I'm pretty new to AG (only 4 batches under my belt ... literally, they are now under my belt), but have extensive history with extract brewing. I keep getting a OG a few points below the bottom of the recipe's estimated range. I feel like an idiot saying this, but even though I'm asking an efficiency question I am not yet in the habit of actually calculating the efficiency. Don't care about the math and the gadgets, just want a beer that has proper body and alcohol. So if anyone has some straightforward ideas about how to get my efficiency up, that would be great.
My setup:
- Always organic, fully modified grains crushed that day from the LHBS
- Add appropriate amounts of gypsum to my reverse-osmosisized water
- Mash in the brewpot at 152-54, ~45 minutes
- Iodine test looks good
- Fly sparge in my homemade lauter-tun that consists of two buckets and a spigot, as described by Papazian
- Sparge takes a long time because spigot is small. By long time I mean at least 1 hour.
- Keep the sparge water temp up so grain bed stays over 160.
- 1 tsp of lactic acid added to sparge water to keep pH from going basic
What am I not seeing here?
Should I just buy a couple more pounds of grains?
Should I go for batch sparging and build one of them neato cooler thingys?
My setup:
- Always organic, fully modified grains crushed that day from the LHBS
- Add appropriate amounts of gypsum to my reverse-osmosisized water
- Mash in the brewpot at 152-54, ~45 minutes
- Iodine test looks good
- Fly sparge in my homemade lauter-tun that consists of two buckets and a spigot, as described by Papazian
- Sparge takes a long time because spigot is small. By long time I mean at least 1 hour.
- Keep the sparge water temp up so grain bed stays over 160.
- 1 tsp of lactic acid added to sparge water to keep pH from going basic
What am I not seeing here?
Should I just buy a couple more pounds of grains?
Should I go for batch sparging and build one of them neato cooler thingys?