First AG Brew - Disaster? BierMuncher's Centennial Blonde

My first AG brew day was a disaster. Well, disaster may be too strong of a word but I know it's close.

I realize I had to get the first one under my belt but man.... I thought it would have went better!

Here are some issue highlights that I need to work on:

The Mash
(Note: I should have followed BierMuncher's advice instead of the path I followed below)

Was targeting a mash temp of 150F. Heated 2.75 gal of strike water to 180F and put in 10 gal Igloo MLT. Let sit for about 10 minutes and then stirred to get temp down to 152F. (I read a head where a member had great success in following this method so I tried it).

Temp after coughing in was 141F!

Heated up 2 Qts water to 175F, added to mash to get temp up. Brought it up to 142F.

Heated up 2 more Qts water to 180F, added to mash to get temp up. Brought it up to 144F.

Emptied 1 gallon mash running, heated it to 180 and added back to mash. Brought temp up to 154F. Stirred until temp was 150F. Put lid back on.

This all took 1 hour!

Increased mash water volume by 1 gallon.

Started the timer for 75 minutes.

First Runnings

Vorlauf went well and collected (I think) 3 gal from first runnings.

The Sparge

Original estimated spare volume was 6.5 gal. I subtracted 1 gallon due to using an extra gallon in the mash and heated 5.5 gal of water - Target 168F.

I overshot my target temp by about 15 degrees. It took a while to get the temp down to 168 to sparge.

Spare seemed to go well. No stuck spare, vorlauf went well.... nice and clear.

Collected 2nd running to achieve 7.5 gal boil volume. What I didn't do was collect a preboil sample of the 2 runnings mixed. The 2nd runnings did have a refractometer reading of 1.008 (measured later).

The Boil

Everything went well with the boil until the 60 minute timer went off and I collected a sample to measure SG.

1.030!! Target was 1.040.

So I kept boiling hoping to boil off some wort and get my SG up. After 30 additional minutes and several sample test later I was at 1.035. I did some quick googling and calculations and determined I needed to add 8 oz of DME to bring SG up to 1.040.

I added it, stirred it in for about 10 minutes and shut her down. SG is 1.038. Gonna have to do.

Fired up the Immersion Chiller (yes, I did have it in the boiling wort) and it took longer than usual. I didn't add bagged ice like last time,just frozen jugs. Note taken.

Fermenter

I ended up with ~5.12 gal in fermenter. Target was 5.5 gal. Not bad.

Pitched the yeast and stuck it in my fermentation chamber. The bummer is, I just realized this morning I forgot to oxygenate the wort before pitching yeast!

The yeast is taking off this morning so hopefully that won't matter.

Sigh

This brew took me 8 hours from the time I started up the burner until general cleanup.I say general because I rinsed everything down and started it soaking and I'm going to finish it now.

Man..... so many lessons learned and so many questions. I gotta do better next time.

I hope this batch turns out half decent. I think I'll brew it again for my next batch so I can work on my process and not have to be concerned with a different recipe.

This was the recipe I was using.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=42841

you made beer! can't call that a disaster

like learning any new process, it takes practice.

practice making beer.

^. What he said! Well done! Doesn't sound terribly different than my brew day last weekend and I've been doing this a couple years now. 😀

Sounds like a few wrinkles but an otherwise successful brew. Thinking on your feet, making adjustments and corrections. Well played

Next one will be smoother.

Congrats on your first AG

Honestly that doesn't sound like a disaster at all. It probably seems a lot worse from where you're at. But a few observations from my perspective:

1) You need to calculate strike water temperature for your mash. For the given recipe, a mash thickness of 1.25 qt/lb, and grains at 70F, you need 3.2 gal water at 161F. Use a calculator like Brewer's Friend, BrewToad, or BeerSmith to smooth out your mash schedule / process. The idea is to allow your strike water to come down to the strike temperature (not mash temperature) that your looking for in your MLT so you don't have to account for the thermal mass of your MLT.

2) You can add boiling water directly to the mash if you make an error. It takes a few minutes for enzymes to denature, so just mix well and wait for the temperature to stabilize before adding more water.

3) Sparge water temperatures are a little more forgiving than the mash. If you monitor your mash to keep its temperature under 175F to avoid tannin extraction, you can add sparge water in excess of the 168F target temperature.

Disaster is when you spill half of your grain at dough-in, forget to close your MLT bulkhead valve, have a stuck sparge, and pitch dead yeast into 85F wort. In the same batch. (Yes, I did all of these things.)

Yes, you will have beer. And it will probably be pretty good. It will not be as intended by the recipe but it should be decent.

I would guess the person striking only a few degrees above mash temperature is using a recirculating mash. I always preheat my tun then add strike water about 8-10 degrees above the mash temperature. That is assuming about 70 degree grain temperature. If it is cold out (I brew outside) I leave the grain in the house until ready to mash.

Lessons learned, the next will be easier, and easier most batches after that.

Most of all don't sweat mistakes, have fun, learn and enjoy the fruits of the obsession, er, hobby.

If you used Nottingham or any other dry yeast, don't sweat the oxygenation. Dry yeast doesn't need it.

When you did your gravity readings, did you correct for temperature?

Thanks for the words of wisdom and encouraging words folks.

My refractometer is auto temp compensating.

Pretty common first ag brew day. Last brew day I dang near spilled the kettle of first run wort on the ground. Table leg gave way and I just happened to be standing right there to catch it. That really would have been a problem.

Sounds like a good first day. I wound up doing something similar on my first AG batch.

I've done a bunch of extract brews and a few BIABs, but last Sunday was my first real all grain brew day. Its a cobbled together setup; a 48qt cooler mash tun, 5 gallon igloo water cooler for a hot liquor tank and a turkey fryer burner and kettle. All in all, it worked out ok.

I made a mild to keep the grain bill small for the first run. Mash went well, batch sparged, vorlaufed and by some cosmic accident I hit my estimated pre-boil gravity. Clearest wort I have ever made too.

Problem came at the end of the boil. The auto calc beersmith boil off numbers must not be accurate because I wound up with about 4.5 or 4.75 gallons of wort post boil. Figuring at this point my wort was similar to an extract batch post boil, I topped it off in the fermenter to reach my target. Was that the right thing to do? Don't know?

Aerated it and pitched a jar of harvested nottingaham into it. Primary fermentation seems to have subsided sometime today, so hopefully I will have beer soon ...

You made beer and it should be tasty. The only thing I notice...Isn't SG taken before the boil and OG taken after the boil? Personally I don't get too caught up in gravity readings and just go with what happens.

You'll probably knock a couple hours off the next one.

Jiffster said:

The Mash
(Note: I should have followed BierMuncher's advice instead of the path I followed below)

Was targeting a mash temp of 150F. Heated 2.75 gal of strike water to 180F and put in 10 gal Igloo MLT. Let sit for about 10 minutes and then stirred to get temp down to 152F. (I read a head where a member had great success in following this method so I tried it).

Temp after coughing in was 141F!

Click to expand...

You almost had it! if im reading correctly you let your strike water cool to mash temp (152F) before doughing in?

The step you missed:

Use beersmith or calculate by hand what temperature your strike water needs to be before doughing in. Im not sure the formula because beersmith just tells me, but google it and you will find it. Basically when you dump the grains in the temperature of the grains themselves bring down the whole mixture. So in your case you dropped about 11F from ~152F to ~141F. Your strike water should have been above 160 when you doughed in so that the mixture temp would have dropped ~10-11F and you would have ended up at 152F.

So basically what you should have done is something along the lines of this:
step 1: preheat tun using your hot water (180F in this case) for 10 minutes
step 2: take temperature reading of preheat water. it should have dropped in the last 10 minutes and hopefully is at your STRIKE temperature (which is somewhre in the 160s, you need to calculate it)
step 3a: if your strike water is too cold after preheating you should probably heat it up or you will undershoot your mash temp
step 3b: if your strike water is too hot you can stir it around or let it sit with the lid off to cool to strike temp. i usually stir it it helps drop the temp quicker.
step 4: when your strike water is at the calculated STRIKE WATER temp (i usually dough in at 2 degrees hotter than strike temp) then you dough in. stir vigorously while taking temp readings. you want the grains evenly distributed with no dough balls. if you doughed in a bit hot stir until you are right on your mash temp.

its always good to keep some boiling water ready on hand in case you undershoot your mash temp by a bit. I usually keep every step a degree or two on the high side because i feel like it is a lot easier to dough in a little hot and stir the jesus out of it until it drops to the temp i want.

FWIW i just brewed centennial blonde and botched it as well. I still have no idea where I went wrong but my efficiency was in the ****ter at like 60%. i usually get 85%...

**** happens when brewing, you seem to have salvaged it and its a good first brew in the sense that you will never make these mistakes again and the rest of your process seems pretty sound.

Sounds like my first AG brew day.

Now you know a ton more about AG brewing than you did last week. That's a win.

brewcat said:

You made beer and it should be tasty. The only thing I notice...Isn't SG taken before the boil and OG taken after the boil? Personally I don't get too caught up in gravity readings and just go with what happens.

You'll probably knock a couple hours off the next one.

Click to expand...

Not exactly... Any reading is SG or Specific Gravity. A reading of the wort before sparging is "first runnings". if a 2 step sparge is done you get "second runnings", When all the wort is collected you get your preboil gravity. After the boil you have your OG or Original Gravity. When fermentation is done you get your FG or Final Gravity.

kh54s10 said:

Not exactly... Any reading is SG or Specific Gravity. A reading of the wort before sparging is "first runnings". if a 2 step sparge is done you get "second runnings", When all the wort is collected you get your preboil gravity. After the boil you have your OG or Original Gravity. When fermentation is done you get your FG or Final Gravity.

Click to expand...

Oh right. The lower gravity is what had me wondering. Around 1.040 is usually my preboil or starting gravity. I label it SG. Of course if I would have looked at the recipe...

About 47 hours after pitching yeast. Temp set at 65F.

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Sounds like a good day. Sure there might have been a few bumps. I can't think of anything else to say that the others have not already said. Just take some notes, review the brew day in your head of the things that went right and the things that didn't go so well.

Pull these notes out before you brew next time, form your game plan and jump back in. Each and every brew session things will become more streamlined.

At the end of the day, you made your own beer buddy. Brew on!

KT

I wanted to thank the OP for posting this. I had nearly the same scenario unfold today on my second all grain batch. Mashed in, mash temp too low, but because of this thread I at least had an idea of what to do. Added hot water to get mash temp up. Wound up 1.058 on an expected 1.064 pre boil. Used beersmith to figure out how much DME to add and did so.

Wound up within a thousandth of my OG. Would have been lost if I hadn't seen this last week. Thanks!

Hopefully, I will have a beer that is at least close to my recipe in a few weeks.

I would be lost without the help of the good people on this forum. Glad something I did actually was a help to someone else!

First official pour - bottled 2 weeks ago. Delicious!

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Another example of "All's well that ends well"

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Nice looking beverage!

Excellent work. Just learn from the mistakes you made and keep brewing. I "jacked up" my first 3 or 4 all-grain brews, each one in a different and wonderful way, but eventually I got it. And even then those "jacked up" brews were not terribly bad, just a little weaker than I hoped for.

I am about to bottle my batch of this Thursday. How much corn sugar did you use, are you happy with the carbonation? What yeast did you use?

arnobg said:

I am about to bottle my batch of this Thursday. How much corn sugar did you use, are you happy with the carbonation? What yeast did you use?

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I used Danstar Nottingham yeast.

http://www.danstaryeast.com/company/products/nottingham-ale-beer-yeast

I'm happy with the carbonation. I think I used 4.2 oz of corn sugar.

arnobg said:

I am about to bottle my batch of this Thursday. How much corn sugar did you use, are you happy with the carbonation? What yeast did you use?

Click to expand...

Use a calculator.. its really easy, and only you can decide what your level of carbonation makes you happy.
I think BM, author of this recipe uses Notty. I've used Denny's Fav 50 (1450) and US 04 (an error, I meant 05, and I wished I'd used 05, not 04).
Good luck!

My 2 cents. No need to preheat the tun. Use an online calculator, measure well and heat +5-6 F over STRIKE. Stir well, close up for 5 min, stir well and take temp. IF you're over by a degree or two (likely) stir and leave open to hit STRIKE temp. Dough in, stir well and you will likely hit your mash temp. No need to add in the pre-heat tun step. It works really well this way to hit mash temp. Brew on!