3rd brew..first all grain! Smooth stout.

[Albertk]

Well, I got a wild hair and brewed the well regarded smooth oatmeal stout last night...was up till 1am, and the house smelled awesome!
A few issues and concerns.
Details....I brewed a half batch 2.5 gal and halved all the grains/hops/oats. used full yeast pack though...
I used 2.5 gallons in the mash with a grain bag, and 2 gal in the sparge (a small cooler I put the grain bag into with 170 degree water)
The ingrediants that Northern had for this were similar but not exact. I used

• Briess Pale ale
• Flaked Oats
• chocolate at 350L (slightly off of recipe)
• victory
• caramel (no crystal avail at 120L) 120L
• caramel 40L
• Roasted Barley 300L (slightly off of recipe)
• Williamette
• S-04

I had a hard time keeping consistant temps on the mash. Most of the time it was the proper 156. It droped to 150-152 for a few min, and I over compensated bringing it to 163 for a few min.
I killed the heat after an hour and pulled the grain bag. I squeezed out the bag of grains and moved it to the cooler to sparge along with 2 gal of 170 degree water. Covered it and let it soak for 30 min. was not sure how long to let it go. I then took the grain bag and put it in a collander over a pot. I poured the sparge wort over the grain bag once more as it went in the pot. I think I messed up after that. I was worried about final volume, so I only added enough sparge wort to the boil pot that already had mash wort in it to come to 3.75 gal which left about 3/4 of a gallon of sparge wort unused. It did not occur to me to simply add it all and boil down to the correct volume...duh. Anyway, I tossed in the hops and boiled for an hour. I then cooled the wort down to 71, stirred and took an OG reading. 1.050..it was supposed to be 1.055. I bet I can guess where my sugar went
I then syphoned 2.7 gal wort to a glass 3gal carboy (left only about 10oz in the bottom of the pot. I did this through a fine mesh sieve that fits in my funnel. filtered out a lot of gunk....and aerated in the same process i think...Half way through filling the carboy, I pitched the hydrated yeast throught the funnel only. I then finished filling using the mesh screen and funnel combo. I put an air lock on at 1am. Set it in a 62 degree room with metallic bubble wrap around the carboy as an insulator. Checked at 7:30am when I awoke, and it was happily bubbling away.
Questions:
Will my swinging mash temp, or the sparge wort i did not use cause trouble. How about the filtering into the carboy, or the slightly low OG?
Is the grain difference a big issue really.
Thanks a bunch for reading this and providing input.
Other brews so far:
Apfelwein-wife loves it!
extract Pale ale with honey...my first brew. was pretty good.
working on a partial mash surly bender this weekend.
FUN STUFF!!!!!!!!!

 

[southerngroove]

It looks like everything went ok for your first ag batch. My first one probably did not go as good as yours. As far as the og, what said it was supposed to be 1.055? It seems hard to get your eff. down the first few times. Adding of the extra water is probably what did that. The grain can be a difference once you have a bunch of brews under your belt and you want to really tweak your recipe. But you should be fine, of course you will find out when you are drinking the finished product!

 

[Albertk]

the original recipe said 1.055OG..foind it here, on the forum...called smooth oatmeal stout.