First AG - Bad Mash temp = bad efficiency?

[jeffdill]

I brewed my first all-grain batch today, EdWort's Pale Ale. It didn't go so smoothly. I was hoping maybe you guys could help troubleshoot my process?

I heated up 3.5 gallons of water to ~175 degrees and put it in the mash tun. I let it preheat the cooler, and once the water reached 162 I added the grain and stirred vigorously for a couple minutes. Closed the lid, saw that my temp was reading 148 degrees.

I then a brain fart and thought I had to mash at 162, when it was supposed to be 152. So I heated up a gallon and a half of water and added it to the mash after about 15 minutes to bring the temp up to about 160, and kept it there for an hour. Poured a gallon of 175 degree water in, vorlaufed, drained 5 gallons into the kettle. Added another two gallons of 175 degree water, stirred for a couple minutes, closed lid and waited 10 minutes, then vorlaufed and added 1.5 more gallons to the kettle.

Total preboil kettle volume was 6.5 gallons. Total post-boil volume was about 4.6 gallons with OG 1.046, which is 55.7% efficiency.

So, few questions:
-Would my mash temp problems likely be the reason for the bad effiency?
-Would me adding extra water to increase mash temp dilute it and hurt efficiency?
-Do the sugars sink to the bottom of the cooler or are they pretty dispersed (my drain is an inch or so above the bottom of the cooler - worried I'm not getting all the sugars out)
-Does boiling off 2 gallons in an hour sound wrong? I thought that 1 gallon/hr was the rule of thumb

Cheers...hoping to do a better job next weekend

 

[Brulosopher]

-Would my mash temp problems likely be the reason for the bad effiency?
Very unlikely... the higher mash temp will simply produce a less fermentable wort, though still "sugary" enough to register on a hydrometer... expect a fairly rich/sweet and heavy bodied pale ale with lower ABV than expected

-Would me adding extra water to increase mash temp dilute it and hurt efficiency?
As long as you didn't add more water than the total volume intended, it wouldn't have much of an impact at all. If, however, you were haphazardly adding hot water for whatever reason and went beyond the intended volume, your OG would most certainly be lower than expected due to dilution

-Do the sugars sink to the bottom of the cooler or are they pretty dispersed (my drain is an inch or so above the bottom of the cooler - worried I'm not getting all the sugars out)
Sink to the bottom? You mean during your runoffs? I'm confused about this one...

-Does boiling off 2 gallons in an hour sound wrong? I thought that 1 gallon/hr was the rule of thumb
This depends on a few factors. While 2 gal/hr is pretty high, its not crazy. I usually boil off about 1.5 gallons in 75 minutes.

Here's the deal... you made beer. It will work, I promise. With the exception of raising the mash temp unnecessarily, everything else seemed pretty right on. You'll be enjoying the fruits of your labor 3 to 5 weeks from now... cheers!

 

[jeffdill]

I had about a gallon of extra runoff that I just tossed...I was shooting for 5.5 gallons in the fermenter, but I clearly overshot my boil off rate.

I'm guessing it is no big deal to just add more water to the fermenter if I boil off too much?

I'm hoping that was the problem...I didn't want to have to build another mash tun.

As for that third question - i would need to leave an inch or so of runoff at the bottom of the cooler and I was concerned that it might be more dense with sugars than the wort at the top of the cooler. I might be completely wrong