All Grain #2 - Problems...

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ColoradoXJ13

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So my brew buddy (Yeast Infection on here) and I did AG #2, a big IPA this weekend, with our new 10-gal MLT and newly cut keggle...went ok, but had some problems. I'll write a book about it here, if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know. We did this recipe b/c my neighbor who gives me advice did it last weekend, and I am trying to convince him that a single infusion mash in a MLT works as well if not better than his multi-step mash and bucket sparge. We were competing for OG/FG and taste.

Recipe:
1.5 # Great Western 6-row
1.5 # Crystal 75L
14 # Great Western 2-row

4 oz Cascade 6.6% (50 min)
2 oz Centennial 9% (50 min)
4 oz Fuggle 3.9% (10 min)
2 oz Fuggle (2 min)

Yeast harvested and grown from Mountain Sun Brewery (Boulder, CO)


Brew Day:

Put 17 lbs grain in the MLT (10 gallon orange cooler with bulkhead ball valve and SS braid), and added ~5.65 gallons (1.33qt/#) water at~167*F to get a mash temp of ~155*F, we wanted 151*F so we added a little cool water and stirred until it was ~151*F. Lid on, waited 1 hr. No temperature loss!

Vorlaufed until no more husks in runoff (~1/2 gallon, poured back on top of grains), drained all liquid into keggle. Added ~2.5 gallons of water @ 170*F to MLT, stirred, waited a few minutes, vorlaufed and drained into keggle. Repeated with another 1.5 gallons, repeated, still running nice and dark and sugary, repeated again with another 1.5 gallons.

So total water was 5.65 gallons strike water, and ~6 gallons sparge. Collected ~8 gallons of total runoff. Didn't really take/record OGs. but after we started the boil I collected another 1/2 gallon of the runoff and OG was still about 1.03-ish...

Boiled runoff for an hour to reduce volume to about 7 gallons, started hop additions as above, had a couple boil-overs due to lack of attention to keggle, probably lost about 1/2 gallon total :(

Did all hop additions, in the meantime, was boiling that 1/2 gallon of later runoff on the stove with a pinch of hops to use as primer later...

When boil was over, dropped the wort cooler in the keggle and cooled to ~80*F (note, forgot irish moss addition, oh well...). When cool, tried to auto-siphon into the primary, didn't work particularly well with 12oz of hops in there, so we wrapped a grain bag around the end of the siphon, worked ok, obviously need to build some sort of hop stopper and bulkhead fitting before the next brew session...any cheap/good suggestions?

We only had about 4.6 gallons total wort at 1.073-ish, so added the stuff from the stove and about 1/2 gallon of water, OG now at 1.067ish.

Pitched yeast, was bubbling 1/min last night about 5 hours post pitch, 1/s this morning with 2" krausen.

As far as I can tell, this is about a 60% efficiency...need to improve this as my neighbor had a 1.076 OG/1.011 FG...he beat us on this, but then again, he has been brewing a long long time.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
 
First, I personally wouldn't try to replace the boil over because it probably just dilutes the wort and leads to your lower OG. Go with 4 gallons of beer instead of 5, one more excuse to brew again...

Second, you've gotta handle your alcohol better. Missing the irish moss addition and a couple boil overs - your mother would be ashamed! :p

My racking cane clogs up as well. I'm with you, gotta build up a bulkhead. Many rave about the stainless braid but I haven't really looked into that yet.

Great job on your first AG brew. My first was a nightmare, but the beer turned out great, I'm sure yours will too. I learned a lot from that experience and each AG brew goes better and better. Someday it won't take 8 hours with all my mistakes.
 
Oh, and I'm curious why you added the 6-row? I've heard 6-row has more enzymes, so is helpful when brewing a recipe with a high amount of non-convertible specialty malts, but this recipe is pretty much convertible stuff. What benefit are you looking to attain with the 6-row?
 
knipknup said:
Oh, and I'm curious why you added the 6-row? I've heard 6-row has more enzymes, so is helpful when brewing a recipe with a high amount of non-convertible specialty malts, but this recipe is pretty much convertible stuff. What benefit are you looking to attain with the 6-row?

No reason really, just wanted to have the exact recipe as my neighbor/competitor. He does a multi-step and always had ~10% of his grains as 6-row for more enzymes. He doesn't believe that modern, fully modified grains don't need this, and I won't do it in the future.
 
I'm not a batch sparger, but I would think you need more than 2.5 gallons for the second 'batch' That's only .6 qt/#. Was that even enough to make soup? I would think 17# would get , ummm 1.080?

but I've never figured my own efficiency. 10#, about 1.055 5/gal. sometimes.
 
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