Beginner all grain issues

[CPFITNESS]

Hello all, I'm a newbie here but I think i'm better served asking the all grain experts rather than the beginner forum. thus far I've had good success with my few brews. Each time learning something and improving. On the last one, my goal was to improve efficiency and I did it in two ways. 1. I fly sparged MUCH slower, seemingly painfully slow and 2. I used more water in my mash and sparged with more water. So here is the issue. My recipe can be seen here because i used more water to sparge and mash, I should have boiled longer to get down to the correct post boil volume but I didn't. So now I have 6 gallons in the fermenter instead of 5. This was a higher gravity beer so now in essence I"ve "watered it down" but my concern is specifically with the juniper and coriander that I used in the recipe. I'm wondering if I should add more in a "dry hop" sort of way to my primary since I've got a gallon more beer than I planned or if I should just let it ride? I hit a really good efficiency number so i'm happy with the changes I made but I just didn't boil long enough. I know now for next time but really want to make sure this beer has a nice flavor too. at 6.4% I'm not really worried that it's truly going to be "watery" but it just may not be as nice as intended. Will letting it sit in the primary a bit longer add to the flavor?

Lastly, is this something that Beersmith will figure out for me? I've downloaded the software but I don't fully understand how it works. Things like equipment are throwing me for a loop as i have a 10 gallon cooler to mash in and I do 5 gallon batches but the options listed are something like 10 gallon cooler mash tun for 10 gallon batches. Its a bit confusing at this point.

 

[Homercidal]

First, Beersmith has a learning curve. Don't give up on it. Equipment set up is important and each person needs to do this on an individual basis, so read up on it until you have your equipment setting correct. They have a pretty good forum. I highly recommend you check it out.

I think it would be good to know what your actual OG was. This will give us an idea of how far off your beer is to the recipe.

And relax. I think you will have beer when you are done, even if it's not exactly what you had tried for.

 

[tbone0n74]

Beersmith does take some "dialing in" time. I'm happy to say, my third batch (I'm a noobie too) came out spot-on on all my numbers. Don't be too concerned with not hitting things exactly right off the bat... you will still wind up with great beer

 

[CPFITNESS]

First, Beersmith has a learning curve. Don't give up on it. Equipment set up is important and each person needs to do this on an individual basis, so read up on it until you have your equipment setting correct. They have a pretty good forum. I highly recommend you check it out.

I think it would be good to know what your actual OG was. This will give us an idea of how far off your beer is to the recipe.

And relax. I think you will have beer when you are done, even if it's not exactly what you had tried for.

Okay, I posted the recipe in my first post but I just realized something else so let me see if I can explain this.

http://hopville.com/recipe/1189464/belgian-blond-ale-recipes/bel-gin-strong This link is the actual recipe. The batch size and the boil volume are what they SHOULD have been if I hadn't added the extra water to the mash and sparge. The gravity readings you see listed are the actual gravity readings of this batch.

http://hopville.com/recipe/1196377/belgian-blond-ale-recipes/bel-gin-strong-2012-03-05-version After I was done, I substitued the actual pre and post boil volume numbers and used the actual gravity readings to see what I did actual create. I'm completely confident I've got beer and it will be fine, just trying to improve my process and wondering if I should add any more coriander and juniper since I'm a bit watered down. I'll definately check out the beersmith forums! It really seems like a great tool.

I get my recipes from the Brooklyn Brew Shop book which has some intriuing recipes but they keep it very basic and don't get into a lot of the specifics of brewing so ideally I'd like to take their grain bill and hop schedule and input it into beersmith to get more precise volumes of water for mashing, sparging as well as figure out proper boil times to get to desired final volumes

 

[Shooter]

On the last one, my goal was to improve efficiency and I did it in two ways. 1. I fly sparged MUCH slower, seemingly painfully slow and 2. I used more water in my mash and sparged with more water. So here is the issue. My recipe can be seen here because i used more water to sparge and mash, I should have boiled longer to get down to the correct post boil volume but I didn't.

By sparging slower, you should be able to extract the sugars more efficiently. I would just collect what you normally require pre-boil and then see what your gravity is at that point. You shouln't need to collect more volume to increase efficiency. In truth, collecting more at the end of the sparge would be dilluting your wort as the sugars being pulled out at the end are much lower than those at the beginning of the sparge.