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Can you get me the gravity of the first wort (wort collected before sparging) and the mash thickness you used? This can be used to asses your mash performance. Kai

No I couldn't. ;) Gary, leave the Melanoiden malt out if you don't want to mash grains. Kai that was post 3333. Cool.

I don't know. I didn't check the recipe. Maybe others can chime in. Kai

I see that their selection of unhopped malt extract is a little slim, but I hope this helps: light unhopped malt extract (liquid): http://www.hobbybrauerversand.de/products/Bierkits-Malzextrakte/Malzextrakt-ungehopft/Brewferm-Fluessiger-Malzextrakt-hell-ungehopft-15-kg.html Weyermann Pale...

You have very soft water and all that dark crystal dropped your mash pH substantially. As a start I'd add 0.4 g baking soda and 0.8g chalk per gallon of strike water. But in gerneral you'll have to adjust your water chemistry to match the acidity of the grist. The latter is largely determined...

The link to the website got lost. Kai

I think it is your mash pH. You'll have to change your water along with adding more dark malts to the grist. If not, the acidic dark malts lower the pH too much and the enzymes won't be as effective. Do you have a water report for your water? Kai

A mash is a steep in which you have enzymatic activity. To get that you need to be in a sufficient temp range (150-160f is fine), the water grist ratio shouldn't be too thin (1.5-2 qt/lb is good), and there should be a sufficient ratio of enzymatically active base malt. Vienna should be able to...

You know what this discussion reminds me of? Batch Sparging. What ever happened to that outlandish technique? ;) Kai

Thanks. How is the spreadsheet working out for you? Do the losses and gains add up to close to 100% at the end? I had some brewers tell me that they are always 10-12% short and I cannot explain that. This reminds me that I should add a conversion efficiency field somewhere on the...

I keep pretty extensive notes and more than 2 years ago I designed 4 pages per batch for a log book. They might be more than you need now but you don't have to fill in all the fields. The pics on this page are only previews. Use the PDFs for printing. Keeping Log - German Brewing Techniques Kai

The sugars that can be metabolized by lager and not by ale yeast are melibiose and raffinose. Raffinose is absent from brewing wort and melibiose is only present in trace amounts. Hence there is no difference on the significant wort sugars that both yeasts can ferment. There may however be a...

There is no significant difference in the types of wort sugars ale and lager yeast ferment. It's more about the flavor profile that fermentation byproducts impart. Kai

Lower temps may affect the taste of the beer but mostly to the better. Another problem with low temp fermentation is slow and sluggish fermentation towards the end. Sometimes making you believe that it is over when it is not. The result is an overly sweet beer due to the large amount of residual...

Using the yeast strain's attenuation rating is not a reliable way to predict the FG because that will depend on the yeast and the fermentability of the wort. Since the Mr. Beer recipes are extract based the kit should be able to specify the FG that you can expect. Kai

What you are looking for from a boil is movement of the wort and evaporation of unwanted aroma compounds (DMS, gives a cooked corn taste and flavor to the beer). The former is needed for the proteins to coagulate and distribute the hops more evenly. The latter requires you to boil-off at least...

I'm not sure for how long the wort for the extract is boiled when it is produced. I'd expect that they would minimize this expense in energy. So my inclination is that the extract should have had enough DMS potential for it to become a problem it it is not driven off. Let us know if you notice a...

The idea of the fast ferment test is NOT to mimic the fermentation that is going on in the main batch, as you pointed out this would be really difficult, but to allow for the quick and (almost) complete fermentation of all fermentable sugars in the wort. A detail that is often misunderstood and...

A quart is to much and might be a waste of wort. You only need enough to fill a hydrometer anyway. In my case this is 4-5 oz (allow for some buffer b/c of the yeast trub). Kai

While Beersmith can be helpful for other tasks it cannot predict the FG. It tries to but this FG is based on the chosen yeast's attenuation numbers. And since these numbers may not take into account the actual composition of your wort they may not work. The only way to predict a FG before the...