I made my second attempt at AG brewing this weekend and I missed my OG pretty badly. I was making a mint chocolate stout (recipe was from this webstie) It was supposed to be 1.060 and I got 1.045. I'm trying to trouble shoot what I did wrong. I mashed at 152 degrees for 60 min with 17.81 qts of water and I sparged at 168 for 15 min with 24.5 qts of water. I had 12.25 pounds of grain. Mash went well and I thought the sparge went well also, but next is where I ran into problems (I think). When I was draining the sparge I didn't have enough room in my boil kettle to hold all the liquid safely. So I ended up not using about 2 qts of the sparge water. I then boiled for 60 min and ended up with almost 7 gallons of liquid with 5.5 gal being my target. I could only fit about 6 gallons safely in my fermenter ( I knew if I went and higher than 6 gal. I would be asking for trouble.) Should I have boiled longer to get my volume down to the 5.5 gal? Would boiling longer have effected the flavor of the beer?
As an aside the hydrometer sample tastes great and I can't wait to drink it once its done, but I'm curious where I went wrong.
As an aside the hydrometer sample tastes great and I can't wait to drink it once its done, but I'm curious where I went wrong.