 1.042 to 1.055, and my ingredients are equivalent to 1.056.

Click to expand...

You're only talking about 1 point here. Even if you hit your gravity dead on and submitted this to competition, nobody would be able to detect that 1 point. No worries.