Why was my ABV wrong

Hey guys.

My buddy and I just started brewing. We did the extract thing on our first brew then decided to jump right in to the all grain. So we will built our mash tun cooler. Got all of our stuff and then ran into a problem. I'll explain what happened and hopefully you can tell me if that's why my ABV was off.

Here is the recipe I used. Suppose to be a clone of Karbach's Hoppadillo IPA.

Malts

11.5 lbs 2-Row Pale Malt

12 oz. Munich

8 oz. Biscuit

8 oz. Crystal 70

4 oz. Crystal 120

Hops

1 oz. Magnum 14%a, 60 minutes

1/2 oz Chinook 13%a, 20 minutes

1/2 oz. Amarillo 8%a, 20 minutes

1/2 oz. Simcoe 13%a, 20 minutes

1/2 oz. Citra 11%a, at flameout

Yeast: White Labs WLP001 California or Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Dry-Hop: 1/2 oz. Citra, 1/2 oz. East Kent Goldings, 1/2 oz. Amarillo




Here's what happened. We use the steel sheath from a hose to be our sparge. So after the mashing, I went to sparge and nothing would come out. Apparently the sparge had got clogged with loose wires when we cut it. So we had to dump all of the malts out of the mash ton, fix the sparge and put it back in there.

Everything went fine after that fiasco.

I ended up only getting 1.048 for my original gravity rather than 1.074 which is says I should have got.

Is this because of what happened with the sparge or did I mess up somewhere else.

Please help... and try to explain cause I am new to this.

 

I think you might want to look up what "sparge" means. It's a process, not a piece of equipment.

Low original gravity could be the result of several things.

How did you crush the grain? Could you describe your mash process? How much liquid did you run off from the mash tun? What was it's pre-boil gravity? How long did you boil? How much liquid did you end up with? Did you "top-up" after the boil?

 

Sorry - I am very new to this.

What I am calling the "sparge" is the filter thing at the bottom of the mash tun.

1) How did you crush the grain?
I put it in the machine at the home brew store.
2) Could you describe your mash process?
Pre-heated the mash ton. Then put in the water at about 163 deg and then poured in grain. Temperature dropped to 152 deg. Mashed for 1 hour
3) How much liquid did you run off from the mash tun?
I don't know. About 7 Gallons
4) What was it's pre-boil gravity?
I don't remember. Didn't think to log it
5) How long did you boil?
1 hour
6) How much liquid did you end up with?
A little over 6 gallons
7) Did you "top-up" after the boil?
Don't know what that is so I doubt it

 

Did you stir the mash like crazy when you first mashed in? If you didn't get a good mix with the strike water, it's conceivable that you had enough dough balls to limit your gravity. A dough ball is a clump of grain that can be completely dry in the middle, and doesn't convert to sugars.

Additionally, when you sparge, you need to stir like mad then as well. That helps rinse all the sugars from the grains.

In the end though, you'll still have beer, and it'll probably be pretty good!

 

What was the batch size supposed to be? Is it a 6 gallon recipe, or 5?

It sounds like you might have run off too much liquid during the sparge, and consequently ended up with too diluted a wort in the fermenter. Possibly coupled with poor mash efficiency, but that's difficult to determine at this point.

 

I left out that we did sparge.

I sparged twice with about 170 deg water. Might be why I ended up with 7 gallons.

The batch was suppose to be 5.5 gallons.

1) How much water should I have used for original mash?
2) How much water should I have used during sparging
3) My mash temperature dropped to about 145 when we had to pour it out. But it rose when we sparged. Could that have affected the efficiency

 

1) & 2) It depends on your recipe, system, and process. I like to consult online mash calculators to help determine how much water to use for each step.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash/
http://www.brew365.com/mash_sparge_water_calculator.php
https://www.brewtoad.com/tools/mash-water-calculator

As yooper said, 7 gallons of runoff is fine if you boil enough off to get down to your target volume. But in this case you were off by about 1/2 gallon. That would result in a lower than expected OG, but I don't think 1/2 gallon is going to throw it off THAT much, so I think there might be a conversion efficiency problem somewhere.

3) By the time you begin the sparge process, the conversion should be complete, so temperature should be less critical at this stage. As long as you held your temps up until that point, you're fine. However, 145°F should still be warm enough to convert, so even that much drop during the mash would not explain the efficiency loss, it would just result in a "thinner" tasting beer.

 

Thanks Hunter.

Now that I'm thinking about it. I was using "brewersfriend" app on my phone and I used whatever amount of water it told me to use.

Well. Let's hope I don't have to dump my mash out on my next brew and maybe my efficiency will be better.

Thanks again.

 

You might have had dough balls when mashing in at 163*F and didn't break them up when you stirred the grains into the strike water. Not breaking up the dough balls will cause lack of conversion of those dry grains inside the ball(s).

Anyway - great advice above. You should type "How to Brew" into a search engine and read Palmer's book cover to cover. You could also read the AHA's tutorial here:
http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/advanced/how-to-brew-beer/#all-grain especially the sheet that says "For more detailed information read How-To: All-Grain (Batch Sparging) Brewing "

 

Thanks Yooper. That really helped a lot.