First All-grain batch problem

I'm hoping to learn what went wrong with my first all-grain brew today.
I've done 30+ extract recipes but bit the bullet and bought an igloo mash/lauter tun.
The grain bill was 12.5 lbs. I mashed 3.5 galls at 146 degrees for 1 hour.
I did a batch sparge of 4 gallons at 152 degrees (went with the same 167 strike temp Beeralchemy said for mash)
My pre-boil gravity was expected to be 1.076 but came out to 1.040
After boil it was 1.044. My efficiency came out to 40% if my volumes are correct.
What the hell happened?
Thanks in advance

 

How was your grain crush? Were there a lot of grains that were still intact? Were you monitoring your temps during the mash, especially after the first ten minutes? If your mash tun and grains are cold it can quickly drop your mash temperature and you may not have had completed conversion....

 

Why did you mash at 146? That's really low and only for one hour at that temp. I don't think you got full conversion. What was your recipe?

 

You did mash low, but did you stir any? Did you stir well enough to make sure you didn't get any dough balls? What bout stirring anytime during the mash?

When you lautered, and then sparged, did you stir the grain bed up well before you recirculated and and drained the sparge off?

 

Please post the recipe. I've heard advice that low temp mashes (<150 deg f) should be extended time wise. Unless the grains weren't crushed I have a hard time blaming crush for a 40% efficiency. The lowest efficiency I have ever gotten was 70% and I had the LHBS crush the grains for the first year that I brewed all grain.

Here are my steps.

1) add strike water at temp specified in beer alchemy to mash tun
2) add crushed grains to mashtun about 25% at a time stirring while adding and between additions mix with a lifting motion looking for clumps.
3) take temp
4) take temp 10 minutes later to ensure that it is stabile.
5) sit around for 45 minutes waiting for the mash to end.
6) start heating sparge water
7) VORLAUF (drain some if the mash into a pitcher until clear and pour it back into the top if the mash this sets the grain bed as a filter.
8) drain tun into kettle.
9) add sparge water to mash tun.
10) stir (I usually don't now)
11) let sit 10 minutes so everything get absorbed (I've stopped the step but would add back if I had efficiency challenges)
12) VORLAUF
13) drain tun
14) estimate volume and take gravity reading and compare to beer alchemy preboil SG / calculate efficiency
15) I haven't had to do this yet but I would add malt extract if I got a super low reading.

 

Shouldn't your sparge temp be around 170 degree?? I usually need to add water around 190 degree to get my sparge temp up to 170... am I understanding right...you sparged at 152??

 

Thanks for the prompt answers. Nice to see an online community that genuinely wants to help.
I'll try to go in order but this morning I may have found my answers. I'd still like input because I could be wrong or I may have made multiple mistakes.
-I did not inspect the grains after crush but they were from highgravitybrew.com and I find it hard to believe they crushed wrong
-I monitored the temp of the mash the entire time with an internal cooking probe
-I mashed at 146 by accident. The recipe called for 154 and strike water heated to 162 and when the grain was stirred in and closed up 146 is what I was at. I don't think I took an inordinate time getting the mash closed up.
-I read the effects of a 146 mash and all it said was less body, more sugar, it didn't say anything about having to mash longer so that is a real possibility if I should've mashed longer. I use Beeralchemy and I made the changes in it and still predicted a fairly high SG
-I stirred the mash putting in the grain with vigor. I didn't go crazy on the bottom since the braid was there. When I cleaned up the grain looked fine. Would doughballs have separated out a few hours later?
-I stirred similar for the sparge
-Beeralchemy didn't specify a sparge temp so I used the the same 162 strike water temp and and when I closed up it was 152.

I used a dual oven probe for my temps called iGrill with 1 probe in the mash tun and the other in the strike water.
This morning I pulled the probes out of the dishwasher and they are recording temps I know aren't right-
I'm wondering if my temps were correct.

 

You mashed tooo low. Also very very important to preheat your MT. Add strike water 10-15 degrees too hot and let it cool in the cooler to your strike temperature for 10-15 minutes. Let it cool in the tun either by stirring, adding a couple ice cubes, or a touch of cool water. I believe your cold cooler absorbed a lot of the heat and resulted in your low mash temps. In the future, add some boiling water to your mash if your are ever that low again.

Next time, add strike water to your cooler at 175 -180 and let cool to 162 and add your grains. This method should get you much closer to 154.

Also not sure your probe is dishwasher proof??? Even w/ a proper thermometer, your method is flawed I believe IMHO if you did what I think you did.

Did you add your strike water to the cooler at 162?

 

If you know the specific heat of your mashtun you can skip preheating the vessel and just compensate for it with hotter water.

 

Yes my strike water was 162 for the mash and the sparge.

The probes unattach and say they are dishwasher safe. I've used it many times with my smoker with perfect results.

When you add hot water to the mash do you stir and start time from the moment you hit the right temp.

 

Without reading though the thread,
1.) Many HBS crushes are inadequate
2.) You mashed too low
3.) you sparged even too lowerer

Fix these and you'll be fine. Don't worry about the sparge water being too hot, you won't extract tannins

 

When you say that you batch sparged, please explain. A lot of times people say they did "xyz" and their understand of what that actually means is not the same as everyone understands.. Ok, so at the end of 60 minutes of mashing, describe what you did in detail until you had all the wort in your boil pot. Speaking of which, how much wort did you start your boil with?

You said:

 

Good point Bobby...may very well be a slight problem here w/ the method and a larger problem with the maths...1.076 is a lot of gravity!

 

Thanks for all your help. I think it has been a combination of messing up volumes in the software and low mash temperature. At the end of the day the original gravity is low but not too low to produce beer I had fermentation Saturday night and it is bubbling away this morning. Who knows-maybe it'll be awesome and I'll try to repeat my mess ups.

Thank you all for your help, I look forward to the day I can contribute back to the community.

 

One tip I used when I was new at the all grain was just keep a couple pounds of DME on hand to make up for a short fall. Also take a look at beersmith. I have had the best luck with that software.

 

The Advantage of Beer Alchemy is that it can live on your mac, iphone/ipod touch, and ipad and sync between the three (currently you need to buy the mac, iphone, and ipad version but in version 2 there will be one iOS and one OSX version with introductory pricing for early adopter according to the developer). I always have a shopping list at the ready with my phone in my pocket. I use the ipad in a rugged case on brew day to keep everything running smoothly. The only thing I'd like to see would be a built in timer.

The disadvantage is that the database is not as complete as others but adding the ingredients is pretty easy except that you have to add grain/malt extract as extract% instead of Points per pound per gallon so there is a conversion needed when the maltster publishes PPG instead of extract %. Not a huge deal.

 

Also the inventory system in beer alchemy is really nice. Haven't tried keeping inventory in other software.

 

I would be interested in what happened also. I don't have many all grains under my belt, but just realized, after doing much reading here, was that I was batch sparging all wrong, hence I was getting very low OG's. My last brew I ran off the mash and then added the sparge water (where before I was adding sparge water before I did my first running's). This helped my efficiency get up to 70%-75% from about 55%....