2nd All Grain beer, here we go!

[Auspice]

Goodness, after a busy holiday season I'm finally back to brewing after a few months off!

Today I'm brewing the Strawberry Dubbel from the forums here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/strawberry-dubbel-124335/

Batch sparging in my 10gal orange cooler right now. I hit 150F with 15 quarts of water and after about 30 minutes my temp is down to 145ish. I added a little over a quart of water to bring it back up to 150F. With my temp being a bit lower than expected the beer is going to have a lighter body, correct?

As typical, I'm probably worrying about silly things but just wondering if I should let the grains sit a bit longer since I'm losing temp or just go ahead at 60 minutes and sparge?

 

[DrDirt]

i'd sparge at 60 mins. Longer mash = more conversion = lighter body and more alcohol. Since you undershot the mash temp you definately don't want to wait longer.

 

[Auspice]

I ended up mashing out at around 70 minutes. Sadly my hydrometer is broken but according to my refractometer my first runnings hit 1.072!

 

[Auspice]

Wow, that was a pretty fast brew day. After cleanup and everything I'm sitting at just under 5 hours from prep to cleanup. I really feel like I'm starting to get better at all this stuff.

I took 3 samples with my refractometer and averaged about 1.060(instead of the 1.073 OG estimate from the recipe) and after dialing it down on Beersmith means I hit 60% efficiency; I'll take it over the 48% I had on my first AG batch!

The only deviation from the recipe is that I added 2 quarts of 180F water halfway through my mash to bring the temp back up, everything else was followed to a T on Beersmith.

I'd like to hit 70% efficiency but for the time being should I scale up my recipes for a 60% and hope? lol

 

[Pappers_]

That's great, I can brew a 5.5 gal batch, start to finish, in 4 hours.