So I'll start with maybe a sort of funny story... I did my first partial mash the other day. I was totally unprepared, as I had somehow talked myself into thinking it was just an extract w/ steeped grains recipe pretty much up until the time I was in the LHBS grinding a bunch of ingredients that I knew damn well had to be mashed Laugh if you want, I think I had this phobia about partial mash, so I looked at the recipe and said, "Yeah, I can do that... as long as I tell myself it's an all-extract recipe!"
I know the process is basically the same, except that temperature control is more important. Also, I usually don't use a grain bag, I just scoop the spent grains out with a strainer, but this recipe had a bunch of flaked wheat and flaked oats and stuff... so I had to improvise... but I think it worked out alright on that front, except that the grains were maybe a little bit more packed together than is ideal.
Of course, the day I had planned to brew, my older son started coming down with a fever. We gave him some medicine and thought he was better, so I started brewing anyway over my wife's objections -- and then he got worse. D'oh. I mean, he was fine, no symptoms other than the high temperature and a little cranky, but all of a sudden my wife sorta needed some help. So I spent about 90% of the brewing session holding my younger son, 4 months old.
You'd be surprised how much you can do one-handed if you have to! To make matters worse, I was running in and out of the kitchen to check on my older son and wife. Given that, I think I did a damn good job at temp control, all things considered: I was going to mash for 45 minutes, and it was right between 151F and 155F for the first half hour. Then the temperature started to drop, so I turned up the burner, then got called into the other room, and well... I guess that was my "mashout". It climbed to about 165F, and I never got it back down.
And sparging was entirely out of the question, not least because even if I did figure out how to do it one-handed with my complete lack of preparation of equipment, I wasn't about to be pouring 170F+ water all over the place while holding an infant in the other hand...!
Luckily, I wasn't overly worried, because the recipe was such that even if I got zero fermentables from the mash, there was enough extract that it still ought to have been a decent beer, if perhaps a bit thin. And so what was my efficiency?
Well, I know I've read how to calculate it before, and I'm sure I could just look it up again... but I was wondering, if I just play around with the efficiency numbers in Beersmith until its predicted OG matches my measured OG, that's pretty much the same thing, right?
If so, I got about 43% efficiency, which I think is pretty good considering the circumstances! Just wondering if I can trust that number, or if I really have to go to the work of calculating it for real. Comments?
I know the process is basically the same, except that temperature control is more important. Also, I usually don't use a grain bag, I just scoop the spent grains out with a strainer, but this recipe had a bunch of flaked wheat and flaked oats and stuff... so I had to improvise... but I think it worked out alright on that front, except that the grains were maybe a little bit more packed together than is ideal.
Of course, the day I had planned to brew, my older son started coming down with a fever. We gave him some medicine and thought he was better, so I started brewing anyway over my wife's objections -- and then he got worse. D'oh. I mean, he was fine, no symptoms other than the high temperature and a little cranky, but all of a sudden my wife sorta needed some help. So I spent about 90% of the brewing session holding my younger son, 4 months old.
You'd be surprised how much you can do one-handed if you have to! To make matters worse, I was running in and out of the kitchen to check on my older son and wife. Given that, I think I did a damn good job at temp control, all things considered: I was going to mash for 45 minutes, and it was right between 151F and 155F for the first half hour. Then the temperature started to drop, so I turned up the burner, then got called into the other room, and well... I guess that was my "mashout". It climbed to about 165F, and I never got it back down.
And sparging was entirely out of the question, not least because even if I did figure out how to do it one-handed with my complete lack of preparation of equipment, I wasn't about to be pouring 170F+ water all over the place while holding an infant in the other hand...!
Luckily, I wasn't overly worried, because the recipe was such that even if I got zero fermentables from the mash, there was enough extract that it still ought to have been a decent beer, if perhaps a bit thin. And so what was my efficiency?
Well, I know I've read how to calculate it before, and I'm sure I could just look it up again... but I was wondering, if I just play around with the efficiency numbers in Beersmith until its predicted OG matches my measured OG, that's pretty much the same thing, right?
If so, I got about 43% efficiency, which I think is pretty good considering the circumstances! Just wondering if I can trust that number, or if I really have to go to the work of calculating it for real. Comments?