American ale possible problems

[bunker45]

This was my first attempt at my own recipe for an all grain brew. The 2 other brews I did were all grain brew in the bag purchases that went well. This was a copy of the first, American pale ale. This batch seemed to have much more sediment at the bottom of the ferment bucket. Would using fresh ground grain cause this? I boiled the beer about 15 minutes longer than the first and when bottling barely got a case of beer. The other batch we got around 40 bottles. I started with 6.5 gallons of water. Any suggestions? Thanks for any help.

 

[Ski12568]

You needed a lot more water which is equipment specific. I am using BeerSmith to keep track so I can dial this down even better.

I did my last batch starting with ~9 gallons. Lost 1.29 gallons to boil off, 0.2 gallon to trub, 1.44 gallons to grain absorption, 0.5 gallon after fermentation, about .2 to the dead space in my mash tun. Even had extra after I transferred to secondary. I was always short before I started keeping track.

 

[Ski12568]

I had a lot of sediment in my last batch also because I did not vorlauf or whirlpool the wort and try to let things settle in the center of the pot.

 

[bunker45]

Thanks. When I look at some of the recipes they mention 6 gallons of water. Is this the amount you should ferment or the amount to start the brewing process?

 

[rodwha]

I generally lose about a quart to trub, maybe a hair more. If I want roughly 5 gals in the bottles I go for a 5.25 gal batch.

 

[Jupapabear]

Hey bunker, the amount of water needed is particular to your equipment and the grain bill. So it is not really possible for someone to tell you how much water to use. What I would suggest doing is keeping a proper log of how much water you use, and then how much wort you get out of your mash, and then how much of that is boiled off, then how much is left in the kettle when you go to your fermentor. There will be some constants, such as boil off that you can pretty much bank on. I would start from there. If you know you boil off 1 gallon of wort per hour, and leave 1/2 of wort and trub in the kettle, AND want 5.5 gallons into the fermentor: you will need 7 gallons in the kettle pre-boil.

That is a basic example and if you had your numbers from your brewday, I would be glad to help some more. I usually need 7.5 in the kettle for a 5.5gallon batch with my setup.