holy f#$%&*g crap man

well i am sure some of you seen my last post about my og and once again i have the same problem from the top i decided to do a big pumpkin ale. so to head up any problems i calibrated my thermometer boiled some water in a pot and adjusted to 212 deg. then put some 60 deg water in my hydro and check it came out to 1002 ok its off but not by much. then i mashed my grains

12.5 lbs 2row
1.25 lbs carapils
1 lbs biscuit
60 qts of libbys canned pumpkin

@ 148 for 75 min using 4.5 gallons (yes all my grains where def crushed from midwest supply) ok so i ran of my mash didnt get much in the boil pot maybe 2 gallons then i sparged my grain with 4 gallons at 190 deg ran my sparge took about 35-45 min got about 6.25 gallons in the pot (my stir stick is marked in gallon tics so thats a guess but a good one) at this point i took a sample the gravity was 1.035 @ 65 deg. ran my boil added my hops put in my Irish moss and finishing hops in then i added

1lbs of dark brown sugar in the last five min along with my pie spice

put in my chiller cooled down to 75 deg took a sample 1.050 @ 65 deg. took the chiller out checked my finish wort level and it was right 5 gallons then i pitched. it to my starter and cali yeast 01. ok so now beer smith 2 says i should be at an O.G. of 1.084 with 70% eff. and to get a O.G of 1.050 i would have to have an eff. of 38% from what i understand thats just damn impossible. so where did i go wrong is my hydro just wrong or dose god not want me to brew all grain.

 

2 things I can see...

No rice hulls or other lautering aids. That mash was sticky with all that pumpkin
No mash out to raise the grain bed temp to 168-170 to further liquify the sugars.

My guess is you left a lot of sugars in the main mash.

 

yea, I don't understand your process? If you sparged with 190 degree water how did you take a reading of 1.035 @ 65 deg.? I'm lost, was it 165 degrees?

 

I think your mash was too thick. Just the grains and water would have been 1.25, which is fine, but add in the pumpkin and it was probably too thick for the enzymes to move around and do their job.

BTW, how much pumpkin did you use? I'm pretty sure 60qts is a typo.

 

Sorry but God has nothing to do with it.

 

johngie the grain bed was not that sticky as seabass pointed out it was a typo 60 oz was the amount of pumpkin, and in 14.75 lbs of grain it was not to bad. no i did not mash out but i did sparge with water that was 192 or so witch raised my bed to 168 deg. and i took my samples and did not take readings on them until they where down to 65 deg.

 

With 60oz of puree, that puts your mash at 0.9 qt/lb. I think it was too thick...and 25% of that was pumpkin.

 

Sounds like you left 2.5 gallons in your MLT when you pulled off your first runnings. If that's in fact the case, I would say you have a lot of deadspace in your MLT and leaving lots of sugars behind. What kind of manifold are you using?

 

yankee i am using a 10 gallon rect cooler and i have the pvc type manifold that sits just above the bottom with a grain bed on top i would think that it touches the bottom and i thought maybe i did leave some behind but it started coming out very light and i even checked to see if any liquid has settled and a bit has but not even enough to fill half a beer and i was done brewing several hours ago. but lets say i messed up how did i mess up so bad i got a 38% eff rate?? is that possible

 

yeah you should be good with that setup. I don't fly sparge, but maybe you're getting some really bad channeling and not getting to all the grain.

The best thing I can think of is to maybe try batch sparging on your next brew day to see what kind of difference that makes.

 

zombie my bad

 

Big John,
Am I missing something here? A few post mentioned that adding the puree to the mash would make it to thick, but after the boil and irish moss you added the brown sugar and pumpkin right? I'm not sure what that would have to do with making the mash to thick. Like Yankeehillbrewer suggested, maybe your mash had some bad channeling.

I didn't read your other post but if you regularly have efficiency problems it has nothing to do with the pumpkin. However, grain crush, (I never had good luck with MW crush) or chanelling is more likely the culprit.

 

Brewing all grain and brewing a pumpkin ale for your first time are two totally different scenarios. You will great efficiency if you dial-in your all grain mashing technique. Don't try crazy sh1t, and you'll see how well you do. You made mistakes on this batch, and you'll figure out what they are as you get more batches under your belt. The guys who posted on this thread have valid suggestions for improving your efficiency. Listen to them, and you'll see that all grain is the way to go.

 

According to my off the cuff calculations, adding 4 ish gallons to the mash and draining 2 ish is about right when calculating grain absorption. So there is apparently no significant loss to the mash tun.

Without the pumpkin, beersmith tells me that your preboil gravity would be about 1.050, and post boil would be about 1.064. Add a few points for pumpkin and I'm guessing your estimated numbers are close.

If your volumes are measured accurately, and your thermometer is also calibrated then I can't see a problem. You say you calibrated your thermometer at boiling, but this is hard to determine. I suggest calibrating to crushed ice and water at 32 degrees instead. If you can check it against other thermometers at a higher temp, then all the better.

 

Did you stir your mash at all? I remember an early batch where I didn't stir at all and my OG should have been 1.070 and ended us at 1.040. Now I stir several times during the mash and also during the sparge. For me it made a huge difference (I use a barley crusher so I know my crush is good).