Recent content by seb1222

Eastside - I agree, I'm so impressed with all the willingness to help! What a great community. Arch1tect - Yeah, I did jump in a bit fast. My friends pressured me into entering a homebrew competition so I had to learn fast! I'll enter one of my porters if they're drinkable but I definitely...

Eastside - I agree, I'm so impressed with all the willingness to help! What a great community. Arch1tect - Yeah, I did jump in a bit fast. My friends pressured me into entering a homebrew competition so I had to learn fast! I'll enter one of my porters if they're drinkable but I definitely want...

Wow, ok I'll let them know, and I guess that means my gravity was fine for both of those batches!

Strange- I'll talk to my homebrew shop - I think they created the partial mash/extract kits themselves - and see why they thought the target gravity could be so high with only 3.3 lbs extract!

That makes sense for the all grain recipes, so hopefully when I try one without the smoked malt I'll have more success.

skyewines - Yeah, measuring with a hydrometer and adjusting for temperature. I had suspected maybe I just got a bad hydrometer but the final gravities all seem about right..

Thanks JNye, All good tips that I will try! I appreciate the advice.

Thanks Pkeeler. Yes, 5 gallon batches. The extract batches were both kits, so they set the gravity. The second extract kit used LME as you guessed. Thanks for the tip to use 70% base malt. My smoked malt was home smoked maris otter, and it seemed pretty subtle, so that's why I used so much. I...

Thanks brewinjunk. So, for sparging, why can't you just pour all 4 gallons of sparge water in at once and then open that valve right away? would that still make it stick? And 68% was my target efficiency, but i ended up closer to 53%... I suppose I could always just up the grain, but if there's...

Oh yeah, forgot to add my signature...

Hi, I've made four beers (two partial mash and two all grain) that have all had original gravities between .019 and .013 below target. I am having a hard time figuring out what I'm doing wrong! I'll outline what I think are the important details about each beer to see if anyone has any insight...