First All-Grain.......and the mistakes

Well, this weekend I made the jump to the dark side (which like everyone has said, really isn't that big scary monster that everyone thinks it is). Looking back at the proceedure I do believe I made a few mistakes, one big one, but for my first batch, I wasn't too upset. Since I have all the equipment to do it, I chose to do the BIAB method without the sparge.

My Recipe for SchitznGiggle Oktoberfest:
9# German Pilsner
4.5# German Vienna
.5# German Carapils
.5# Caramel 40
2oz Mt Hood @ 60 minutes
1oz Hallertau @ 5 minutes
2L Starter with Wyeast 2633
90 minute boil

Mashed 9 gallons @ 152 for 60 minutes (I wrapped with a sleeping bag and had no trouble keeping the temp the whole hour)
Mashed out @170 for 10 minutes.

My preboil came out to 7.75 gallons with a reading of 1.048 so my efficiency turned out at 68.5%, I didn't think that was too bad for first time.

In hindsight, and please critique if I am wrong, I think I used too much water in the mash. I used Beer Review Dude's BIAB calculator to calculate the amount of water needed, but I did change the formula to boil off of 1.5 gallons an hour. I used this because when I was seasoning my pot a long time ago that is how much came off, but looking back on it I think I had the gas cranked when I was seasoning the pot so more boiled off than needed.

I added the hops at 60 minutes left in the boil, but by the end of the boil I noticed that the boil off wasn't what I calculated so I cranked the heat to see if I could get some extra boil off at the end. I didn't want to over boil the hops and throw off the flavor, so I kept the boil at 60 minutes with hops.

So I ended up with 6 gallons at an OG of 1.057, which the recipe is for 5 gallons at 1.064, so I wasn't that far off, but I attribute this to the more water in the mash like before.

But after dumping in the fermentor, I took my reading and tasted the reading amount......NOT TOO SHABBY if I do say so myself. I think even with the mistakes and 6 gallons with a smaller alcohol level at the end I think I'll still be happy with the brew, the only problem is I have to wait a long time to taste it...

Am I on the right track of thinking that the more water attributed to the lower OG and the efficiency rate???

 

probably right about the water. your wort was more diluted than you had intended and this will give you a lower OG. another reason not to mash with this much water is because it messes up the ph, which can lead to tannin problems. but you said it tasted ok, so it will probably be alright.

 

Since I don't have the tools to do any sparge method, I was needing to Mash with the entire water level to get all the level to do the boil at the end of mashing.

The reason I ended up with the more water is because I changed the formula to do 1.5 gallon per hour boil off, which is definately not what I got. Looking back on it, I should have started with either 8 or maybe 7.75 gallons.

Lesson learned though. I just wish I wouldn't have learned it on one of my favorite styles of beers, but oh well, heres to hoping it turns out right in the end.

One other lesson I learned is I actually need a bag to do the BIAB. I used a massive peice of voile, since I can't sew, and just drapped it inside the basket. THe problem came when I mashed in, the side fell into the basket making room for the grains to fall outside of the voile. So I actually spent the first 15 minutes while warming up the wort to boil straining out grains still left after I pulled the grain out. Actually in the end I found a few grain peices that actually went through the entire boil. I just figured three pieces wouldn't make that much difference.