I made BM's Centennial Blonde. I have made the extract version many times, and still have a full keg of it. I wanted to try a side-by-side comparison to see the difference with AG.
Since I only have one 30 quart pot, the logistics were a little tricky. It went something like this:
- Measured out sparge water first and heated to about 185. This went into the MLT to get it warmed up.
- Measured out the mash water next and heated to 161 per Brew Smith calculations. I am not really happy with the thermometer I used. It is one of the cheap floating thermometers that, while accurately reading 32 in a glass of crushed ice water, it is
really slow at getting to the correct temp. This was not a problem here, but it ended up fooling me later.
- Drained out the MLT into a food-grade plastic bucket, since the pot was holding the mash water at the time.
- Put mash water into MLT and stirred in the grain. Here is where the thermometer did not work out for me. After getting everything stirred in, I put the thermometer into the MLT and closed the lid for 3-4 minutes. When I checked the temp, and hit my target of 150 dead on and I was feeling really good about things. However, after another 20 minutes I checked the temp again and now was reading about 155.
Not really wanting to make it worse by "doing something", I let it go since it was not off the charts high.
- Now the sparge water that was in the plastic bucket was transferred to the pot and heated back up to about 185. Since it was still very warm, it didn't take long.
- Collected the wort from the mash into the plastic bucket. Got about 2 gallons. Original water was about 13.2 quarts.
- Poured sparge water into the MLT, stirred and let sit for 10 minutes.
- Gently transferred wort from the bucket to the pot.
- Collected the rest of the wort from the sparge into the pot up to 6.5 gallons.
With 6.5 gallons in the 30 quart pot, it was closer to the top than anything I have boiled before (usually do about 5.5 gallons for extract brewing) and did boil over. I have always boiled more vigorously and had to back it off quite a bit to prevent further boiling over. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. However, I did end up getting pretty low efficiency (63.6% according to Brew Smith).
The three things that I took away from the experience was 1. I need a better thermometer, 2. I need a bigger pot, and 3. I need to research ways to improve my efficiency.
For the thermometer, I saw a digital stick thermometer that claims to get an accurate reading within seconds. From what I could tell, there was not a way to manually calibrate it. I will keep looking around. I do prefer digital since I always seem to mis-read the scale on the one I have.
As for efficiency, my LHBS asked me if I wanted house crush or if I wanted it smaller. I asked for house crush to get a baseline on my efficiency. I will ask for it smaller next time. I was also wondering about the mash temp being too high. What impact on efficiency would that have?
Also, any other feedback on my process is welcome and appreciated.
Mash in:
My ghetto setup:
Early in the boil - after the boil over was dealt with:
