I had really silly "oh yea" or "duh" moment today in the brew house that I thought I would share in hopes it helps others. This is more of a story and not much in the way of knowledge or wisdom. Hopefully it can help others and be a bit entertaining.
First some background info. I have been on a mission lately to collect all the data I can on my process to see if I can find areas to improve and to better predict results. After many helpful posts here and working on a giant spreadsheet I was starting to feel just a tad bit over confident. That must be why I was ready for a set back. Karma was looking for a cocky brewer I guess.
Since all my kegs are full I have been working on some high gravity beers that might need aging. Last week was a wheat wine. This week I went with a wee heavy. I was going to do a strong Belgian but I changed my mind. I wish I hadn't done that. Anyway, I plugged all the numbers in and did all my prep work. The grain bill was within a few pounds of the wheat wine so I thought I was good. What could go wrong?
Things went fairly smooth. I did have an issue with my mill. I adjusted it down from 045 to 039 and it kept getting stuck. It might need to be cleaned or I might need to upgrade. This caused me a big delay but so far no problem. I kept my temper and tried to move on thinking "I'm prepared for this so a 30 minute delay isn't a big deal".
I started to add the grains to start the mash and things started to look odd. I kept adding grains and the mash just didn't look right. I re-circulate and I had my rice hulls ready to go so that wasn't an issue. But as I kept adding grains the level of wort just looked really low. For a moment I thought I didn't put enough water in but that wasn't it. I kept going until it just got so silly that I had to stop. I should have taken a picture but the mash thickness was just over the top. There was no way this was going to work.
I just couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had taken good notes and measured accurately. This wasn't all that different from the last brew either. So what was wrong? Then it finally hit me. This was a 22 lb grain bill. That rang a bell with one of mine 10g batches. My calculations are always based on a 20g kettle. The problem? Well, the basket is smaller than the 20g kettle, by a fair amount. The wheat wine was 20 lbs of grain so I guess that 2 lbs was just too much over the top. Basically I finally smacked myself in the head and said "you're basically trying to do a 10g batch with water for only 5g".
Thanks to this forum the solution was quick to find. Someone (I forget who) suggested in another post about high gravity beers that you need to work around the mash thickness by planning for a 90 minute boil. So I quickly went inside to plug in 90 minutes into BeerSmith and figure out that I needed 3/4 gallons more of water. Luckily that seemed to do the trick. To be honest, if I want to get decent numbers out of this next time I would need to do a 120 minute boil and include some sparge. But I was happy to see a mash thickness that looked right so I just went with it. I had already wasted another 30 minutes trying to figure this out, and added another 30 minutes to the boil, so I was eager to get things done.
At the end of it all the numbers look very similar to the last brew so I'm getting better and predicting the results. My trub losses are definitely too low because I'm consistently below what I want into the fermenter. But my 65% BH estimate in BeerSmith is pretty accurate.
Only thing that disappoints me is that I don't think this can be predicted in the future. It would take some complicated calculations to predict not only the capacity of the kettle but also the basket in the kettle. I guess this is a big advantage of any BIAB system that uses a bag that expands to the capacity of the mash tun. But you just have to know your system to learn something like this.
My only advice would be to be careful with those high gravity recipes and be ready for having to add more water if you have a basket type system. Brew on.
First some background info. I have been on a mission lately to collect all the data I can on my process to see if I can find areas to improve and to better predict results. After many helpful posts here and working on a giant spreadsheet I was starting to feel just a tad bit over confident. That must be why I was ready for a set back. Karma was looking for a cocky brewer I guess.
Since all my kegs are full I have been working on some high gravity beers that might need aging. Last week was a wheat wine. This week I went with a wee heavy. I was going to do a strong Belgian but I changed my mind. I wish I hadn't done that. Anyway, I plugged all the numbers in and did all my prep work. The grain bill was within a few pounds of the wheat wine so I thought I was good. What could go wrong?
Things went fairly smooth. I did have an issue with my mill. I adjusted it down from 045 to 039 and it kept getting stuck. It might need to be cleaned or I might need to upgrade. This caused me a big delay but so far no problem. I kept my temper and tried to move on thinking "I'm prepared for this so a 30 minute delay isn't a big deal".
I started to add the grains to start the mash and things started to look odd. I kept adding grains and the mash just didn't look right. I re-circulate and I had my rice hulls ready to go so that wasn't an issue. But as I kept adding grains the level of wort just looked really low. For a moment I thought I didn't put enough water in but that wasn't it. I kept going until it just got so silly that I had to stop. I should have taken a picture but the mash thickness was just over the top. There was no way this was going to work.
I just couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had taken good notes and measured accurately. This wasn't all that different from the last brew either. So what was wrong? Then it finally hit me. This was a 22 lb grain bill. That rang a bell with one of mine 10g batches. My calculations are always based on a 20g kettle. The problem? Well, the basket is smaller than the 20g kettle, by a fair amount. The wheat wine was 20 lbs of grain so I guess that 2 lbs was just too much over the top. Basically I finally smacked myself in the head and said "you're basically trying to do a 10g batch with water for only 5g".
Thanks to this forum the solution was quick to find. Someone (I forget who) suggested in another post about high gravity beers that you need to work around the mash thickness by planning for a 90 minute boil. So I quickly went inside to plug in 90 minutes into BeerSmith and figure out that I needed 3/4 gallons more of water. Luckily that seemed to do the trick. To be honest, if I want to get decent numbers out of this next time I would need to do a 120 minute boil and include some sparge. But I was happy to see a mash thickness that looked right so I just went with it. I had already wasted another 30 minutes trying to figure this out, and added another 30 minutes to the boil, so I was eager to get things done.
At the end of it all the numbers look very similar to the last brew so I'm getting better and predicting the results. My trub losses are definitely too low because I'm consistently below what I want into the fermenter. But my 65% BH estimate in BeerSmith is pretty accurate.
Only thing that disappoints me is that I don't think this can be predicted in the future. It would take some complicated calculations to predict not only the capacity of the kettle but also the basket in the kettle. I guess this is a big advantage of any BIAB system that uses a bag that expands to the capacity of the mash tun. But you just have to know your system to learn something like this.
My only advice would be to be careful with those high gravity recipes and be ready for having to add more water if you have a basket type system. Brew on.
