Concluded First AG tonight: Thoughts?

Greetings everyone!

Just finished up my first AG brew tonight: Edwort's Haus Pale 'hybrid.'

Grain bill was identical to Ed's, but I changed up the hop schedule a bit:

.50 oz Cascade 30 min.
.50 oz Cascade 15 min.
.25 oz Amarillo 10 min. with Irish Moss
.25 oz Amarillo 5 min.

Problems: Missed my mash temperature by quite a bit. (146-147) I ended up mashing with what Ed called for at roughly 3.50 gallons of water; however, I believe I overcompensated by roughly 1/2 gallon of leftover in my sparge. (Didn't have enough room in my kettle)

I didn't pre-soak the MLT which I believe accounted for some of the heat loss and then I didn't double, triple, etc., check my strike temperature which accompanied some more of it.

I did the boil according to Ed's schedule, dropped my immersion chiller in at 15 minutes to sanitize and then proceeded to chill down to 75. At that point I dumped my beer through a santized paint strainer into my bucket and ended up with roughly 5.25-5.5 gallons of beer, took a hydrometer reading: 1.022 (WTF!?)

Now, after doing probably 10-15 batches of beer I can realize that a hydrometer can be a bit wonky, but what the hell did I do wrong?!

Probably a stupid question, .... but was the grain crushed? I don't know enough yet about mash dynamics to know how the lower temps would affect efficiency. Of course there are tons of others things that can affect mash efficiency like pH, manifold design, sparging type (fly, batch), draining speed, mash time, etc.

Oh, I see, so you hit your mash temp, but probably were a little thin. I'm not sure if that alone could account for such a low efficiency.

Yep - used a corona mill and had a very pulverized / floury crush.

Mash procedure was a paint strainer in a 10 gallon igloo cooler, making sure all of the grain was thoroughly wetted. It had the consistency of porridge throughout so I know there weren't any dry clumps. As I mentioned in the previous post, I missed my actual temperature by about 6 degrees (Hit 146 instead of 152) which I largely attribute to a cold mash tun.

This might sound stupid, but is there anyway there would be any kind of separation of sugars the way that it happens in Extract brewing when you do a top off? I'm just baffled that I came out with such a terrible OG.

I didn't stir anything as it came off of the burner, it was straight to the faucet where I hooked up my chiller and then through a sanitized strainer into the bucket to strain out hop residue.

Edit: I should also mention that I checked my hydrometer in a water sample and it came out a flat 1.000 aka normal; thermometer read 73.6 degrees too I believe.

What was the total grain bill in pounds?
You said you used 3.5 gallons of strike water but you're not sure exactly?
Describe each step in detail leading up to the boil, volumes of liquid you moved, etc.

Troubleshooting efficiency requires a detailed analysis of your process.

Did you take a preboil gravity reading? This is ESSENTIAL so that you don't get to the end of your entire brew day only to realize something is wrong. You can always fix low efficiency at the beginning of the boil.

Bobby_M:

Total grain bill was approximately 10.5lbs. (8lbs 2-Row, 2lbs Vienna, .5lbs Crystal 10L)

When I went to mash in I had a complete brainfart and ended up grabbing my 3 gallon cooler instead of my 5 gallon (Don't ask..they look alike ) so after I added a majority of the strike water and thus realized it was not the correct cooler, I had to transfer grains and then add the remainder of my mash water to the other cooler.

After that debacle, I doughed in and let rest for 60 minutes like normal. The recipe called for adding 5 qts of 175 degree water and then begin the vorlauf procedure.

As i'm typing this out, I now realized that I added another 3.5 gallons to my mash tun instead of the called for 3.25 gallons which would be the reason why I had leftover in the tun. Prior to that, i already had 3.5 gallons in the kettle. (Aluminum Turkey Fryer)

kanzimonson:
Sadly I didn't take an OG reading prior to my boil; first AG, as you can see, several mistakes. I now realize the major importance of doing the OG prior and then after because I probably could've subbed some extract in to raise my OG in the fermenter.

Did you check the temperature throughout the mash? When you saw 146, was that at the beginning of the mash?

My thought is that you started getting conversion at 146 but the temperature declined over time due to the cold MLT and typical heat loss to a temperature below where conversion will occur, so you ended up with a beer with little or no sugar. Does it taste watery? Starchy?

A lot of us screw up our first AG. I tried to adjust the water and set my scale to ounces instead of grams so when I added salt I ended up with an undrinkably salty brown ale. I use it to cook hot dogs and I'll probably try adding it to chili.

Aside from the temperature thing, it doesn't seem all that off yet. The 5 quart addition is usually called a "mash out" infusion, but it actually should have been a lot hotter than 175F. Boiling or around 200F would have raised the overall temp up to near 170F.

You did drain the entire tun after that, right before adding the 3.5g of sparge right? The big question is if you stirred really well after adding that sparge water.

ReverseApacheMaster:

Temperature was as I started the mash. I stirred everything around pretty good and checked from several positions in the vessel and it was between 146-147.

Sadly I didn't taste it coming off of the boil, didn't think ahead to sanitize a jar/cup of any sort to do so.

Bobby_M:

I did drain the entire tun after vorlaufing for clarity; however, I didn't stir very vigorously after adding the sparge water.

I'm planning on doing another batch today or tomorrow (vacation time!) so hopefully my 'lessons learned' will give me an idea what to expect the second go-around.