First All-Grain brewday - weird results

[thrashandburn]

I decided to try and brew up a batch of edwort's hefe https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f70/bee-cave-brewery-bavarian-hefeweizen-35679/ I followed the recipe to the t except I forgot to make a yeast starter and didn't really have the time to push the brew to another day, so I opted to add some yeast nutrient to the boil. I hope it works out.

Anyway, everything went really smoothly all day. I mashed with 3.5 gallons of water. My mash tun held the temp really well. It was supposed to be at 153, and I only lost about 3 or 4 degrees throughout the whole 90 minutes, though I added about an extra quart or so of 153 degree water when I noticed it dropping. When I finished it read 150, so I was close. I then batch sparged with another 3.5 at 170 degrees. Then came the boil which was a disaster.

My turkey fryer kept cutting out every time I would try to adjust the shut off timer to keep the flame going, so I constantly had to remove the kettle and relight the burner. This happened like four times making it impossible to keep the boil consistent for the full hour. So, either my fryer is really touchy or I was doing something wrong. As a result the hour long process of the boil took almost two. After this plus a boil over, I wound up with only a little more than 4 gallons of wort!

However, my OG was ~1.051, which was only 1 point off of the target (1.052), so I think it turned out fine, it was just a big hassle and I have less wort. I used an efficiency calculator which said I was at 48% efficiency from inputting my OG and actual wort volume of 4 gals. I don't really get the whole efficiency thing yet, but if I more or less hit the OG, why is the calculator giving me such a low efficiency? Shouldn't I be closer to 75%?

Thanks for reading guys. Any comments, feedback, or suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Stauffbier]

Your efficiency is low, because you only ended up with 4 gallons of wort. To get good efficiency you need to hit your gravity numbers at the right volume of wort. It sounds like you didn't use enough water for your brew. You only had 7 gallons of total water, and after grain absorption it likely gave you less pre-boil volume than you should have had.

 

[brewn00b4]

Also make sure your tukey cooker air intake is adjusted properly. The right mixture of fuel and air will keep that baby burning better.

 

[Stauffbier]

thrashandburn, after looking at the grain bill in the recipe you linked I calculated that the total water volume (on my system) would have been 8.3875 gallons (33.55 qts)..

My system breaks down like this;

5.5 gal batch size
1.2 gal boil off rate (calculated for 1 hour)
1.4375 gal grain absorption (I calculate .125 gal per pound of grain, and I included the rice hulls)
.25 gal of dead space in my MLT
------------------------------
= 8.3875 gallon total water

On this batch, if I were brewing I would have mashed with 17.25 qts (4.3125 gallons) of water. This gives you a mash thickness of 1.5qts/lb of grist. I then would have split the remaining 4.075 gallons of sparge water in to two equal batch sparge's. These are just my personal preferences. Some people like to mash thicker or thinner than 1.5qts/lb... YMMV

 

[thrashandburn]

yeah, I realized after the fact that I did my math wrong. I just kinda winged it a couple minutes before I started mashing, which was dumb. Also, I didn't account for the grain absorption, so I think that's where I lost that extra gallon of water, cause I used a total of 7 gallons, so if I lost over a gallon to the grain and the boil off, then I would be left with around 4 gallons of wort instead of 5. Next time I know I'll have to total just over 8 gallons to get a full 5 in my fermentor. But having hit the gravity, my conversion was pretty good right, so the beer should turn out fine?

 

[gmcastil]

yeah, I realized after the fact that I did my math wrong. I just kinda winged it a couple minutes before I started mashing, which was dumb. Also, I didn't account for the grain absorption, so I think that's where I lost that extra gallon of water, cause I used a total of 7 gallons, so if I lost over a gallon to the grain and the boil off, then I would be left with around 4 gallons of wort instead of 5. Next time I know I'll have to total just over 8 gallons to get a full 5 in my fermentor. But having hit the gravity, my conversion was pretty good right, so the beer should turn out fine?

You should really consider getting some brewing software to help you get your temps and water volumes right. Probably the best money you can spend if you want to get more consistent and figure out how your system works.

I use Beersmith 2, but there are plenty of other options.

 

[Stauffbier]

The thing is, if you hit your efficiency that you were expecting then your gravity on 4 gallons would have been way higher than it is. You probably got good conversion, but lacking at your lauter efficiency. Meaning, the starch was converted, but you didn't rinse all of the sugars out when you lautered. This is my guess, anyway....

The beer will still be good. I'm guessing your IBU's are off because of the lower volume, but it will still be beer..

With a little practice you'll get the process down. My efficiency was in the mid 50's the first time I did AG. Now I typically get 78-80%...