Hello all,
I got myself a mill recently and crushed the grain myself on my last batch. My intention was to improve efficiency. I crushed at 0.025. Crush looked good but there was certainly more flour than ever before.
I put some of the crushed grain dry in my bag, and i could see flour being sifted out. I had nothing to compare that with, i had never tried it with store crush. So made a note of this and moved on.
I brewed as i normally do, w/o much change in any other variables... 13 lbs grain, 7.5 gallon water. mostly Belgian pils, 8 oz of wheat.
I use a bag in a steamer basket
I very gently recirculate for temp distribution
I use an ezboil for temp control
I have 2250W element from BrewHardware.
Single step full volume mash, no mash out, no sparge
I could tell the mash had a lot of particles in suspension outside the bag. Taking samples from drain valve (not from inside the bag), the wort was cloudier than i had ever seen. I removed the basket/bag, squeezed a fair amount ramp to boil (no pump) at 100% and boiled for 1h at 85%. I did crank it up to 95% towards the last i'd say quarter of the boil, as it seemed it could use a bit more power... After draining to fermenter, element is caked in black crud. Took a sample today, it's burnt. Not absolutely awful burnt, but it's there. Still debating whether I will bottle or dump.
As far as i remember the wort tasted fine after the mash.
So... looking for advice. Here are my takeaways
1- Only variable that changed was crush. I've brewed 5 or 6 very successful batches on this setup (albeit of low efficiency) until this last brew.
2- my bag is of some long forgotten origins... probably not a high quality bag.
3- moving the boil power to 95%, maybe a bad move in retrospect
4- somehow, i got a lot more hop trub than i normally do. I use a hop spider so i am not sure how it "escaped" but it did. Perhaps also a burn candidate, though seems less likely.
Thanks for any guidance/advice
I got myself a mill recently and crushed the grain myself on my last batch. My intention was to improve efficiency. I crushed at 0.025. Crush looked good but there was certainly more flour than ever before.
I put some of the crushed grain dry in my bag, and i could see flour being sifted out. I had nothing to compare that with, i had never tried it with store crush. So made a note of this and moved on.
I brewed as i normally do, w/o much change in any other variables... 13 lbs grain, 7.5 gallon water. mostly Belgian pils, 8 oz of wheat.
I use a bag in a steamer basket
I very gently recirculate for temp distribution
I use an ezboil for temp control
I have 2250W element from BrewHardware.
Single step full volume mash, no mash out, no sparge
I could tell the mash had a lot of particles in suspension outside the bag. Taking samples from drain valve (not from inside the bag), the wort was cloudier than i had ever seen. I removed the basket/bag, squeezed a fair amount ramp to boil (no pump) at 100% and boiled for 1h at 85%. I did crank it up to 95% towards the last i'd say quarter of the boil, as it seemed it could use a bit more power... After draining to fermenter, element is caked in black crud. Took a sample today, it's burnt. Not absolutely awful burnt, but it's there. Still debating whether I will bottle or dump.
As far as i remember the wort tasted fine after the mash.
So... looking for advice. Here are my takeaways
1- Only variable that changed was crush. I've brewed 5 or 6 very successful batches on this setup (albeit of low efficiency) until this last brew.
2- my bag is of some long forgotten origins... probably not a high quality bag.
3- moving the boil power to 95%, maybe a bad move in retrospect
4- somehow, i got a lot more hop trub than i normally do. I use a hop spider so i am not sure how it "escaped" but it did. Perhaps also a burn candidate, though seems less likely.
Thanks for any guidance/advice