Alright guys we have an issue that we have noticed while all grain brewing with our equipment. We use a standard a 10gallon round cooler for mash tun, 5gallon round cooler for hot liquor, and collect into boil kettle. Essentially an easy 3 tier system. We have brewed 2 batches of an IPA and have had the same results both times, low O.G. resutling in boiling up extra DME to jack the gravity up. After figuring out the potential problem with the 1st batch being the mistake of top of water diluting, we made upgrades and changes to our process and equipment to ensure we end up with 6gallons of wort and boil down to 5gallons.
This second time we brewed we treated our water for proper pH and did the dough-in at 167-168F to get to 154F and maintained that for 60min. We did the iodine test at 60min. to see if conversion was complete. Iodine turned light brown to clearish when dripped into wort so I was convinced conversion was good. We then did our vorlauf process to ensure clarity and set up our grain bed for natural filtration by collecting runoff into a 4c. measuring pitcher and proceeded to do this process 4 times until wort ran clear. After that we started our sparge process with 168F water maintaining 1"-2" water above grain bed. This process took about 30-35min. and were able to collect 6 gallons of sugary wort. We then did our boil for 60min. added our hops and Irish moss, cooled with wort chiller to 65F-67F and pitched our yeast starter.
Here is our recipe for grains.
12lbs. - Golden Promise
12oz. - Caramel 60L
4oz. - Acidulated Malt
O.G. - 1.063
F.G. - 1.016
SRM - 9
ABV - 6.3%
On both batches we hit a gravity of about 1.045 +/- .002
Is there something in our process we are doing wrong? I am assuming we are running at about 70%-75% efficiency out of our equipment, just the fact that it happened twice and ended up about the same I am assuming its our process or equipment limitations. Is the answer that maybe we just need to up our base malt to ensure more sugars? Please let me know because I am going crazy having to boil up DME at the last minute!! Thanks guys!
This second time we brewed we treated our water for proper pH and did the dough-in at 167-168F to get to 154F and maintained that for 60min. We did the iodine test at 60min. to see if conversion was complete. Iodine turned light brown to clearish when dripped into wort so I was convinced conversion was good. We then did our vorlauf process to ensure clarity and set up our grain bed for natural filtration by collecting runoff into a 4c. measuring pitcher and proceeded to do this process 4 times until wort ran clear. After that we started our sparge process with 168F water maintaining 1"-2" water above grain bed. This process took about 30-35min. and were able to collect 6 gallons of sugary wort. We then did our boil for 60min. added our hops and Irish moss, cooled with wort chiller to 65F-67F and pitched our yeast starter.
Here is our recipe for grains.
12lbs. - Golden Promise
12oz. - Caramel 60L
4oz. - Acidulated Malt
O.G. - 1.063
F.G. - 1.016
SRM - 9
ABV - 6.3%
On both batches we hit a gravity of about 1.045 +/- .002
Is there something in our process we are doing wrong? I am assuming we are running at about 70%-75% efficiency out of our equipment, just the fact that it happened twice and ended up about the same I am assuming its our process or equipment limitations. Is the answer that maybe we just need to up our base malt to ensure more sugars? Please let me know because I am going crazy having to boil up DME at the last minute!! Thanks guys!