All Grain Final Gravity Question

okay homebrewng friends. I have a question....
I have been all-graining for awhile now and seem to have an issue creating beers with little malt character and residual complex sugars.
Lately I've been raising my mash temperature and performing a mashout to try and lock in my malt profile. Everything I brew attenuates all the way
down to 1.010 and even lower using both us-05 and s-04.

I brewed last weekend the recipe is as follows.

11.5 lbs 2-row
.5 lbs munich
1.2lbs crystal 80
.5 crystal 60

1oz simcoe bittering
.5oz simcoe flavor
.5oz crystal flavor
1oz simcoe aroma flameout/whirlpool
1oz crystal aroma flameout/whirlpool
chill method counterflow
dryhop simcoe and crystal

Mash in 4.2 Gallon 154 Degrees 60min
recirculate and collect first runnings in kettle and begin to heat
heat 4.1 gallon sparge water to 180 and bring water level just above grain bed and hold at 170 for 10min
begin sparge mash temp stays around 168-170 15 min sparge and collect in kettle with first runnings. hardly any sugar can be detected in grains after sparge.
6.7 gallons collected
70 min boil
chill and pitch.

5.3 gallons collected at 1.060

pitch yeast and kept at constant 65 degrees. Vigorous fermentation for 3 days. 6 days later I'm at 1.010 was looking for 1.012
probably be lower than 1.010 by the time all is said and done.

sanitation practices are on point no bacteria eating all the residual sugar.
Use bru'n water spreadsheet and water report from my local RWD.
I bought a cheap ph meter but it broke before I could use it.

can ph effect each targeted enzyme? say my ph is off in one dirction or the other will the alpha enzymes be less happy even though
my temp is in their range and the beta be more happy even though im higher than their range as far as temp goes.
I figured if I was getting a good conversion I must be at least somewhat in the right ph range. my understanding
temp = what type of sugar is created
ph = starch actually getting converted to sugar
mash out = lock in malt profile created so complex sugars arent broken down further to simple sugars.

I'm just left scratching my head lol. I use a floating mash thermometer and a digital probe thermometer and take gravity readings throughout with a refractometer and
hydrometer.

Don't get me wrong the beer that is created is loved by all that consume it and im not complaining as I love good dry beer with the malt taking a backseat
to the hops. The problem lies in the fact that I want to recreate a commercial beer and this recipe is supposed to be a big sky clone with a nice balanced
malt and hop character.

Please forgive grammatical errors and misspellings. I flew through this.

Thanks in advance for any advise.

 

Complex question with tons of complex answers!

From reading your post you want a beer that has more of a malty character with some sweetness. Your finishing gravities are around the 1.010 mark and you want that to be a touch higher.

Ill say this for now and let you chew on it, have you tried a different yeast? one that is not as attenuative as 04 and 05?

 

Your mash temperature is already high enough, you have plenty of crystal malt in there too. Independently of the FG, how does the beer taste? Often we expect the attenuation to directly translate into mouthfeel but that's not always the case (there's a good experiment in brulosophy on this, somewhere).

Tweaking the FG by 0.002 is going to be a bit difficult. Mash out a bit earlier? Mash a couple of degrees higher? The change of yeast is a good thought too, but you might lose more attenuation than what you expect if you move to some dry yeasts.

 

What's your take on using Dextrine to improve body?

 

Oh I just remember this one, try using a different brand of base malt. Instead of using a 2 row try MO different malt character but one might have a bigger impact on flavor. I tent to share with my friends who brew the different malt brands can play a bigger role in your final beer taste. Doing an experiment this spring with Grambinus 2 row and Great western 2 row.

 

use yeasts and or malts to improve body. I don't find crystals do much for you other than flavour and colour. That munich though... there you have a body grain. I would up that munich to around 3 lbs or more. It will change the flavour though but it will be a flavour that is already in your recipe.

 

Hey guys this is all great advise. my thermometers have been calibrated and I use two just to be sure. so I don't believe its a temperature issue but I have been wrong a time or two though....just ask my wife lol. Anyway I don't really have an aversion to dextrine. There actually was about a hand full of carapils in the grain bill as well that I forgot about.

As far as yeast goes, when I started brewing I was buying all the fancy liquid yeast and using them in my extract brews, however as most of us do I started small and gradually began upgrading my equipment little by little when I should have just went all in in the first place. long story short I didn't worry about gravity reading as much as an extract brewer and now that I am all-graining i'm on a strict budget and have been using dry yeast only and haven't really used much more than us-05 and s-04 dry yeast. I live in rural Southern Oklahoma no brew shop within 100 miles. I'd love to open one in north Texas though

Anyway the body seems medium to me and mouthfeel I've never been one to be able to give a real good description. But as i stated earlier its all pretty delish.

I would like to try some Maris Otter or other base grains but as stated i'm on a budget and pick up what I can when I can. me = loser. I'm definitely going to save some cash and get some MO and different yeast and try both routes but not at the some time. One variable at a time right.

If I was to add more munich would I replace some of the 2-row with said munich in the grain bill right?

 

I see your in a tough spot from where you live. Scratch all we have said then and try using wheat or some oats. Read on here to see use them properly to increase the body of your beer. This would be the cheaper rout to hit a higher final gravity. Oats from what I have read adds some nice body to a beer but not sure if they need to be mashed longer.