First All Grain Is In The Primary(critique please)

Wee Heavy pitched onto "Poor Richards Ale" yeast cake:
14.5 2 row
10oz 60L Crystal
8oz CaraWheat
4oz Munich
2oz Roasted
1oz Smoked
1.5 oz EK Goldings 70 min

Pre-boil SG 1.063
Post-boil SG 1.090
I thought my hydrometer was broken but it is spot on. Target was 1.083. Less than 12 hours my 6.5 carboy is full of Krausen and a blowoff is rigged.
Carmalized a quart of the first runnings and added to the pot.

Lessons learned:
1) Had a hard time maintaining mash temp. By the time all mash water was added I was at 143 with a target of 158, had to add an extra gallon to get it up to 154 where I kept it for the entire mash. Strike was 170 but I was very inefficient at transfering strike water to the mashtun, I need to come up with a better way. Used a pitcher to transfer from my keggle to mashtun, took forever.
2) A hop sock is your friend, I had no friends, had to use the trusty auto-siphon to get the wort from my keggle. False bottom stopped most of the leafy matter but those rascally seedlike hop things were more than a match for the drain siphon tube on my keggle.
3) My mashtun worked like a champ, Coleman 48qt with a homemade copper manifold.
4) Batch sparging seemed to work fine, towards the end measured 1.020
5) Missed my target post boil level by about 3/8 gallon, added water to make up, figured with a OG of 1.090 it would not make much difference. Boiled off more than anticipated but the smoky caramely flavor is a plus.

I guess this was a bit of a large brew for a first all grain but I love using the cake from previous batches so it just worked out that way.

Sounds like it will be a great beer...I'm not big on Scottish ales, but this sounds good.

What was your actual volume when the gravity was 1.090? If it was 5 gallons you're looking at an efficiency of 81%, which I would say is fantastic for a first all grain. Even 4.5 gallons would be about 73%, which is still pretty darn good.

It was about 4 5/8 to 4 3/4 gallons

I had trouble with the intial strike water temperature on my first try. I think Promash is off a bit. I have found that it is better to start a little hotter in the cooler and stir until it reaches your desired temp and then add the grains. My 2nd and third brews were better as far as hitting temperatures. I

Blender said:

I had trouble with the intial strike water temperature on my first try. I think Promash is off a bit. I have found that it is better to start a little hotter in the cooler and stir until it reaches your desired temp and then add the grains. My 2nd and third brews were better as far as hitting temperatures. I

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Do you enter any value for your mash tun thermal mass? I enter .3 for my picnic cooler type mash tun and I usually hit it right on. You may need to experiment with that until you find the correct value.

You can also pre-heat your mashtun to help offset the temp diff.

alemonkey said:

Do you enter any value for your mash tun thermal mass? I enter .3 for my picnic cooler type mash tun and I usually hit it right on. You may need to experiment with that until you find the correct value.

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I didn't enter a value for thermal mass because the Help files indicated that if you preheat the cooler it isn't needed. I preheat my cooler with about 3 gallons of hot water.

If your finishing sparge measured 1020 then you left a good bit of recoverable wort in the tun.