First All Grain Brew Completed - But Questions

[DirtyJersey]

I completed my first all grain brew last night. First and foremost, this was damn FUN! It took a lot longer than I expected, I made a mess, a few things went wrong, but I had a blast and that's what a hobby is for, right?

Okay, a few questions;

1) The target O.G. was 1.054. My O.G. was 1.062. Obviously I missed it by quite a bit. What would cause such a miss?

2) My mash tun held my strike temp at 154 for 60 mins! I didn't lose a single degree. HOWEVER, when I went to sparge, I heated my sparge water to 184, added it to the mash tun, and the sparge temp was only 162ish. My target was 168-170, so I fell way short. I couldn't heat any more water fast enough. I suspect I didn't get a good sparge. How will this affect my beer?

3) How do you guys clean your mash tun? I wasn't prepared to deal with 25 lbs. of soaking wet grains. I scooped them into a garbage bag, but this took forever, and needless to say, eventually leaked. Cleaning the mash tun itself was a process. (I can hose it down in the summer, but in 15 degree weather, that's not an option for me).

 

[MalFet]

1) Hitting gravity is much more technically involved in AG than in extract brewing. For a first go, being off by 8 points ain't bad. This doesn't actually necessarily indicate that you did anything wrong, either. The recipe you used has a presumed efficiency, often 70%. Your efficiency might just be higher than the recipe presumed. The real goal is not so much any particular efficiency, or even a high efficiency (grain is cheap), but rather a consistent efficiency from brew to brew. Until you figure out your system's efficiency, you can always just tweak your wort by either boiling longer or adding water. The math for this is pretty easy. If you don't know how to do it, speak up.

2) A low sparge temp will only have the effect of decreasing your efficiency, but clearly that wasn't a problem this time around.

3) This one is trickier, and everyone has a system. You didn't mention what kind of mash tun you're using. I use a brew-in-a-bag bag in my mash tun, even though I'm running a HERMS system. Yank the bag out and away you go!

Congrats! I'm sure it's great beer. The problems you described won't interfere with that, and it gets easier and quicker as you get more experienced.

 

[BendBrewer]

I think I saw Bobby use a shop vac to clean his out. Couldn't tell for sure as the video was chopped but it looked like a great idea.

I just dump them into my compost or a bucket to give away to a guy who feeds wild turkeys and deer on his property. Right under the tree stand. Season starts April 15th!

 

[DirtyJersey]

Malfet.... I'm speaking up! I don't know the math. can you please explain?

BendBrewer, I would love to give my grains away to wild turkeys and such, however, I live in New Jersey where the wildlife ain't so wild! haha. I actually threw a couple of handfuls onto a cookie sheet, baked them for a few hours and let my dogs munch on them...they seemed to like it, but I can't give them all of it.

 

[Berock]

How many gallons did you make? 25 pounds of grain to only have a 1.054 is a problem on 10 gallon systems. If it was a 10 gallons system I would check your efficiency issues (temp, mill, etc). Unless the 25 pounds is the wet weight (then disregard my comment)

 

[MalFet]

Malfet.... I'm speaking up! I don't know the math. can you please explain?

Sure!

You've got a fixed quantity of sugars in your kettle, and you want to figure out how much water you need to add to reach a specific concentration (gravity) appropriate to your recipe.

1) Take a gravity reading and ignore the leading one and the decimal. Say it comes out 1.040, that means you've got 40 points of sugars per gallon in your wort.

2) Multiply your concentration of sugar by the volume of wort you have. So if you have six gallons of 40 points-per-gallon wort, you've got a total of 240 points worth of sugar.

3) Divide this number by your target gravity (again, lopping off the leading one and the decimal). Say your recipe calls for 1.030. Divide 240 by 30, and you get 8. That means that your total volume needs to be 8 gallons at the end of your boil.

4) In order to figure out how much you need pre-boil, you'll have to just know your system's evaporation rate. You'll get a sense of this as you do a few batches, but in the meantime you can always just (gradually) add a little bit of water if you think you're going to overshoot your boil off.

Make sense? Say so if not.

 

[DirtyJersey]

Wow. I've never seen this formula before, but it seems simple enough. I will keep this in mind as I go forward and try again. Thank you, Malfet.


Berock....I started with 13 lbs of grain. I was referring to the soaking wet grain weight. I probably over-estimated a bit....it probably wasn't 25 lbs, but it seemed like it!

 

[BendBrewer]

Berock....I started with 13 lbs of grain. I was referring to the soaking wet grain weight. I probably over-estimated a bit....it probably wasn't 25 lbs, but it seemed like it!

With water weighing 8 pounds per gallon I bet you're pretty close actually.

 

[DirtyJersey]

Well, I just ran my numbers and it looks like my efficiency for my first all grain batch was 71%. I guess I'm pretty happy with that!

I didn't have any activity in my airlock for the first 30 hours or so, but I came home this afternoon and it's bubbling away like mad! (does anyone else sniff their airlocks? haha)

So, good news all around as far as I'm concerned.:rockin:

 

[El_Exorcisto]

I just bring the tun outside and dump the spent grains. In the winter the rabbits seem to love it, in the summer it makes for decent compost. After I dump that it goes in the tub and gets a thorough rinsing.