Bad water or just bad technique?

[Snikwad1020]

With my 1st batch of all grain I didn't get a water report, I didn't make any adjustments and I ended up with a pretty good beer. My efficiency was fairly low at around 65%, so I got a water report with the following results…

pH 7.3
TDS Est 200
EC 0.33
Cations 3.1
Anions 3
Sodium 34
Calcium 20
Magnesium 6
Potassium 2
Total Hardness 75
Nitrate 1.4 (SAFE)
Sulfur 10
CO3 < 1.0
HCO3 72
Chloride 38
Total Alkalinity 59

I used palmers spreadsheet to work out some adjustments for a wheat that I made this weekend with a target RA of -41. I added 6ml of Lactic Acid and 2 grams of gypsum to my mash and sparge water which was a total of 13 gallons. I went through my normal steps of a 60 minute mash and batch sparging. I screwed up my batch sparge in that I didn't stir the water in, but just let it sit for a few minutes before draining off. The result was 12 gallons of 1.020 wort and I just want to make sure that it wasn't the additions that I made to the water, but rather my botched technique that caused the super low level of efficiency.

I plan to rescue this brew today by pulling off 5 gallons of the yield and boiling with 3lbs of pils DME and 3lbs wheat DME to get me back in the 1.050 range. I will then pitch some new yeast and hopefully have a good beer in the end.

Thanks in advance for your help!

n00b to all grain

 

[wilserbrewer]

I would suggest merely steeping say above 170 - 180 the 6 llbs of DME in a 2-3 quarts of water and adding that to the fermenting beer rather than reboiling 5 gallons of fermenting beer....

Or maybe reboil or just pasteurize with a much smaller amount of the original batch, and some more yeast if you have it handy...interesting little problem you have going, but you should be able to straighten it out.

Just a thought....

 

[zakleeright]

that gravity was very low. Are you fairly confident that you had the right amount of grain for the recipe to hit your target volume? As long as you track your efficiency with each brew, you learn what your system will do. then beersmith (or whatever) can help calculate recipes for you. if you mash for typical 60, then drain all that to your BK, then add the right amount of sparge water at ~168-170, let sit for, say, 20 minutes, then drain that, you should get over 70% efficiency, yes?
Until you know what "normal" is for your system, you'll likely miss target OG a few times. No problem, since once you have all wort in the BK, you can predict what your OG will be at the end of the boil, and do something about it at that time, during the boil.
If you have 10g@ 1.030, and your boil-off rate is 1g/hour, then:
30 x 10 = 300 total Gravity Units (GUs).
During your 60-minute boil, you'll boil off 1 gallon, leaving you 9 gal. If you take no action, you'll get:
300 / 9 = 33.33, or an OG of 1.033.
dang! your target was 9gal at 1.051 (and 9 x 51 = 459GUs), so:

- Extract potential for DME is ~ 45GU/lb.
- how much must you add now, during boil, to hit 1.051?

extract in lbs = (459 - 300) = 159 / 45 = 3.5lbs DME

so, if you add 3.5lbs of DME during the boil, you will nail your target.

Assuming you have your process down, you now know that next time, you need to add more grain to prevent the need for back-end DME additions. Each time you brew, you dial in your process and system efficiency, and after 2-5 batches, you nail your targets every time.

 

[Snikwad1020]

that gravity was very low. Are you fairly confident that you had the right amount of grain for the recipe to hit your target volume? As long as you track your efficiency with each brew, you learn what your system will do. then beersmith (or whatever) can help calculate recipes for you. if you mash for typical 60, then drain all that to your BK, then add the right amount of sparge water at ~168-170, let sit for, say, 20 minutes, then drain that, you should get over 70% efficiency, yes?
Until you know what "normal" is for your system, you'll likely miss target OG a few times. No problem, since once you have all wort in the BK, you can predict what your OG will be at the end of the boil, and do something about it at that time, during the boil.
If you have 10g@ 1.030, and your boil-off rate is 1g/hour, then:
30 x 10 = 300 total Gravity Units (GUs).
During your 60-minute boil, you'll boil off 1 gallon, leaving you 9 gal. If you take no action, you'll get:
300 / 9 = 33.33, or an OG of 1.033.
dang! your target was 9gal at 1.051 (and 9 x 51 = 459GUs), so:

- Extract potential for DME is ~ 45GU/lb.
- how much must you add now, during boil, to hit 1.051?

extract in lbs = (459 - 300) = 159 / 45 = 3.5lbs DME

so, if you add 3.5lbs of DME during the boil, you will nail your target.

Assuming you have your process down, you now know that next time, you need to add more grain to prevent the need for back-end DME additions. Each time you brew, you dial in your process and system efficiency, and after 2-5 batches, you nail your targets every time.

Thanks for the advice on this. I had enough grain to hit my OG as I had about 16-18#'s of grain total that should have got me about 1.055 at 80% efficiency. I think I didn't let my sparge water sit long enough to re-suspend the sugars and I didn't stir at all with my second sparge batch. The first batch I had I took more of a fly sparge approach and never let the grain bed dry out. looking forward to getting through my next batch with a few more tests in the middle of the brew to determine adjustments needed on the fly rather than after the fact.

 

[Snikwad1020]

I would suggest merely steeping say above 170 - 180 the 6 llbs of DME in a 2-3 quarts of water and adding that to the fermenting beer rather than reboiling 5 gallons of fermenting beer....

Or maybe reboil or just pasteurize with a much smaller amount of the original batch, and some more yeast if you have it handy...interesting little problem you have going, but you should be able to straighten it out.

Just a thought....

Thanks for the suggestion… I figure in order to have room for the additional water I would need to pull some amount of liquid out of my fermenter. I think your approach is much better than mine, so I will just take a small amount of wort out of the fermenter steep the DME and add back with new yeast.

 

[Snikwad1020]

will 3 quarts of water be enough for 6 lbs of DME?

 

[wilserbrewer]

will 3 quarts of water be enough for 6 lbs of DME?

IDK, I would use just enough water so as not to dilute the already diluted beer any more than it already is....

6 lbs of DME is roughly 2 quarts, so 3 quarts of water or beer / wort should dissolve 6 lbs of DME if you are careful and patient...just heat SLOWLY and don't scorch it!

Good luck with the beer rescue...good idea you have for saving the batch!

And yes, not stirring the sparge water on a batch sparge could severely limit the extraction of malt sugar. Also, a poor crush, and wheat can be more difficult to crush, will also most likely lead to poor extraction. If in doubt, or your LHBS does not fully crush the grain, I would advise running it through the mill twice....

edit, for the life of me I can't understand how you mashed 18 lbs of grain in 13 gallons and boiled it to end up with 12 gallons of wort...should have been roughly 8-9???

 

[uatuba]

I rarely stir after adding sparge water unless it is a brew with a very light grain bill. My efficiency hovers around 85%.

I don't think it was your lack of stirring that caused it to be that low.


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[Braufessor]

The most likely cause of poor efficiency is almost always a bad crush. That is where I would start looking when you go on to future batches. Poorly crushed wheat, in particular, can yield lousy results in my experience.

 

[Snikwad1020]

IDK, I would use just enough water so as not to dilute the already diluted beer any more than it already is....

6 lbs of DME is roughly 2 quarts, so 3 quarts of water or beer / wort should dissolve 6 lbs of DME if you are careful and patient...just heat SLOWLY and don't scorch it!

Good luck with the beer rescue...good idea you have for saving the batch!

And yes, not stirring the sparge water on a batch sparge could severely limit the extraction of malt sugar. Also, a poor crush, and wheat can be more difficult to crush, will also most likely lead to poor extraction. If in doubt, or your LHBS does not fully crush the grain, I would advise running it through the mill twice....

edit, for the life of me I can't understand how you mashed 18 lbs of grain in 13 gallons and boiled it to end up with 12 gallons of wort...should have been roughly 8-9???

I should have clarified that I treated 13 gallons of water, but I had to add a few additional gallons for sparging when I only had 10 gallons of yield and wanted 13. I expected a boil off of 1 - 2 gallons (lost a little over 1 gallon with my 1st batch) and wanted to be over 10 gallons rather than under. Not sure if that answers your question.

 

[Pie_Man]

In my opinion, you either had a really terrible grain crush, or something is off with your gravity reading and/or volume calculation. I recommend double checking your gravity before fooling with things.

I'll add, if you are making water adjustments, forget about RA, your mash pH is what really matters. I highly recommend you learn to use the Bru'N water spreadsheet and use that for salt and acid additions going forward.

 

[Pie_Man]

I should have clarified that I treated 13 gallons of water, but I had to add a few additional gallons for sparging when I only had 10 gallons of yield and wanted 13. I expected a boil off of 1 - 2 gallons (lost a little over 1 gallon with my 1st batch) and wanted to be over 10 gallons rather than under. Not sure if that answers your question.

I am not sure when you took that gravity reading, but adding top up water can easily skew your gravity reading. Think about it, the wort is at a completely differnet gravity than the water you added. If things are not mixed together extremely well, your gravity readings will be off. There are hundreds of partial boil posts on this forum where people think they missed their gravity when that is really not the case. Slightly different situation for you, but the same concept.

 

[Snikwad1020]

In my opinion, you either had a really terrible grain crush, or something is off with your gravity reading and/or volume calculation. I recommend double checking your gravity before fooling with things.

I'll add, if you are making water adjustments, forget about RA, your mash pH is what really matters. I highly recommend you learn to use the Bru'N water spreadsheet and use that for salt and acid additions going forward.

The grain crush looked good or at least as good as my last all grain and my prior mini mashes. Admittedly I have not brewed a wheat prior, so I may have needed to run the wheat through a 2nd time. Unfortunately I checked my gravity post mash when hot and adjusted thinking it was fine. After not seeing any activity for a day or two with a very active starter I checked again and saw it was at 1.02. I actually went ahead and added the 6 lbs of DME and pitched new yeast and still nada. At this point I'm thinking it must have been something with the water. The only other thing I did beyond the gypsum and lactic acid addition is adding 2 tsp of yeast nutrient which is 1/5 the recommended amount. Let me know if there are any other thoughts.

 

[Foosier]

Are you saying that your 1.02 measurement was after 2 days of fermentation? If that is the case, and you added another 6 lbs of DME, you are likely going to have a very strong beer. Your yeast likely ate through a good chunk of your gravity already. 2 days is plenty of time for the yeast to lower the gravity dramatically. Especially if you used a starter.

The lesson here is to take your gravity readings before you pitch your yeast to see where you stand. Checking after the yeast have had time in the wort is almost useless for telling where you started from.

 

[KepowOb]

I agree with Foosier, if you had a SG of 1.020 after 2 days, I'd be much more inclined to say fermentation had already taken off!

When you say there were no signs of activity, I take it that you mean no airlock activity? If your using a bucket, it's quite possible the seal isn't great, so you won't get any bubbling. When you look your sample after 2 days, was there any signs of a krausen ring or something?

Also, after adding the DME and more yeast, there is no way nothing at all happened... What's the gravity at now??

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[Pie_Man]

Definitely not the water's fault.

Your gravity readings are all screwed up. If I understood everything correctly, you took a reading with very hot wort, right after adding top off water, and another one two days into fermentation. I recommend you purchase a $25 refractometer on Amazon. They make pre-fermentation gravity readings easy.

I would just enjoy this beer and stop tinkering with it. For your next batch, write yourself a detailed checklist before brew day, take your time and have fun.

 

[Snikwad1020]

Thanks for the help here guys! I hadn't thought about the potential for leaks in the seal allowing for release outside of the airlocks. Seeing the same lack of activity in both fermenters made me think there was an issue. I may end up with an overly strong wheat beer at the end of all of this which was not the goal. I will make sure that I take additional readings my next brew day and go slow and steady. I will report back with updates as things move along...

Thanks!

Paranoid n00b