2nd AG - near perfect brewday!

[BrokenBrew]

Saturday I brewed my second All-Grain, BM's Centennial Blonde.

I mashed in a little thick just in case I had to add some hotter or colder water. Meant to mash in at 150, hit 149. After a few minutes, it dropped to 148, so I added a couple quarts to raise the temp to 151. It dropped a degree over the hour so I figure my average was pretty darn close to 150. Damn near perfect!

I hit 75% for my efficiency - I'm definitely happy about that especially considering this was only my second AG batch!

Pulled off 7.5 gallons to boil, boiled down to 6 gallons, for an OG of 1.040. BierMuncher says it should be at 1.039.

Yesterday morning it's bubbling away.

Now the hard part - waiting.

 

[avshook]

Congrats!,
I also had a near perfect brew day on Saturday. But, it was my first time fly sparging with my stainless steel domed false bottom in my 5 gallon igloo, and after recirculating 4 quarts and running off about 4 more into my boil pot, the grain bed compacted and I had a stuck sparge. I was sparging too fast and I had too much water on top of the grain bed. It set like a slab of concrete. I use a corona mill, so there is a little too much flour in my grind, so next time I'll add some rice hulls and sparge really slowly being careful to keep the water just above the grain bed. I had to resort to stirring and ended up doing a hybrid batch sparge, not ideal, but it finally went through.
I used 10 pounds of grain and got 5.5 gallons at 1.050.

 

[Mike M]

I hit 75% for my efficiency - I'm definitely happy about that especially considering this was only my second AG batch!

Sounds like you got it going on. Well done

 

[Q2XL]

Great job! I wish I would have gotten 75% on my 2nd all grain. Start planning your next brew.