A few minor issues with partial mash. Advice?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

jsharp

Member
Joined
Dec 6, 2010
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Location
Wichita
I did a partial mash Northen English Brown yesterday. It was only the second time I did a partial mash and the first without using a kit. I did a 5 gallon batch using a full-boil. My grains were fresh unmilled grains that I crushed beforehand with my barley crusher (factory setting). Here was my recipe:

3.3 lbs Amber malt syrup (15 min. late boil)
1 lb. Extra Light DME
1.5 lbs. Maris Otter
.5 lbs. Toasted Maris Otter
.5 lbs. Dark (80L) Crystal
.25 lbs. Chocolate malt
1 oz. E.K. Goldings (60 min)
.5 oz. Fuggles (10 min)

Wyeast 1028 yeast

Other than taking forever to do my mash and sparge I only had a few issues. According to Beersmith, my OG should have been about 1.046-1.047. My actual OG was about 1.042, so pretty close but not quite. My main issue was the color of the beer. Beersmith said it should be about 19.7 SRM (don't remember for sure). I don't know what the actual SRM would be, but I would say its closer to 28-30 SRM than 19.7. What would I have done to both make it too dark and be a little under on my OG? Most of the OG problems I found were from partial boils and I don't know what the heck I did wrong on the color. Thanks in advance!
 
first off, your gravity may have bit a touch low if you didn't get the efficiency that beersmith had for the recipe, adjust beersmith accordingly.
second, beer always looks a lot darker in the carboy than it does in the glass. SRM is based on the latter.

BTW, i just pitched my PM northern english brown about 90 minutes ago! i had the same issue, but the other way around. had efficiency set to 75%, got more like 80%! time to adjust the software! errors in my favor as i added a bit of water to hit the OG, so more beer!
 
Thanks for your input. I have to confess, I'm still quite a noob and can't make sense of all the functions on Beersmith. I guess I just need to do a little more fooling with it. I have noticed the issue with beer looking really dark in a carboy before, it just seemed darker than the last brown ale I did. It looked really dark in the kettle too. Oh well, I still made beer and I guess this is how you learn.
 
Back
Top