First AG This Morning - Success, Feedback Desired

[OKCAg2002]

Hi gang,

Just a word of thanks to this community for my successful brew day today. I ventured into the great unknown world of AG brewing for the first time today and I think I was pretty successful all things considered.

I think my efficiency was a bit low, so you guys might have some insight. I followed BeerSmith to a "T" and ended up pretty close to my target OG.

Here's my recipe. It is a Goose Island 312 clone.

3 Gallon batch

2.75 lbs white wheat
2.5 lbs 2 row
1 lb terrified wheat
1 lb munich

60 min boil of 1.10 oz Cascade (odd numbers because of scaling)
5 min boil of .60 Cascade

1 vial of White Labs California Ale WLP001

I used a 5 gallon mash tun for the mash. My strike water was 9 qts at 177. I batch sparged with 11 qts at about 175.

I used RO water. I didn't add any salts because I just wanted to KISS this time.

Beer Smith said my target OG would be 1.056. I measured 1.052 with the refractometer.

Brewersfriend efficiency calculator said I was at 56%. Any idea why I was too low? I seemed to nail the temperatures for the most part.

All things considered, I have it in the fermentor now at 68 and it should be happily fermenting soon. I'm pleased and learned a lot.

Feedback would be appreciated!

 

[peterj]

Your strike temp was 177F? Seems a little high. What mash temp were you shooting for?

Also when you use RO water you should really add at least some salts. Otherwise I would just use tap water. This is a good and easy way to do it: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewing-water-chemistry-primer-198460/.

Welcome to AG brewing!

 

[OKCAg2002]

Beer Smith accounted for the temp of the mash tun. I ended up with a mash temp of about 154. Yeah - I know I should have put some salts in the water. My shipment from Midwest with them comes tomorrow but I only had today to brew so I did it anyways. I'm guessing that the RO water had something tondo with my low efficiency. Think that's right?

 

[peterj]

Oh that makes sense about the mash tun.

I've heard that calcium in the mash has some effect on efficiency, but I'm not sure how much. I would think it wouldn't be a very noticeable effect. A lot of things can affect efficiency so it's hard to say. One big thing is your crush. If your grains aren't crushed fine enough it can bring down your efficiency quite a bit.

A lot of people get pretty low efficiencies when first starting out. Hopefully it will go up, but the most important thing is get to a place where you can get consistent effeciency numbers. Then you can adjust your grain bill to whatever the number is.

 

[MazdaMatt]

Probably. No biggie. As I always say "It'll be beer".

LoL@ "1 lb terrified wheat"

I'm not sure what your target mash temp was, but 154 should be fine for a medium bodied beer. If you find this beer to be too slick/thick in the mouth, do it again a little lower. Between the munich and all that wheat and the mash temp it may be a bit "thick".

 

[LandoLincoln]

How did you terrify your wheat? I show my wheat other wheat kernels being ground up in my mill. That terrifies them pretty thoroughly.

Yes, it's certainly possible that your RO water didn't have the necessary minerals to help the mash enzymes to do their job most effectively. Did you take a pre-boil specific gravity reading? That would tell you the most about what happened in your mash.

 

[stpug]

You said your OG should have been 1.056 @ 3gallons, but that's already a fairly low efficiency (~60%). The fact that you were shy of that makes it even lower, like you said - ~56% efficiency. As mentioned above, I would start by looking at the crush since it's often times the biggest contributer to poor efficiency. Plus, it's really easy. Grab a handful of your spent grain and see if you can estimate the percentage of uncrushed kernels. You should see VERY few intact grains (1-5% maybe).

Regardless, first batches will always be off more than successive batches since you're still working out your process and any bugs.

 

[OKCAg2002]

"Terrified Wheat" - oops. Funny typo. :cross:

I went off of a recipe that I searched for on Beer Smith so I wasn't too picky. I'm obviously still learning what the different grains are and what flavor profiles they have. It'll be an interesting learning experience no doubt.

As for the crush, it looked fine to me. I had my LHBS do the milling, and all the grains looked uniformly crushed.

The 1.056 was what Beer Smith calculated as a target OG based upon 72% predicted efficiency. I'm not too sure why mine it calculated what it did. Is it the particular grains I used?

Like another poster said, it'll still be beer and I'm not worried about it really. I'd like to get it higher, obviously, and I expect that I will.

My mash tun is a 5 gallon cooler with a stainless steel braid false bottom. Could that design give me a lower efficiency as well?

Thanks, guys!

 

[Conan]

You tun/ braid combo is fine. I routinely get 81-83% efficiency using a braid. Did you take gravities of your first and second runnings, as well as preboil? These numbers can help determine if you over-sparged or didn't get good conversion in the mash. While your grain may be crushed by the LHBS it's likely still a fairly coarse crush. I used to get half to quarter-kernel size grains post-crush, but with my crusher the chunks are 1/8-kernel sized or less. Kyle