First AG with terrible mash efficiency

[jetmac]

Bottling done with final gravity at 1.014! ABV about 8.9%. Not too shabby. With a few tweaks on the next batch I should be able to hit close to the estimated efficiency numbers. Thanks to everyone for the great input.

Hmmm....12 days from brewing to bottling. That's not very much time.

 

[freeflydude]

I only have a 7 gallon brew pot so 6.5 gallons is about as much as I can boil right now. The boil may not have been very vigorous but is that important for anything other than boil off. It was a constant boil but I think if I were to get much more heat it would boil over. It will be awhile before I can get a larger brew pot so maybe I'll stick with smaller brews for now.
On the gravity, did you have the candi sugar added in your calculations? I always double check my hydrometer readings so I'm sure they are correct.

 

[freeflydude]

Hmmm....12 days from brewing to bottling. That's not very much time.

I didn't transfer to secondary. Trying to get this one ready for an event at the end of the month.

 

[freeflydude]

Okay, Plugging your numbers into BeerSmith I get 1.066 pre-boil. Link to recipe I through together So you were pretty close but something was off and I agree you may need to change something like a longer sparge. But most importantly, a 90 min boil is going to require more wort than a 60 min boil. In this case BS suggests almost 8.5 gallons in your boil kettle. I typically boil off 1.5-2 gallons in a 60 min boil. You only boiled off 1 gallon in 90 min which should have been closer to 3 gallons. So, your boil could not have been very vigorous. Also, BS puts this at 1.099 into the fermenter. Which you were way off of. If you had 8.5 gallons pre-boil, at a gravity of 1.055 it would have helped you to get to the 1.099 having the extra 2 gallons to boil off. Even @1.055, you could have boiled down to 5 gallons and made it into the 1.090's.

Also, I think you have a few numbers wrong or your hydrometer is off but 6.5 gallons @ 1.055 equals 357.5 gravity units. If you boil off 1 gallon and divide that into the 5 gallons left it's only a gravity of 1.071 not 1.082 post boil as you have stated. so something is not right.

Does this make sense?

I'm going to have to start using Beer Smith. Looking at their numbers it is more like what I was expecting to see and my results are way off in comparison. The color was off at more of an amber than a darker Belgian. It still tastes pretty good but is not what I expected. guess I'll have to wait awhile before I can brew this one again.

 

[jetmac]

I only have a 7 gallon brew pot so 6.5 gallons is about as much as I can boil right now. The boil may not have been very vigorous but is that important for anything other than boil off. It was a constant boil but I think if I were to get much more heat it would boil over. It will be awhile before I can get a larger brew pot so maybe I'll stick with smaller brews for now. .

Actually, boiling is very important not just to evaporate the water. One of the reasons you boil this particular recipe for 90min is to get rid of DMS.

There is a pod cast about boiling wort at The Brewing Network somewhere.

Ya, I think 90 min boils are out of the question unless you do a 2.5 gallon batch

On the gravity, did you have the candi sugar added in your calculations? I always double check my hydrometer readings so I'm sure they are correct.

Yes, the sugar was in the recipe creation. So, I'm thinking BeerSmith takes it out of the equation pre-boil because as you can see, OG was up in the 1.090's. That's after boil.

 

[jetmac]

I didn't transfer to secondary. Trying to get this one ready for an event at the end of the month.

Good, there is some debate, but a secondary isn't necessary other than for specific reasons like adding fruit.

Typically I let my beer stay in the primary for 1 month

 

[Darwin18]

Not to beat a dead horse...but who batch sparges for an hour? I've heard people fly sparging slowly and using an hour to drain the mash tun.

If you're going to batch sparge, you don't need to take an hour doing so. Add the sparge water, let it sit for 10 minutes, and then drain. An hour to batch sparge is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I've never had an issue with efficiency or flavors, and my beers have scored well in competition.

 

[jetmac]

Not to beat a dead horse...but who batch sparges for an hour? I've heard people fly sparging slowly and using an hour to drain the mash tun.

If you're going to batch sparge, you don't need to take an hour doing so. Add the sparge water, let it sit for 10 minutes, and then drain. An hour to batch sparge is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I've never had an issue with efficiency or flavors, and my beers have scored well in competition.

He must have misspoke surely he meant fly sparge

 

[Denny]

Not to beat a dead horse...but who batch sparges for an hour? I've heard people fly sparging slowly and using an hour to drain the mash tun.

If you're going to batch sparge, you don't need to take an hour doing so. Add the sparge water, let it sit for 10 minutes, and then drain. An hour to batch sparge is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I've never had an issue with efficiency or flavors, and my beers have scored well in competition.

Actually, there is nothing to be gained by letting the sparge water sit for 10 min. I had that in my original batch sparging swritep, but changed it years ago. These days I simply stir in the sparge water, vorlauf and runoff. See dennybrew.com

And yes, an hour to batch sarge is not necessary. It takes me 15 min. total to vorlauf the mash, run it off, stir in the sparge water, vorlauf that, and run off the sparge. I average 85% efficiency.

 

[freeflydude]

Not to beat a dead horse...but who batch sparges for an hour? I've heard people fly sparging slowly and using an hour to drain the mash tun.

If you're going to batch sparge, you don't need to take an hour doing so. Add the sparge water, let it sit for 10 minutes, and then drain. An hour to batch sparge is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I've never had an issue with efficiency or flavors, and my beers have scored well in competition.

I did fly sparge. Did I say batch sparge? I agree no need to sparge for an hour with batch sparge.

 

[jetmac]

I did fly sparge. Did I say batch sparge? I agree no need to sparge for an hour with batch sparge.

No, ATXweirdobrew did in post #3