ahhhhh First AG beer

I Am little annoyed. Brewed EdWorts Kolsch as my first AG brew. It went pretty good but my post boil gravity was 1.040 instead of the .052 in the recipe, kinda sux. Also my yeast starter didnt show any visual signs of life after 10+ hrs in the flask, kinda sux also. I pitched it anyway.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

how did the crush look?
efficiency rides on it,
also, what type of sparge?

Well, that I wasnt sure about. Since Its my first AG i wasnt sure how it should look. I ordered it online as "Milled" when I looked at it I can remember thinking it seemed like it had alot of whole pieces in there.

I did a single batch mash using a 10 gal round cooler with braid. It seemed like I hit temperatures pretty good...

What did your efficiency come out to? My first couple of AG brews had very low efficiency. The more AGs you do, the better you'll get at predicting the post boil gravity and you can plan accordingly.

The starter doesn't have to krausening for it to be ready. I look at the color to see. If it sort of looks milky, then you should have good growth. This is the brewing "zen" that Jamil Z talks about. Knowing when its "time" comes with experience.

I havent really tried to figure out efficiency yet. I only took the one hydro reading after boil. I guess Ill just let it sit a few days and see if I get any fermentation.
Was wondering, what would the lower gravity reading do to the beer? does it change alcohol and flavor content?

if you want stick with all grain, you might want to consider a mill. the crush is often fairly poor with the pre-cracked grain from some online retailers/lhbs. or you can consider one of these:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/using-pasta-maker-mill-grain-75784/

Mongrat said:

I havent really tried to figure out efficiency yet. I only took the one hydro reading after boil. I guess Ill just let it sit a few days and see if I get any fermentation.
Was wondering, what would the lower gravity reading do to the beer? does it change alcohol and flavor content?

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the lower gravity means that you'll have less alcohol in the final beer, but it may also lead your bitterness to be off balanced (higher) if your yeast over attenuates because of the lower original gravity.

Well, good news is, its fermenting away nicely. Hopefully it turns out good, I can deal with a little less alcohol, just didn't want my first AG to be a complete failure!! I will definitely be buying a barley crusher or something for my next batch....

It sounds like you did a no-sparge?

If you did not sparge, that is most likely why you got a lower-than-expected OG.

As mentioned, it'll probably still taste great.

Well I think What I did was a sparge. Basically I mashed at 151 for an hour (3 gallons) and drained that off into the kettle, then I added enough water back into the mash tun for about 10 min untill i collected the rest of the 5.5 gallons.

I'm not sparge expert. But with only 2.5 gallons of sparge, you could be taking an efficiency hit. I can tell you that I batch sparge and I get 2/3 of my volume from sparging.

Taking gravity measurements could help. If you need to increase your efficiency, you should collect until your gravity falls below desired levels (you'd have to ask someone who fly sparges for a number). Then you would have to adjust the length of your boil to compensate for the volume and need for more evaporation.

If you fly sparge and stop at desired volume, you could be leaving behind a lot of fermentables with the grain.

Anyone who fly sparges have any input on this?

huh, i guess Im confused more now. I did roughly 1.25 quart per pound of grain (9.5lb) which was just under 3 gallons for the mash. So you would need to over sparge and collect more than the 5.5 gallons needed then boil down to 5.5?

Its actually a complex subject. But, essentially, yes.

If I am providing too much info I apologize in advance...

In a nutshell, the reason why people sparge is to increase their efficiency - to get more sugar out of the same amount of grain. The initial reason for doing this was money. Same amount of grain but more wort.

For the homebrewer I suppose some of it is still money. But its also a volume issue. You only have room for so much grain. So you try to get more wort from the maximum grain your system can handle.

But with sparging, there are trade-offs. Eventually you start to get more than just sugar in the run-off water from sparging - and can end up with an increasing astringent taste from what I understand.

I batch sparge and according to research I read here in the wiki section, 2 batch sparges seems to be a good compromise between efficiency and oversparging so that is what I do. My volume for each sparge is close to my obtained volume after mashing. This seems to work well.

With fly sparging and collecting wort through run-off, it's my understanding that people will collect run-off until a certain gravity is reached. Some will stop it short when a certain volume is reached. But if you stop short early on, you will lose some converted sugar still left in the grain and your efficiency and therefore OG will be effected.

If you get too much wort, yes you have have to boil down to your target initial boil volume and then start your true boil and hop additions from there.

Sorry to be long winded.

Hopefully someone who fly sparges will chime in at some point.

Nah thats cool man, thanks for the info! I thought I had read enough to know what im doing and I guess being a few points off isnt too bad. My plan is to get a barley crusher to eliminate the possiblity of a bad crush and try to get better.

So, I read this (Below) on the beginners forum, is this correct? so for 9.5 lbs of grain I would have to collect 4.5 gallons of sparge water and then boil that down to my 5.5 gallons in the recipe? how long would that take??

1. Low efficiency.
I have found that the most common thread here is not using enough water during mashing and sparging. All you need to do is figure 1 to 1 1/4 quarts of water per pound of grain for the mash and about 1/2 gallon of water per pound of grain for sparging.

here's my example: my recipe had 13 lbs of grain. i wanted to have 6.5 gallons of wort collected. i know that i lose about a gallon over a 60 minute boil. i wanted my OG (post boil)to be around 1.068 so if i reached 6.5 gallons and i am around 1.058 or a little less, boiling off that gallon, i get back up to the gravity i want. i mashed in with 1.5 quarts per pound (roughly 3.5 gallons) mashed at 154 for 60 minutes, then sparged 4 gallons of water at 170. i was dead on for my pre boil gravity, i also collected enough after that for a low gravity 2 gallon batch. my mash tun is a 12 gallon igloo cube with pipe manifold, my sparge method was pouring the 170 degree water through a collander all over the grain with a pitcher (basically fly sparging). i don't know how many times i calculated the mash and re read a bunch of stuff before i started. this was my first all grain, fermenting right now. i hope i can repeat this process every time

That's called a batch sparge....

Shaneoco1981 said:

That's called a batch sparge....

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pouring and collecting at the same time while keeping the level above the grain about an inch is still batch sparging? thought it was fly or continuous sparging.

donjr721 said:

pouring and collecting at the same time while keeping the level above the grain about an inch is still batch sparging? thought it was fly or continuous sparging.

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it is.

donjr721 said:

pouring and collecting at the same time while keeping the level above the grain about an inch is still batch sparging? thought it was fly or continuous sparging.

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that is fly sparging. but i can see how he confused it becuase of the way you worded it. i was thinking batch when i first read it too. i guess some people will pour their sparge water through a collander or something similar all at one time just to let it spread out all over the grain. but not collecting at them same time just to spread water out more evenly. although most people usually stir when batch sparging some dont i guess.

ok. my bad i should have been more clear, or worded differently.

Quick question, I'm assuming you took the gravity reading at pitching temperature?

yep sure did, i think it was just below or right at the .040 mark

well I kegged the beer today after 5 days crash at about 38 degrees.
Hydro reading says 1.000 flat. so by using this calc: http://www.rooftopbrew.net/abv.php

It seems its about 5.5%?

Anyways, the beer is pretty clear and tastes good flat!