Hi guys
I'm still a newbie, with only 4 brews under the belt, so I have a lot of questions for all the hardcore all-grain brewers!
This past weekend I decided to do my first all-grain batch using BIAB, I bought the largest pot that I could find, a 20L Hart Alu pot, which I prepared by boiling water in it for 30 mins.
I followed all the instructions, tips, tricks, etc that I could use from reading many forums:
- Steeped all the grains ('bout 5kg) in 15L water of 65C for 60 mins
- did a "Mash-out" by raising the temp to 75C and letting it sit for another 15mins, 75mins total. (the extra 15mins was supposed to help with my "efficiency", more on this later)
- lifted and drained the bag, squeezed as much wort out as I could (as I read that squeezing is considered good by some, bad by others, so I chose to do it anyway)
- "Sparged" by pouring 3L of 70C water over the bag in various places, and squeezed again.
- Boiled for 60 mins, added hops/irish moss at the all the right times (something that no-one tells you: don't do this indoors, in winter, with all the doors and windows closed, the steam got everywhere and I've now got sticky walls, cabinets, microwave etc... :smack
- Rapidly cooled the closed pot in an ice bath, whirlpooled, and added everything to my fermenter, and topped up to the 23L mark, as per my recipe.
Right, now this is where I need help; the recipe states that after diluting the wort in the fermenter by topping up with clean water up to 23L the OG should be 1.051 (down from supposed post-boil of 1.066, forgot to measure), but I got 1.043? What the hell went wrong? (BTW, reading was taken at 14C, before rehydrated US-05 yeast was pitched)
What can I do to get my efficiency up?
After a bit of googling, I found a calculator that worked out that my efficiency is 63%, but the recipe is formulated for 75%...
Sorry for the ridiculously long post, I'm just trying to make sure that get all the necessary info together.
Thanks in advance for any help!
I'm still a newbie, with only 4 brews under the belt, so I have a lot of questions for all the hardcore all-grain brewers!
This past weekend I decided to do my first all-grain batch using BIAB, I bought the largest pot that I could find, a 20L Hart Alu pot, which I prepared by boiling water in it for 30 mins.
I followed all the instructions, tips, tricks, etc that I could use from reading many forums:
- Steeped all the grains ('bout 5kg) in 15L water of 65C for 60 mins
- did a "Mash-out" by raising the temp to 75C and letting it sit for another 15mins, 75mins total. (the extra 15mins was supposed to help with my "efficiency", more on this later)
- lifted and drained the bag, squeezed as much wort out as I could (as I read that squeezing is considered good by some, bad by others, so I chose to do it anyway)
- "Sparged" by pouring 3L of 70C water over the bag in various places, and squeezed again.
- Boiled for 60 mins, added hops/irish moss at the all the right times (something that no-one tells you: don't do this indoors, in winter, with all the doors and windows closed, the steam got everywhere and I've now got sticky walls, cabinets, microwave etc... :smack
- Rapidly cooled the closed pot in an ice bath, whirlpooled, and added everything to my fermenter, and topped up to the 23L mark, as per my recipe.
Right, now this is where I need help; the recipe states that after diluting the wort in the fermenter by topping up with clean water up to 23L the OG should be 1.051 (down from supposed post-boil of 1.066, forgot to measure), but I got 1.043? What the hell went wrong? (BTW, reading was taken at 14C, before rehydrated US-05 yeast was pitched)
What can I do to get my efficiency up?
After a bit of googling, I found a calculator that worked out that my efficiency is 63%, but the recipe is formulated for 75%...
Sorry for the ridiculously long post, I'm just trying to make sure that get all the necessary info together.
Thanks in advance for any help!