got some ?'s

[Mapleroots]

First i want to tell everyone that i love this art and that I'll brew till i die. That being said here was the recipe.
Knight-N Gale Ale: 4 gal. batch
5 Lbs. victory
4 lbs. 2nd row
mashed in @ 150* for 1 hour with 1 1/4 qts. water to 9 lbs grain.
used another 1 qt. water to the lbs. a total of about 5 gals.
I'm not sure what happened but fell short on the total water weight.
This is were things went wrong. sparging left me with some cloudy wort.
I let It filter twice in a 4 qt. jug to create what I thought was a good grain bed.
Also the glass i filled was clear of all particles.
Started my boil and added my hops.
.75 oz. @ 45 min. organic pacific Gems
.75 oz. @ 45 min. organic pacific gems

As I let this boil I watched as the wort level dropped way past the 4 gal mark that I was looking for. So I added water. Was this Wrong?
Got It up to level and kept boiling.
When I was done found i was still short so I added more water and cooled to 75* drained into my ferment er and added the pitchable yeast I had. Not sure If this will hurt the brew. The wort still looks cloudy in the carboy. Will this clear up?
Overall everything went good and smelled great, It just got a little cloudy.

I need some opinions on my overall procedure.

 

[knipknup]

Well, congratulations on your brew! Not sure if it is your first, but it was a brew!
To start, I'm a bit confused. Did you add 1.25qts to 9lbs grain or 1.25qts PER 1lbs of grain? If you only added 1.25qts to 9 lbs of grain, that was way too thin.

As far as the cloudy wort, that is all a matter of patience. Don't be in a hurry. Let it ferment for 21 days and you will have a finished beer that will clear very quickly. My beers are crystal clear in a matter of days in the keg and when I bottle, by the time they carbonate (another 14 days), they are also crystal clear. If the beer doesn't clear, it could be some proteins from a mash gone awry. If you were just a bit sloppy on the sparging, don't worry about it. The grain particles will settle out. The experienced tasting judges with excellent noses may taste some astringency from the particles if there is any, but for the rest of us, the beer will be great.

For the volume after boil, if you add water, it will change your gravity a bit, but if you boiled a lower volume, the gravity will be higher than the target and the added water should bring it to your target.

I'm curious what yeast you used. 74F is higher than I typically ferment at, but should be okay. If you are targeting an ester-y final beer, it will turn out great.

Keep in mind that beer is very forgiving. It will be good, afterall, it is fermented sugar...

 

[devaspawn]

You are fine with adding the water during and after your boil to reach desired final volume. I must agree with leaving it in primary for 3 weeks. There are varied opinions as to how long you should do it but most will agree that letting the yeasties clean up after themselves during primary is a good thing. If you have questions about how long to ferment do a search in the forum for 3-2-1 or 1-2-3. It's been discussed extensively. The longer you let it sit in secondary, keg, or bottle the clearer it will become. Look up finings in the search function for alternative ways to speed up the clearing process.

The nice thing is that you will have beer. Congratulations!

 

[Mapleroots]

Thanks guys, that gives me some relief, and this was my first batch so you can see my concern. as far as the water I did add 1.25 water to the 9 lbs. And that was way to thin you say? what would you suggest? Also I used a white labs pacific ale WLP041 yeast to the batch. On the label it said to pitch it at anywhere for 70-75*. As for fermenting It says to let stand at temps. above 70* until fermenting begins.(note it is starting to ferment, yeah!) After that it does not give me a temp. What would you suggest?

 

[knipknup]

Are you sure you added only 1.25 qts of water to 9 lbs of grain? I don't think the grain would get wet. I recommend you at 1.25 qts for each pound of grain. This would mean for 9 lbs of grain, you should add 11.25 qts or about 3 gallons. Did your grain get wet?
Also, did you crush your grain?
I also recommend you get a copy of some brewing software. There are many. You can do a search here and find many threads about software. I recommend beersmith, which is very reasonably priced or you can even use the recipe thingy on this website.
In the future, if you want to post a recipe and get input prior to brewing, do for it!
Happy brewing.

 

[Mapleroots]

sorry for any confusion but that is what I meant. I did add 1.25 qts per pound. and yes I had the company who sent the grain crush it for me. I will have to try beer smith I have been hearing about it and It seem very useful.

 

[ajf]

OK, I think I understand you now.
You had 9 lbs grain and mashed with 11.25 qts (9 * 1.25 qts) water, then sparged with an extra 9 qts water, giving you 20.25 qts or 5.0625 gallons of water in total.

The problem is that your 9# grain will absorb roughly 9 pints of that water. Next time, try using about 1.5 qts per # for the sparge. That should give you approximately 5g pre-boil. You may need to use a little more sparge water and collect a bit more than 5g, as you will lose some to evaporation, and a bit more to hop absorbtion, cooling, and trub. I'd try to collect 5.5g from the sparge for the next attempt, and then adjust it up or down according to whether you are short or long on the volume into fermenter.

-a.