2nd AG Batch

I just finished my second AG batch:rockin: This one took around 6 hours because I did a fly sparge. I just purchased a new Barley Crusher and WOW; my efficiency went from 64% to 78%. The beer I made was a Bell’s Best Brown clone. I made a yeast starter from a few bottles of Best Brown earlier in the week, and there was all kinds of active fermentation 12 hours after brewing. The one problem I had was that my OG was 4 points too low. I think that this is because I may have over sparged and did not boil down enough. I started with 7 gallons of wort and boiled down to 6 gallons. The recipe I used called for 5.5 gallons at the end. One question I had is that it looks like there is a lot more trub in the carboy now then there is with extract brewing. Is this normal with AG batches? I did use Irish moss the last 15 minutes of the boil. Also what is the best way to strain out pellet hops? I use a strainer but it still looks like there are still a lot of hops making it into carboy. Any feed back would be appreciated.

~d

 

Congratulations, it sounds like things went well. There is a lot more break material when grain brewing so that is nothing to worry about. It will all settle out and if you carefully siphon most of it can be avoided. Some folks whirlpool the wort brior to transfer for better clarity and I use a paint strainer bag to filter out a lot of the pellet hops. The great thing about all grain is that you can make a 5.5 gallon batch and still end with a solid 5 gallons at the end.

 

Nice job on effeciency! I'm gonna have to get me a barley crusher.

For filtering out hops, it's a bit costly, but I love my HopStopper. You need to put a spigot on your brewpot to use it, but it is definately worth it. I don't worry at all about loading up hops, it can handle anything.