First 10 gallon batch issues.

[hatepickingnames]

Broke int the new 20 gallon ss kettle with an imperial amber today and missed on a few grav points...12 of them!
24.4 lb grain
Single infusion to 154 degrees
Mashed at 1.3 qt/lb maxed out mlt volume.
60 min mash
sparged with 4 gallons of 168 degree water.
My sparge technique is to open the valve on mlt and maintain a thin layer of sparge water above the vrain bed.
this made 10 gallons into the fermenter at 1.060. I topped off the kettle with 4 gallons to make my boil vol of 14 and and for a final vol of 10.5 gallons.
Added 3 lb of dme at the top of the boil.
90 minutes later i had 10.5 gallons of 1.063 wort with an expected og od 1.075.
Any ideas to improve this?
i conditioned the malt and crush at a 1 mm spacing.

 

[duboman]

Based on your comments, process and quality of crush the one thing I would look at is the dough in. I know that the first time I did my largest volume/grain bill it was quite difficult getting a good, thorough dough in as the grain was very thick and heavy and my efficiency suffered because of it. For my next batches I slowed things down so I could really stir well as the grain went in and stirred a couple times during the mash and my efficiency improved to where I hit my numbers and have since.

In addition, you stated you topped off which then diluted your wort to meet your pre-boil volume meaning you did not sparge enough to get the proper volume initially. You could have compensated by boiling longer but then would have been short on your post boil volume, although you stated you had 10.5 gallons but only 10 in the fermentor? Confused:

In all it seems that you need to be more careful with your dough in, mixing and pay closer attention to your volumes and you should be able to fix the short comings of the day

 

[hatepickingnames]

The final vol of 10.5 keeps some of the break material in the kettle so only 10 makes it to the fermenter.

Ive only mashed in my new 48 qt cooler tun 2 times now. Its likely where im struggling. Ive heard over sparging is a nono. What would constitute oversparging? As per beersmith i sparged with +-50% of my doughin vol of 8 gal. My hlt holds 10 gal so i could do more. My preboil vol was entered in bs so im not sure why it told me 4 gal to sparge.

Im thinking about trying a paint mixer at a low speed to get the mash mixed better.

 

[duboman]

It appears that once you get your equipment dialed in you will correct your volumes in beer smith. Go through your notes and process and fine tune your complete equipment profile to get you volumes corrected

As for using the drill, might work, can't really comment as I have no experience doing that but you can always have an assistant help you with the dough in so one can slowly add the grain and you can stir as it goes in for a good mix.

Assuming you get these two things fixed up and pinned down your next batch should be spot on

 

[Brulosopher]

Why in the world wouldn't you sparge 3-4 more gallons?!?!

Seriously, you probably left some fermentables in your MLT. Crush is the typical "poor efficiency" response, and that may be it. I'm still confused why you added DME with such a large system...

 

[hatepickingnames]

As im thinking about it, the mashout bs gave me merely serves as an infusion to raise the temp of the grist to sparge temps. I went to the water needed page and it gave me a sparge amout of 9 gallons. While that would have landed me at 15 gallons, i would have had a higher grav. Its grain absorbtion rate is high for what i observed likely accounting for the extra gal of sparge.
Does a 9 gallon sparge on 24.4 lbs of grain seen a lot?

I use the dme because i cant mash 30 lbs of grain in a 48 qt tun any where near my prefered 1.5qt/lb mash. I was maxed out at 24.4 lb at 1.3qt/lb today. Any more would make a mess. Im going to get a larger cooler for the >1.060 10 gal batches. This capacity ceiling is causing bigger sparges since i have to cut down on mash water to make it fit.

How worried should i be about over sparging? Ive heard bad things start to happen.

 

[Brulosopher]

9 gal for that grist and batch size sounds just about right, actually.

 

[Brulosopher]

I wouldn't worry too much about oversparging, but it certainly is something to be aware of. You wouldn't have extracted an excess of tannins had you increased your sparge volume a few more gallons.

 

[hatepickingnames]

Thats good to hear. Ive had 2 batches with bad tannin due to high sparge temps when i first started out. Its nasty. How does the 1.060 sound with only 4 gallons run through the mash? I had 75% brewhouse as a target. 60% is what i got.. Do you think another 4-5 gal sparge would have made up my 12 pts?

 

[Brulosopher]

Thats good to hear. Ive had 2 batches with bad tannin due to high sparge temps when i first started out. Its nasty. How does the 1.060 sound with only 4 gallons run through the mash? I had 75% brewhouse as a target. 60% is what i got.. Do you think another 4-5 gal sparge would have made up my 12 pts?

Perhaps, though the only way to know... well, you know

 

[hatepickingnames]

Thanks for the replies fellas, i wont let it happen again.

 

[sonex]

its really hard to over sparge. I always try to get 6.25 gals in my first runnings, and then another 6.25 gals for the second runnings. By using equal volumes for the mash runnings and sparge runnings your efficiency is maximized. This ratio for most 11 gallon batches has a qt/lb ratio of 1.7 and sometimes over 2 and I never had any tannin issues. My cooler is 48 qt also and it all fits.

 

[hatepickingnames]

its really hard to over sparge. I always try to get 6.25 gals in my first runnings, and then another 6.25 gals for the second runnings. By using equal volumes for the mash runnings and sparge runnings your efficiency is maximized. This ratio for most 11 gallon batches has a qt/lb ratio of 1.7 and sometimes over 2 and I never had any tannin issues. My cooler is 48 qt also and it all fits.

How many lbs of grain do mash at those ratios? The gb rackers calc says my 30 lb all grain brew would eat up 13.65 gallons of tun space at 1.5 qt/lb...48=12 gal minus submerged hardware. ?

 

[sonex]

today I did a pale ale that had 22 lb of grain. The cooler is large enough to do gravities of 1.065, anything bigger and ya got to do double sparges. I have a 72 QT cooler for larger beers and 15 gal batches.