First AG; is this one even worth making into beer?

I'm sorry to have to post such a n00b-looking post, but it's already dark outside, there's only one light in the center of the garage, and I would rather not bother brewing this batch if y'all say it's not going to be worth it.

Here's the scoop: I'm brewing up Edwort's Haus Pale Ale, tweaked with the numbers BrewSmith indicated for the water volumes and temps. Grain bill:

7lb 2-row
2lb Vienna
~0.5lb Caramel 10L (estimated about 1/4 of the 2lb bag I bought)

Strike water was 11.88 qt @ 164. Mashed-in at 148 (actual measured mash temp, not strike water temp), slightly lower than my target of 150. Let sit for 75 min. Temp at end of 75 min was 140. UGGHHHH!! Added 7.6 qt at 202, reached my target of 168. Held for 10 min. Vorlauf'ed with 3 qt, sparged into brew kettle. Added approx 2 gal of 168 sparge water (didn't think I could fit all 2.5 gal at once), vorlauf'ed with another 3 qt, then drained about 3 qt into brew kettle. Added rest of 168 sparge water (see next paragraph on volume of sparge water), vorlauf'ed a third time with 3 qt, then drained all into kettle. 28qt exactly in brew kettle at the moment. Just took SG reading, only 1.016. Target was 1.045. I know my efficiency may not be all that great my first time, but that's ridiculously low efficiency. I thought I'd get better than that.

I started with 8 gal of water from an artesian well about 45 min away (and conveniently on my way home from work). I measured out 11.88 qt for strike water, and measured out 7.6 qt for 2nd infusion water, then saved the rest as sparge water. In hindsight I bet I sparged with a little too much water, so my hydro reading might be somewhat off. Maybe my wort is just diluted to 7gal and I'd be a lot closer to my target OG when I boil off the extra water. Just grabbing at straws right now.

Can someone do a quick calc for me: 7 gal @ 1.016 @ 170*F = 6 gal @ ?????? @ 170*F.

If it turns out I actually did get like 40% efficiency, would it even be worth boiling this one up and brewing it? If not, I'd rather save the (whole) hops and yeast.

Thanks in advance.

Well, I've been drinking tonight- but Beersmith shows at 7 gallons, at 170, you have 1.042 there. If you boiled it down, you have way higher. Does that help?

Yeah BeerSmith says I should be at 1.045, but I measured it at like 1.016. I even stirred it up real good and took another reading with the same results.

Thanks for such a quick response! I'm sure even inebriated advice is better than nothing.


Edit: Oh wait, you're saying that my 7 gal @ 1.016 = 6 gal @ 1.042??? That's GREAT news if that' is what you mean!

Something is definetly amiss. I'll ask some obvious questions:

Have you used that hydrometer before and are you sure it is accurate.

Have you tasted the wort. There should be a definite sweetness to it if you'r at 1.035 or above.

Are you sure youir grains were crushed and where/by whom?

148 is an okay temp to achieve starch conversion, so long as you don't drop too far below that too fast.

Using 9 pounds of grains shoud definitely give you a good yield and even the worst mash process (short of mashing with ice water) should yied better results.

If I had to make an optimistic guess, I'd say your hydromter may be on the fritz. Either get another hydrometer (at 10:00PM ) or trust your tastebuds. If there's a mild sweet maltiness to the taste, boil it down and move forward.

BierMuncher said:

Something is definetly amiss. I'll ask some obvious questions:

Have you used that hydrometer before and are you sure it is accurate.

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Yes, this is my original hydrometer that I got at Midwest in December. It's worked fine for me all this time, no reason to doubt it. Although I must admit, I have never calibrated it to freezing or boiling water.

Have you tasted the wort. There should be a definite sweetness to it if you'r at 1.035 or above.

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I got some on my hands and licked it off, it definitely had a sweet taste to it.

Are you sure youir grains were crushed and where/by whom?

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I crushed the grains myself at my LHBS (which is Midwest Supplies), but one of their AG experts set the crush gap setting for me. I saw the crush afterward and while I don't have AG experience, it definitely looked like a good crush to me from what I've read it should look like. Husks were cracked and there were little whitish particles in the bag that weren't there before crushing, but it wasn't flour by any means. I would say it was a good crush.

148 is an okay temp to achieve starch conversion, so long as you don't drop too far below that too fast.

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I did some temp testing on these 5 gal coolers before I brewed tonight. This same unit held within 3*F for 90 minutes with straight water. I have a hard time believing I lost 8*F in 60 minutes with grains added. Maybe I'm having thermometer troubles.

Using 9 pounds of grains should definitely give you a good yield and even the worst mash process (short of mashing with ice water) should yield better results.

If I had to make an optimistic guess, I'd say your hydromter may be on the fritz. Either get another hydrometer (at 10:00PM ) or trust your tastebuds. If there's a mild sweet maltiness to the taste, boil it down and move forward.

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I think that's what I'm going to do. I have approx. a dozen extract brews under my belt, and I'm competing in the State Fair this year. I think I know what good [extract] wort is supposed to taste like, so I'll brew this one out and see how it turns out.

Thanks so much for the lightning fast and informative responses!!!!

I order exclusively from Midwest so you can rule out a crush issue...(oh to have Midwest as my local LHBS...).

Press oin and know that the only way to judge your brewing efficiency when all is said and done...is going to be th old fashioned way.

Pop a cap of a chilled bottle...chug on an empty stomach and evaluate taste, aroma and buzz factor.:rockin:

Hehe sounds good. But does this mean I can't tell what my brewhouse efficiency is then? I just used the defaults when I installed BeerSmith, and the default was 75%. It is my personality type to want to make sure everything is as optimal as it can be, so I am definitely going to want to find out what my efficiency is, and how to fix it if I can.

Another detail I should probably mention is that I bought a meat thermometer from Walmart (I know, I know.. trying to be cheap never seems to pay off for me). But hey it has a stainless steel probe! It worked excellent for a little while, basically for my mash-in and mash-out. But sometime around there it started reading 226*F when my other two thermometers read 180*F, and now that it's room temp it still reads 180*F. I'm going to return it tomorrow. So my temperature woes may have been caused partly by taking readings from multiple thermometers.

I also have no way to see what my mash pH was. I bought some test strips from an aquarium supply store, but I realized as I was testing the mash pH that it only measures down to 6.0. Oops. I'll figure something out for next time.

This batch will have to be seat-of-the-pants from here on out. I'll still take OG and FG readings with this hydrometer, so hopefully I'll still have *some* idea of what I accomplished. Hopefully it turns out.

Anything else I should replace or fix for next time, so I can get accurate measurements? EDIT: besides the obvious hydrometer calibration with possible replacement, and a way to accurately measure mash pH..

I finally realized what Yooper meant by 1.016 = 1.042 in BeerSmith. There's one of the tools called Hydrometer Adjust. You punch in your measured SG (in my case, 1.016) and the temperature you took that reading at, and it will normalize it to regular 60*F SG readings. That's exactly what I was looking for. In fact it could have been 1.017 reading, and it might have been a little over 170 (I already had the burners on for getting to boil, and took the reading a little bit after sparging with 168, so 170 is a close estimate). It sounds like I hit my pre-boil SG spot-on. Woo hoo!!!

But I'm done boiling now, it's in the fermenter (pitched the yeast without hydrating, as prescribed by the recipe...). OG for this batch is 1.040. Target OG for the recipe is 1.051. Grrrrr.

My question is now, how is it possible that I hit my pre-boil SG spot-on, but undershot my OG by 0.011?? That pre-boil SG reading was with 7 gal of wort. If I boiled it down to 5 gal (which I did) with the same amount of sugars, it seems to me that I should have OVERshot the OG. What happened here?

EDIT: corrected the numbers.

Thalon said:

I finally realized what Yooper meant by 1.016 = 1.042 in BeerSmith. There's one of the tools called Hydrometer Adjust. You punch in your measured SG (in my case, 1.016) and the temperature you took that reading at, and it will normalize it to regular 60*F SG readings. That's exactly what I was looking for. In fact it could have been 1.017 reading, and it might have been a little over 170 (I already had the burners on for getting to boil, and took the reading a little bit after sparging with 168, so 170 is a close estimate). It sounds like I hit my pre-boil SG spot-on. Woo hoo!!!

But I'm done boiling now, it's in the fermenter (pitched the yeast without hydrating, as prescribed by the recipe...). OG for this batch is 1.040. Target OG for the recipe is 1.051. Grrrrr.

My question is now, how is it possible that I hit my pre-boil SG spot-on, but undershot my OG by 0.011?? That pre-boil SG reading was with 7 gal of wort. If I boiled it down to 5 gal (which I did) with the same amount of sugars, it seems to me that I should have OVERshot the OG. What happened here?

EDIT: corrected the numbers.

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What was the temp of your wort when you took the final reading?

Your pre boil gravity was based on estimates of temperature and volume.
I would guess your estimates were wrong.
In particular, if you add 168F water to a 140F mash, the resulting temperature will be way below 168. In addition, using something to transfer the water will further reduce the temperature, and collecting the wort in the kettle will lose a lot of heat in warming up the kettle. This could quite easily explain the difference.

-a.

Thalon said:

...Another detail I should probably mention is that I bought a meat thermometer......sometime around there it started reading 226*F when my other two thermometers read 180*F, and now that it's room temp it still reads 180*F. I'm going to return it tomorrow. So my temperature woes may have been caused partly by taking readings from multiple thermometers.

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Preheat your mash tun with very hot water to warm it a bit before you mash.
Raise your strike water by 4-5 degrees to start your mash at around 153-154.
Get one of these...they're about $20-$30 at any store.

My final SG reading was taken at 74*F. After I posted the last time I used BeerSmith to adjust it to 60*F and came up with only 1.042. Still under OG.

ajf said:

Your pre boil gravity was based on estimates of temperature and volume.
I would guess your estimates were wrong.
In particular, if you add 168F water to a 140F mash, the resulting temperature will be way below 168. In addition, using something to transfer the water will further reduce the temperature, and collecting the wort in the kettle will lose a lot of heat in warming up the kettle. This could quite easily explain the difference.

-a.

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When the first rest was done (11.88 qt) I added 7.6 qt of water at 201*F to get the mash temp up to 168*F, transfer method was to pour directly from the same kettle. That much worked as expected.

I know I had 28 qt volume of collected wort, it was right at that level as stamped into my 30 gal stockpot by the factory.

With all due respect I think you might be barking up the wrong tree. I'm fairly certain my pre-boil SG reading is accurate. 1.042 (my measured 1.016 @ 170*F adjusted for temp to 60*F using BeerSmith) * 7gal collected wort / 9.5lb grain bill = 76.8% efficiency. Even if it was at 168*F (I know it could not have been below this) it adjusts to 1.041, but we're still talking about 7 gal of wort. BeerSmith says to top off with water to get up to 6 gal boil volume, so my runoff wort was thinned out.

My concern is that I was only a couple points under the target pre-boil, but a dozen points under target post-boil. At first I boiled without putting any hops in until it was at the 24 qt level, then added first bittering hops and started the 60 min boil timer. Is it possible that that many sugars caramelized during the extended boil getting the volume down to 5 gal? If this is really what happened then I know for next time to use less sparge water and collect less wort.

BierMuncher said:

Preheat your mash tun with very hot water to warm it a bit before you mash.
Raise your strike water by 4-5 degrees to start your mash at around 153-154.
Get one of these...they're about $20-$30 at any store.
View attachment 2314

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The reason I didn't preheat my mash tun is because I wanted to let BrewSmith adjust the temps automatically for me to see how good a job it did. It appears I have more mass in the cooler than it accounted for. Good call, I'll preheat separately next time.

That looks a lot like the one I did buy and crapped out on me. What does the sensor on that one look like? Mine's a stainless steel rod about 8" long, bent 90* about 1.5" from where the cord connects. Designed for pushing into meat, but I figured it would work.

Caramelization will not change the original gravity. I really don't trust gravity readings made above 90F, one or two points at 170F have a huge impact. Just re-run your calculations with 1.014 and 1.018 to see what I mean. I'm inclined to believe the reading at 74F, which implies your efficiency was lower.

Two important points: 148F isn't high enough to fully gelatinize the starches in barley and then you did the mash out you de-natured the enzymes. I think you just got poor efficiency on this batch.

Ahhh okay, that would explain it I guess. And if the poor efficiency came from the mash temp being too low, I can blame that on miscalculation of the strike water due to attempting to automatically adjust for heating up the MLT. Preheating the MLT and calculating the strike water temp separately next time should fix it. Good to know.

What could have happened with the meat probe is you got water under the probe where the SS cord goes up into the sleeve. If you get water up in there it will permanently screw up your temp readings..... until you put the probe in the oven at 350º for at least 20 minutes to evaporate the water out.

What I did was put some hi temp engine gasket goop up into the hole where the cord goes up into the sleeve. I still don't immerse it all the way into the water, but I figure it's cheap "F up" insurance in case I drop it further than I want to.

Hmm... that's an interesting trick. I'll try it out. Probe's in the toaster oven now. If I can get it to properly read temps again, I suppose I can enclose the cord coming out of the probe in some high temp tubing. That way I could submerse the whole thing without a worry. Worry = bad.

spend your money on a high quality thermometer. Many brewers cheap out on thermometers for some reason and temperature is probably the single most important factor in brewing.
No offence to those using meat thermometers, but, they are notoriously inaccurate

Bellybuster said:

spend your money on a high quality thermometer.

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I don't want to admit specifically what happened to the plastic end of the probe, but let's just say there was a lack of foresight as relates to the toaster oven... but this is what I'm going to do now. It's so true: You get what you pay for. I've learned that lesson SOOOOOO many times in life, and yet for some reason I just keep trying to get around it every so often. I buy something cheap, then it breaks or just doesn't perform as I require it to, then I end up spending on the good brand or model afterwards. /sigh

Thank you so much everyone for your input. I'll go back to lurking and searching the forums for my answers and responding to posts where I think I can help.

I'd like to chime in with a couple of suggestions which you can take or leave:

1.) Always hit your target mash temperature even if it means increasing your water to grain ratio by .25 of a quart or so. Yes, it will thin out the mash consistency which means that the enzymes have to travel further in liquid to find starches to convert to sugars, but being below or above your ideal temp means the sugars won't be there in the first place or will be in the incorrect proportions leaving you with a beer which is too thin or too sweet. Consider a slightly thinner mash the lesser of two evils and be the master of your mash.

2.)Always stir your mash part way through the conversion rest to make sure the temperature is even throughout the Tun and adjust the temperature if need be. Starting your mash out at the proper temperature only to have it dip below the ideal range or to have it form cold and hot pockets just renders the mash ineffective and inaccurate. You'll wind up with poor efficiency and thin bodied beer.

3.)As david_42 said, be slow to trust gravities taken at extreme temperatures. I place a couple of stainless steel bowls in my deep freeze at the beginning of my brew session. When I take a wort sample for gravity testing I pour it into one of these bowls and and swirl it around and then place it and the bowl back in the deep freeze for 10 mins. I take it out swirl it around and take a temperature reading. I do not test samples above 86 Fahrenheit.

4.)Keep your head up, keep brewing and learn from bad sessions so that you can kick your next brew's butt and turn out a wicked beer. When in doubt always pitch it and hope for the best. If it sucks, serve it to the guests!!!