Duster72
Well-Known Member
Okay, I made the AHS Cali Common recipe tonight. I added 1 lb of 2-row to the recipe due to poor efficiency in the past. I figured I could add water to top off if I overshot.
Anyway, everything seemed to be going well. Beersmith estimated my gravity going into the boiler at 1.046 at 7.0 gallons. I got 7.1 gallons and had 1.047 gravity. I had my expected efficiency set to 75%. BS shows efficiency into boiler at 84.06%.
Then I boiled in my 15 gallon kettle on a turkey fryer. I lose a lot of boil-off with this pot, and I still haven't mastered estimating just how much I am going to lose. Working on that. Anyway, I did my 60 minute boil and then used my immersion chiller down to 65. I got a huge amount of cold break, much more than usual, which I attributed to very cold water coming out of the sink. I whirlpooled, waited 20 minutes, and then tried to siphon as little break material as possible into the carboy, but I still got a good 1/2" of trub on the bottom of the carboy. The 15 gallon kettle does not make siphoning easier due to the huge surface area.
I ended up with 4.3 gallons in my carboy and a gravity reading of 1.054 - efficiency of 58.49% calculated from actual volume. Since BS had estimated my OG at 1.054, would you leave this as-is or add a half gallon of boiled water? Adding a half gallon should lower OG to 1.050.
Any ideas on where I lost all my efficiency? Was it in the break material? I dumped easily 3/4ths of a gallon to a gallon of material from the kettle. I really didn't want all that crap in my carboy.
Help!
Anyway, everything seemed to be going well. Beersmith estimated my gravity going into the boiler at 1.046 at 7.0 gallons. I got 7.1 gallons and had 1.047 gravity. I had my expected efficiency set to 75%. BS shows efficiency into boiler at 84.06%.
Then I boiled in my 15 gallon kettle on a turkey fryer. I lose a lot of boil-off with this pot, and I still haven't mastered estimating just how much I am going to lose. Working on that. Anyway, I did my 60 minute boil and then used my immersion chiller down to 65. I got a huge amount of cold break, much more than usual, which I attributed to very cold water coming out of the sink. I whirlpooled, waited 20 minutes, and then tried to siphon as little break material as possible into the carboy, but I still got a good 1/2" of trub on the bottom of the carboy. The 15 gallon kettle does not make siphoning easier due to the huge surface area.
I ended up with 4.3 gallons in my carboy and a gravity reading of 1.054 - efficiency of 58.49% calculated from actual volume. Since BS had estimated my OG at 1.054, would you leave this as-is or add a half gallon of boiled water? Adding a half gallon should lower OG to 1.050.
Any ideas on where I lost all my efficiency? Was it in the break material? I dumped easily 3/4ths of a gallon to a gallon of material from the kettle. I really didn't want all that crap in my carboy.
Help!