New All Grain Brewer

[GFromNH]

Hello,

I am a long time extract brewer. I have been brewing extract beers for probably close to 15 years. I guess I am bringing this up because I would like to highlight the fact that I am not exactly new to home brewing.

Anyhoo....Today I attempted my first all grain brew, and I am not entirely sure how well it went. I decided to go all grain because I have a 10 gallon keg system and was constantly brewing two 5 gallon extract kits. I finally decided that it was time to switch to a single 10 gallon all grain. I was hoping it would save time and money.

Long story short, I am a numbers/data person. I am pretty sure I will get a drinkable, tasty brew, but the numbers are not adding up to me and I am wondering if I went wrong somewhere. I followed this recipe to the letter

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/

And here is where I have questions. I followed the grain bill exactly. I preheated my mash tun (48 quart) with one gallon of boing water for probably about 48 min. I used Beersmith software to calculate the strike water temp and volume.

I was targeting 150 degrees and I hit 146 degrees . Based on what I read in that Palmer "How to Brew" book I figured this was probably okay.

Anyway I am trying to figure out if/when I did something wrong. My OG was about 1.041 after adjusting for temperature. The original recipe says it should be 1.039. So it seems like that is fine. Here is where I am struggling as a numbers/data person.

This OG gives me a brewhouse efficiently of 61%. This seems bad. It seems like most homebrewers get 75% or greater. And I am not sure why mine is so low? Is it because my mash temp was 146 and not 150?

Did I make a wrong turn somewhere? I only got 9.5 gallons of wort when the recipe was for 11 gallons.

Anyway, I used Beersmith for most of the calculations. I know I got 13 gallons out of the mash tun. I ended up with 9.5 gallons in the fermentor, when I was hoping for 11. And based on that I would have thought less volume would have yielded a higher specific gravity, based on the recipe.

 

[GFromNH]

I guess one of my biggest questions is how do I determine where the wort went? I boiled for 60 minutes. I measured 3.5 gallons from the first run offs. Then, as instructed by Beersmith, I batch sparged twice, with 3 gallons the second time and 6.5 gallons the third time. So I had a total of 13 gallons pre boil, exactly what Beersmith predicting. So I have to assume I boiled off more then expected? Is 3 gallons boil off in an hour realistic? Or am I missing something?

 

[brewbama]

3 gal boil off seems high to me. I avg between 1 and 1.5 gal boil off depending on how aggressively I boil. Just curious, are you using the same boil kettle you used in extract? If so, did you do full volume boils? If so, what was the boil off rate? If not, are you using a tall thin kettle or a short wide kettle?

 

[GFromNH]

I am not using the same kettle. For extract I used to use a 5 gallon pot and would boil 3 gallons in it. The new pot I am using for all grain is short and wide I suppose. It's not tall. It measures about 18 inches wide by 18 inches deep.

 

[Beerbrothas]

How do you fit 13 gallons of wort in a pot that small?

 

[ong]

How do you fit 13 gallons of wort in a pot that small?

Those dimensions would hold over 18 gallons.

 

[ong]

Did you actually measure the amount of wort you collected pre-boil, and what you ended up with after the boil? I would treat this first (and probably the next few) brew days as collecting data to nail down your equipment profile in Beersmith. If measurements show that you consistently boil off 3 gallons an hour, that's your boil off rate. If your mash infusion was off, maybe the mass or specific heat coefficient of your tun needs to be adjusted. It takes everyone some time to dial in equipment profiles with Beersmith -- it's never going to be perfectly accurate with one of the out of the box profiles.