First Brew, Something went wrong

[Naturallight16oz]

BIAB Moose Drool Clone. Mashed at 154 for an hour, finished at 152. target was 1.046 i got 1.040. Ok whatever. boiled 60 minutes and got the same reading. i'm sure i screwed up a reading or something. either way it's in the ferment fridge at 67 degrees for 3 weeks and we shall see what kind of low alcohol drool i will end up with.

 

[DoubleAught]

.06 for your first BIAB isn't too bad. Mine was .20 off! I've learned after about 10 BIAB batches that the grain crush is most important, double crush if you can, and stir the mash frequently. Your beer is going to turn out fine.

 

[Naturallight16oz]

.06 for your first BIAB isn't too bad. Mine was .20 off! I've learned after about 10 BIAB batches that the grain crush is most important, double crush if you can, and stir the mash frequently. Your beer is going to turn out fine.

Almost every step i would get more and more discouraged. But i figured bad beer is better then no beer at all. I will not toss it.

I'm most worried about my post boil being the same as pre boil, which i think is impossible, but i hope i mis read something.

 

[kh54s10]

IMO. Unless you have a very sophisticated beer "palette" (is that the right word?) Can you taste subtle differences in your beers? I doubt that you could really tell the difference in a 1.046 and a 1.040 beer.

I try to get as close to predicted but if I don't I don't worry about it and I have really liked all my brews, even the ones that didn't meet the target OG.

 

[Naturallight16oz]

IMO. Unless you have a very sophisticated beer "palette" (is that the right word?) Can you taste subtle differences in your beers? I doubt that you could really tell the difference in a 1.046 and a 1.040 beer.

I try to get as close to predicted but if I don't I don't worry about it and I have really liked all my brews, even the ones that didn't meet the target OG.

No my point is the post boil gravity. that was supposed to be like 1.060 and it came out 1.040 with hydro and 1.046 with refrac, so i have no clue, we shall see.

 

[DoubleAught]

No my point is the post boil gravity. that was supposed to be like 1.060 and it came out 1.040 with hydro and 1.046 with refrac, so i have no clue, we shall see.

With that big of a difference I would most definitely say that you efficiency is off. Concentrate on that grain crush and stirring the mash frequently and you'll see it jump way up.

 

[Jayhem]

Crushing the grain finer for BIAB is crutial. My efficiency were all about .005 off on my first 2 BIABs around 52%. I'm going to crush my grain through 0.6mm rollers for my 3rd try. I expect a big difference.

 

[Rugrad02]

How did you take a reading? Hydrometer?

If you used a hydrometer, was the temp of the wort at pre boil gravity and OG the same when measured?

In order to get as accurate a reading as possible, the temperature of both liquids being measured should be in the low 60's.

 

[stratslinger]

...boiled 60 minutes and got the same reading...

This line really stands out to me.

If you were really boiling for 60 minutes, then you boiled off volume. If you boiled off volume, then you had less water at the end of your boil than you had when you started, so your gravity HAD to go up.

Did you correct your gravity readings for temperature? What temperature did you take the readings at? And what reading does you hydrometer give with distilled water @ that temperature? Or your refrac, for that matter?

Could be that either you just needed to correct for temperature, or just needed to calibrate your tools.

 

[Paul07293]

I suspect you had a bad reading with the hydrometer. Were both samples cooled or corrected for the temp? It's physically impossible to get the same reading pre and post boil unless your boil was so low you didn't reduce the volume appreciably. I'm sure it'll be fine.

 

[NewBrew2]

I agree with stratslinger. It sounds like you need to correct for temperature. I remember taking my pre-boil reading on my first batch and being very upset with the result. I was measuring at 170 degrees and at that time I had no Idea that temp made such a difference. After it cooled to 68 everything looked much better.

 

[Naturallight16oz]

How did you take a reading? Hydrometer?

If you used a hydrometer, was the temp of the wort at pre boil gravity and OG the same when measured?

In order to get as accurate a reading as possible, the temperature of both liquids being measured should be in the low 60's.

well that could be a problem, but both of my readings were taken at 80 degrees. Either way its bubbling along this morning.

 

[stratslinger]

Well, if you correct for temperature, a reading of 1.040 @ 80F on a typical hydrometer is actually 1.042 (most are calibrated to read correctly at 60) so your pre-boil gravity really isn't that far off. However, your hydrometer may be off by a little; I've got two myself (just in case I break one on a brew day) and one is off by .001, the other off by .002. So it's definitely worth checking your hydrometer on some distilled water @ 60F. It should read 1.000. If it doesn't, then you can figure an additional correction factor based on whatever your reading is, and your pre-boil gravity may be even closer.

I'm still puzzled by your statement that your gravity was the same pre- and post- boil. This simply shouldn't be possible. Did you actually attain a rolling boil? Do you have a rough estimate of how much volume you lost during the boil? Depending on what pot/kettle I'm using, I tend to boil off somewhere between 1.25 and 1.75 gallons in an hour, which is enough to bump up wort gravity by a few points.

Also: did you stir the heck out of your wort before you took the post boil sample? Wort will tend to stratify pretty quickly, so you can easily wind up with higher gravity wort towards the bottom of the pot and lower gravity towards the top. Giving it all a good stir can eliminate that and get you a more representative sample.

 

[Naturallight16oz]

I didn't stir, so i'm hoping that is what happened. I was also excited and i forgot to notice my post boil volume. but i figure i'm about a gallon high.

For in the future, If im supposed to finish with 5 gallons, and at 60 minutes i have 6 gallons. Do i boil for longer? what will this do to my hop times? or do i just take the 6 gallons and cut my losses.

 

[stratslinger]

Keep a couple things in mind:

First, at boiling temperatures, your wort takes up a little more space than it does at pitching temps. It's not a ton more space, but if it looks like 6 gallons at boiling temps, it's probably closer to 5.75.

Second, boiling longer is definitely going to throw off your hop profile. I don't think it'll impact your bittering (60 minute addition) hops very much, but anything from 30 minutes in will definitely be impacted.

In general, if I'm at the end of my boil when I notice that my volume is high, I just take that high volume and cut any losses.

Take good notes over your first several brews, pay very close attention to details like your boil off rate, gravity numbers, etc. The gravity numbers, if they are consitently high or low, will help you start to identify if you need to adjust recipes to include more or less grist. Knowing your boil off rate will help you figure out how much water you need to start with, and will help you to recognize if your volume is high before you ever add any hops - which would be the ideal time to make corrections. If you know then that you'll need to extend your boil to get rid of an extra half gallon, and you know it takes you 20 minutes to boil off that half gallon, you'll know to boil for 20 minutes before you add hops and start any of your timers, etc.

 

[timewasted]

I totally understand, although I do like lower abv beers. I tried my first BIAB 2 weeks ago and ended up .10 low. I didn't learn until afterwards that I needed a finer crush. A little more research ahead of time would have saved me the trouble. I added honey to mine to bring it up a tad and give a little flavor.