Hi all,
I've been looking through the forum at people asking about getting low sg from all grain brewing and I'm not entirely sure what my problem is.
I've done a few all grain batches but they always come up significantly lower in the sg than the recipe suggests. I've been adding dme but need to figure out what i'm doing wrong.
My last brew was for 2.5 gallons:
5lb Pale malt
5.6oz crystal
.50oz Nugget @60mins
.25oz Chinook @15mins
.25oz Cascade @15mins
.25oz Amarillo @15mins
.25oz Chinook @0mins
.25oz Cascade @0mins
.25oz Amarillo @0mins
Wyeast American Ale starter (seems a bit pointless now ahaha!)
I mashed 6.66l at 66oC for 1hr, then fly sparged with 12.87l at 80oC. I used a calculator as I'm not clued up on amounts of water needed still.
I got about the amount I'd planned for. Did a gravity reading and it showed something around 1.020. Boiled and it had gone to 1.038.
The recipe when put in on beersmith said 1.055 so mine was colossally off as usual. I had forgotten to get any dme so only had enough to bump it up to 1.042.
As far as I can tell the grains are crushed fine, I sparged slowly (doesn't seem to make a difference if I batch sparge or sly, it's always mega low).
I've seen and had people comment on a post in the past here about the water. Its hard water here but I don't know mineral readings or such. Is this likely to be what is making the suger extraction so low?
If there's any more information I've missed please let me know too,
Many thanks
Howard
I've been looking through the forum at people asking about getting low sg from all grain brewing and I'm not entirely sure what my problem is.
I've done a few all grain batches but they always come up significantly lower in the sg than the recipe suggests. I've been adding dme but need to figure out what i'm doing wrong.
My last brew was for 2.5 gallons:
5lb Pale malt
5.6oz crystal
.50oz Nugget @60mins
.25oz Chinook @15mins
.25oz Cascade @15mins
.25oz Amarillo @15mins
.25oz Chinook @0mins
.25oz Cascade @0mins
.25oz Amarillo @0mins
Wyeast American Ale starter (seems a bit pointless now ahaha!)
I mashed 6.66l at 66oC for 1hr, then fly sparged with 12.87l at 80oC. I used a calculator as I'm not clued up on amounts of water needed still.
I got about the amount I'd planned for. Did a gravity reading and it showed something around 1.020. Boiled and it had gone to 1.038.
The recipe when put in on beersmith said 1.055 so mine was colossally off as usual. I had forgotten to get any dme so only had enough to bump it up to 1.042.
As far as I can tell the grains are crushed fine, I sparged slowly (doesn't seem to make a difference if I batch sparge or sly, it's always mega low).
I've seen and had people comment on a post in the past here about the water. Its hard water here but I don't know mineral readings or such. Is this likely to be what is making the suger extraction so low?
If there's any more information I've missed please let me know too,
Many thanks
Howard