hoppysailor
Well-Known Member
My wife and I have been making "kit" wine for several years and just yesterday started all grain brewing. We got our Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone in the fermenter yesterday and everything went pretty good for a first time experience. We had a few things come up that I would appreciate a comment on though.
- We overshot our mash temp target (153) and ended up at 158. We didn't know what to expect for temp loss from our Igloo cooler MLT so we didn't make any adjustments. To our surprise we only lost 1 degree in 60 minutes. Will this higher temp make my pale ale a "not so pale ale"?
- When continuous sparging it only took about 20 minutes to finish. Everything that I read says that this should be a 45-60 minute process. Will increasing the sparge duration increase efficiency? We calculated about 66% efficiency yeterday.
- We had planned to drain the brew kettle into the fermenter using the spigot but ended up with a blocked outlet due to a large whole hop. Instead, we ended up pouring all of the contents through a strainer into the fermentor. Is there a problem with this?
- We were shooting for 5 gallons of wort to get to the fermenter and only ended up with 4. We added water to get to 5 gallons. Is this a standard practice?
Enough questions for now. I appreciate any and all comments. Thanks.
- We overshot our mash temp target (153) and ended up at 158. We didn't know what to expect for temp loss from our Igloo cooler MLT so we didn't make any adjustments. To our surprise we only lost 1 degree in 60 minutes. Will this higher temp make my pale ale a "not so pale ale"?
- When continuous sparging it only took about 20 minutes to finish. Everything that I read says that this should be a 45-60 minute process. Will increasing the sparge duration increase efficiency? We calculated about 66% efficiency yeterday.
- We had planned to drain the brew kettle into the fermenter using the spigot but ended up with a blocked outlet due to a large whole hop. Instead, we ended up pouring all of the contents through a strainer into the fermentor. Is there a problem with this?
- We were shooting for 5 gallons of wort to get to the fermenter and only ended up with 4. We added water to get to 5 gallons. Is this a standard practice?
Enough questions for now. I appreciate any and all comments. Thanks.