My first AG batch is now done and its cooling in the fermenter for atleast untill tomorrow morning when its time to pich the yeast.
It was a good learning experience and i was suprised especially by how much time it takes compared to extract brewing. Have to say that i enjoyed myself even though the end result isnt quite what i was hoping.
The biggest dissapointment for me was that i didnt collect as much wort as I orignally thought. I put only 13 liters in the fermenter which also has a lot of trub in it, so I will probably only bottle like 10 liters. My guess is that there are two reasons why i ended up with so little wort:
1. I had way too much grain for the ammount of water in the kettle. I mashed 10,5 lb in 5 gallons of water. Especially in the beginning the mash was so thick that it was really hard to even mix it since it just stuck together. Made the temperature control a ***** also, and i cant say for sure in what temperature i ended up mashing the grain since there was probably a lot of heat variance espeically between the bottom and the top of the kettle.
2. Bad sparging. I was orignally going to sparge with 6 liters of water, but ended up using only like 2,5 liters. The reason was that i thought that i already had like 20 liters of wort in the kettle, so thought i didnt need to sparge anymore which turned out to be a mistake.
For next time i think i will increase water in the mash, which will hopefully give me more wort and make the measurement of the temperature easier. I wil also take sparging a bit more serious
Havent measured the gravity of the wort yet, but my guess is that its going to be really high. Probably around 1.060 which is ok since i like my beer a bit stronger
It was a good learning experience and i was suprised especially by how much time it takes compared to extract brewing. Have to say that i enjoyed myself even though the end result isnt quite what i was hoping.
The biggest dissapointment for me was that i didnt collect as much wort as I orignally thought. I put only 13 liters in the fermenter which also has a lot of trub in it, so I will probably only bottle like 10 liters. My guess is that there are two reasons why i ended up with so little wort:
1. I had way too much grain for the ammount of water in the kettle. I mashed 10,5 lb in 5 gallons of water. Especially in the beginning the mash was so thick that it was really hard to even mix it since it just stuck together. Made the temperature control a ***** also, and i cant say for sure in what temperature i ended up mashing the grain since there was probably a lot of heat variance espeically between the bottom and the top of the kettle.
2. Bad sparging. I was orignally going to sparge with 6 liters of water, but ended up using only like 2,5 liters. The reason was that i thought that i already had like 20 liters of wort in the kettle, so thought i didnt need to sparge anymore which turned out to be a mistake.
For next time i think i will increase water in the mash, which will hopefully give me more wort and make the measurement of the temperature easier. I wil also take sparging a bit more serious
Havent measured the gravity of the wort yet, but my guess is that its going to be really high. Probably around 1.060 which is ok since i like my beer a bit stronger