First partial mash. Expected 1.062, but got 1.090

[BMBC]

Last night was just a miraculous comedy of errors. Unfortunately, they all added up to a 1.090 beer that I'm not sure is going to come out very good.

Mistake 1: Since I was expecting 1.062 I made my first full 2L starter of Wyeast 1078 London Ale. It outgrew my 2L flask. I decanted it and smelled it. I hope that's the way 1078 is supposed to smell. Hint...it wasn't good.

Mistake 2: I used a calculator to figure out strike water temp. It didn't work. I even preheated my cooler and I still ended up at 146. I microwaved a couple of cups of water to 180 and added it, but it made no difference. I definitely got sugar extraction, but what will my wort be missing? Dextrin?

Mistake 3: I used my Yeti Roadie (and 5 gallon paint strainer bag) to mash. It maintained perfect temp. The drain plug, however, is not made for draining hot wort. I had to use a siphon.

Mistake 4: I sparged with 182F water and my mash out was still in the low 160's. Don't know if that matters, but it wasn't ~168 like I had hoped.

Mistake 5: My partial-mash, partial-boil wort came out at 1.040 instead of the expected 1.032.

Mistake 6: I don't have a refractometer so I couldn't take real-time gravity readings while adding the additional 4 lbs of DME. I just went ahead and added what the recipe called for. I ended up with thick malt syrup.

Mistake 7: Ended with a 1.090 wort after topping up with 2 gallons of cold water.

All in all it was a neat experiment. I know my Yeti isn't a good mash tun, but I wanted to try a partial mash before I spent any more money. I wish I'd done a simpler (i.e., cheaper) recipe, but oh well. I had a good enough time to order a propane burner and 15 gallon pot. I'm done with partial boils. Next up...a bona fide cooler mash tun.

 

[Izzie1701]

I had the same mash temp issue with my first all grain 4 weeks or so ago. Beer was just bottles this weekend. I started at around 149 and it dropped to 143 by mash out. Beer taste fine. It's still not carbonated so tough to tell the body of it but the flat warm samples tasted great. It will just be a little drier then you expected.

I have never made a starter. Just pitched my wyeast snack packs. To me they always smell pretty bad. Almost like a stale beer and bad bread smell.

I made a mash tun for around $40 using a braided toilet line, a cooler and some copper wire as a spring in the braided line. It's just a rubber made cooler that was $30 at Walmart. Braided line was on sale for $3. Then just the valve and washers. Re used the coolers bulkhead.

I have been sparging low on all my beers to date. Been trying to hone this in. Still getting good beer though.

 

[wobrien]

Last night was just a miraculous comedy of errors. Unfortunately, they all added up to a 1.090 beer that I'm not sure is going to come out very good.

Mistake 1: Since I was expecting 1.062 I made my first full 2L starter of Wyeast 1078 London Ale. It outgrew my 2L flask. I decanted it and smelled it. I hope that's the way 1078 is supposed to smell. Hint...it wasn't good.

Mistake 2: I used a calculator to figure out strike water temp. It didn't work. I even preheated my cooler and I still ended up at 146. I microwaved a couple of cups of water to 180 and added it, but it made no difference. I definitely got sugar extraction, but what will my wort be missing? Dextrin?

Mistake 3: I used my Yeti Roadie (and 5 gallon paint strainer bag) to mash. It maintained perfect temp. The drain plug, however, is not made for draining hot wort. I had to use a siphon.

Mistake 4: I sparged with 182F water and my mash out was still in the low 160's. Don't know if that matters, but it wasn't ~168 like I had hoped.

Mistake 5: My partial-mash, partial-boil wort came out at 1.040 instead of the expected 1.032.

Mistake 6: I don't have a refractometer so I couldn't take real-time gravity readings while adding the additional 4 lbs of DME. I just went ahead and added what the recipe called for. I ended up with thick malt syrup.

Mistake 7: Ended with a 1.090 wort after topping up with 2 gallons of cold water.

All in all it was a neat experiment. I know my Yeti isn't a good mash tun, but I wanted to try a partial mash before I spent any more money. I wish I'd done a simpler (i.e., cheaper) recipe, but oh well. I had a good enough time to order a propane burner and 15 gallon pot. I'm done with partial boils. Next up...a bona fide cooler mash tun.

1. Smell is subjective, so no way to say it's good or bad, but if you used proper sanitation practices it'll be fine.

2. You won't be missing anything, 146° is low, but not too low. You'll end up with a very ferment able wort.

3. No big deal

4. That may not be high enough to denature the enzymes and lock in the mash profile (someone can chime in on that) but mash outs aren't necessary so I wouldn't sweat it.

5. You can dilute that to the proper SG if you want to next time

6. You had the pre-boil gravity so you can use a calculator to determine how many gravity points the DME will add. Not sure what it is for DME, but sugar adds 46 points per pound per gallon, so you can get a good idea of the SG even without the refractometer.

7. You made an imperial version of whatever you were trying to make

 

[Calder]

Recipe and volumes. Would like to see if your gravity is even possible. 1.062 to 1.090 is a huge difference.

 

[BMBC]

Recipe and volumes. Would like to see if your gravity is even possible. 1.062 to 1.090 is a huge difference.

I turned NB Brickwarmer into a partial mash using BYO's instructions and then performed the mash also by their instructions.

5 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb specialty grains
2 lbs golden DME (down from 6 lbs in original extract recipe)
1 lb amber DME
1 lb wheat DME
.75 oz Magnum @60
1 oz Styrian Goldings @10
1 oz sweet orange @0
Wyeast 1028 London Ale

7.5 qts of water at 165 into 5 lbs of Maris Otter and 1 lb of specialty grains for an hour. Mash around 146.

2 cups of additional water at 180 trying to get mash temp up.

Siphoned first wort into .5 gallons of boiling water per BYO instructions

Heated 6 qts of sparge water to 180. Didn't use it all so maybe...4 or 5 qts for a 162 sparge.

With first and second wort and .5 gal in brew kettle it looked like my standard 3.5 gallon partial boil.

Hydrometer read 1.040, but it was at mash temps so...could be off. Way off?

1 hour boil with a pretty heavy boil off. Maybe 1-1.5 gallons.

Added 1 lb amber, 1 lb wheat, and 2 pounds golden DME at flameout.

Added exactly 2 gallons of makeup water for about 5.25 gallons in carboy.

OG reading of final wort = 1.090 at 75F

 

[atom]

i'm pretty sure your OG gravity reading was not mixed well..highly unlikely you'd get 1.09 out of 6 lbs of grain and 4 lbs of dme in a five gallon batch.

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Brewers Friend says 1.064 for 5.25gal...

 

[cyanmonkey]

4. Was just reading an experiment that concluded sparging with room temperature water results in no loss of efficiency and many people do it. It does not however save on time as you have to boil a cooler wort at that point.

Just found that interesting.

6. I don't have a refractometer, either. I have a stainless steel bowl that I put a sample in, and put in ice water. It's at temp in about 1 minute. Easy peasy.

 

[BMBC]

Brewers Friend says 1.064 for 5.25gal...

Beersmith said 1.062 when I modified the original extract recipe. That doesn't change the fact that my hydrometer read 1.090.

 

[dsaavedra]

Regarding #4, check out this thread I started this morning and fear not!

 

[atom]

Beersmith said 1.062 when I modified the original extract recipe. That doesn't change the fact that my hydrometer read 1.090.

your hydrometer wasn't wrong but your wort wasn't properly mixed....so the reading is off.

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Beersmith said 1.062 when I modified the original extract recipe. That doesn't change the fact that my hydrometer read 1.090.

My guess is that you didn't have your top off water mixed well enough with your wort. So your gravity sample was not indicative of the whole amount of wort. Even when I upped the efficiency to 100 percent the gravity only ended up at 1.075. So 1.090 is technically impossible I believe.

 

[BMBC]

My guess is that you didn't have your top off water mixed well enough with your wort. So your gravity sample was not indicative of the whole amount of wort. Even when I upped the efficiency to 100 percent the gravity only ended up at 1.075. So 1.090 is technically impossible I believe.

Good to know. I'm totally open to the possibility that I messed up the hydrometer reading. Heck, I messed up just about everything else. The only reason I was even willing to believe it was so high is because my partial boil wort was so freakin' thick. It wasn't quite like LME, but it was somewhere around table syrup (a/k/a Aunt Jemima fake maple syrup).

 

[Calder]

5 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb specialty grains
2 lbs golden DME (down from 6 lbs in original extract recipe)
1 lb amber DME
1 lb wheat DME

Assuming 80% mash efficiency (which is higher than many get, but not unreasonable), the grain would get you about 170 gravity points. NOTE: 100% efficiency is pretty much impossible, but would only get to 215 points.

DME is usually around 45 points per lb, so 4 lbs will get you 180 gravity points.

Total gravity points = 350. Now divide that by final volume of 5.25 gallons, and you get a wort about 1.067.

Even at the impossible level of 100% mash efficiency, the maximum you could possibly have gotten with that volume is 1.075.

Either your gravity reading was wrong - did you take it from the bottom of the fermenter, a higher reading would indicate heavier wort from the bottom of the fermenter.

OR:
- You used more than 6 lbs of grain (you would probably need an additional 4 lbs of grain to get there).
- You used more than 4 lbs of DME (you would need about 2.5 lbs extra)
- Your volume was short (you would need to be down to about 3.9 gallons.

Just figure you got what your original calculation said you should have gotten and go from there.

If you have a refractometer, you can take both an hydrometer and refractometer reading now, or when it is finished and back calculate what you started with. You should be able to get pretty close. But you need both measurements made at the same time.