This past weekend, brewed what will be a Key Lime Pie Sour. Large grain bill - 117lbs of grain and 20 lbs of Graham cracker crumbs. For the past 3 brews, we’ve slightly missed our OG mark, by anywhere from 3-5 points. Not a huge deal.
On this particular brew, the predicted OG was 1.080 and we ended up with 1.095.
I thought this was strictly due to the use of Graham cracker crumbs. However, if what I found on Reddit and the math is correct, the crumbs should only count for 6 gravity points. I’m trying to account for the other 9.
There’s a variable in here that is new that I’m wondering if it helped us out on the lauter efficiency - the use of a wort grant. The Graham crumbs and the large amount of grain made the lauter process a nightmare. Kept clogging pumps and too much junk getting through that would have ended up in the BK.
We rigged up a wort grant out of a 20gal kettle that was gravity fed through a hop spider to filter everything out. We then pumped off of the grant and into the BK.
In my Head, I’m wondering if the use of the grant contributed to the efficiency gain. Did the gravity feed through the grains allow us to collect more of the sugars as opposed to pulling liquid through the grain bed with a pump? Any thoughts? Does my theory hold water or is it full of holes?
On this particular brew, the predicted OG was 1.080 and we ended up with 1.095.
I thought this was strictly due to the use of Graham cracker crumbs. However, if what I found on Reddit and the math is correct, the crumbs should only count for 6 gravity points. I’m trying to account for the other 9.
There’s a variable in here that is new that I’m wondering if it helped us out on the lauter efficiency - the use of a wort grant. The Graham crumbs and the large amount of grain made the lauter process a nightmare. Kept clogging pumps and too much junk getting through that would have ended up in the BK.
We rigged up a wort grant out of a 20gal kettle that was gravity fed through a hop spider to filter everything out. We then pumped off of the grant and into the BK.
In my Head, I’m wondering if the use of the grant contributed to the efficiency gain. Did the gravity feed through the grains allow us to collect more of the sugars as opposed to pulling liquid through the grain bed with a pump? Any thoughts? Does my theory hold water or is it full of holes?
