yakimabrewer
Member
So I brewed my second batch of home brew Saturday night, a Snow Cap Ale clone from the HTB 250 commercial beer recipes. Everything went super smooth, filled the house with some great smells, got the wife involved a little bit. It was very enjoyable.
I have a question about the gravity. Here is the fermentables from the recipe, and then I will ask my question following it:
3.5# Light DME
5.2# Light LME
1.0# Crystal 80
0.33# Chocolate Malt
Steep the crushed grains in 0.66 gallons of 155 degree water for 30 to 45 minutes (I did 45 min). Let bag drip dry and then add grain tea, DME and water to make 2.5 to 3.0 gallons and boil. Add LME with 15 minutes left in boil.
I altered it a bit, heating 2.0 gallons of water in my brew kettle while I was steeping the grains in a different pot. I sparged the grains with 160 degree water from the brew kettle and then added the tea back to the brew kettle.
Finished the recipe, chilled the wort to 80 degrees within 25 minutes. Splashed into the fermenter, and brought the final volume to 5 gallons with water.
The recipe's OG is 1.071. I took an OG after the water addition just before pitching the yeast and got 1.056, adjusting for temperature. I woke up in the morning (about 7 hours later) and it was already fermenting, but I took another gravity to check, and I got 1.056 again. So where did I go wrong? I have been going over and over the recipe trying to determine where my screw up was, but I can't figure it out. Why is my OG so low? Did I not get a good "yield" from the grains? Any ideas?
Also, I tried making a starter for this one after reading about the benefits on here, and expecting my OG to require more than 100 billion cells, and that is the way to go! My last beer took ~18 hours to start, and once it started it took a long time to really get going. This beer (the snow cap) had a nice thin foam after about 7 hours (maybe earlier even, that is just when I woke up), and by 12 hours it was rippin'!
I have a question about the gravity. Here is the fermentables from the recipe, and then I will ask my question following it:
3.5# Light DME
5.2# Light LME
1.0# Crystal 80
0.33# Chocolate Malt
Steep the crushed grains in 0.66 gallons of 155 degree water for 30 to 45 minutes (I did 45 min). Let bag drip dry and then add grain tea, DME and water to make 2.5 to 3.0 gallons and boil. Add LME with 15 minutes left in boil.
I altered it a bit, heating 2.0 gallons of water in my brew kettle while I was steeping the grains in a different pot. I sparged the grains with 160 degree water from the brew kettle and then added the tea back to the brew kettle.
Finished the recipe, chilled the wort to 80 degrees within 25 minutes. Splashed into the fermenter, and brought the final volume to 5 gallons with water.
The recipe's OG is 1.071. I took an OG after the water addition just before pitching the yeast and got 1.056, adjusting for temperature. I woke up in the morning (about 7 hours later) and it was already fermenting, but I took another gravity to check, and I got 1.056 again. So where did I go wrong? I have been going over and over the recipe trying to determine where my screw up was, but I can't figure it out. Why is my OG so low? Did I not get a good "yield" from the grains? Any ideas?
Also, I tried making a starter for this one after reading about the benefits on here, and expecting my OG to require more than 100 billion cells, and that is the way to go! My last beer took ~18 hours to start, and once it started it took a long time to really get going. This beer (the snow cap) had a nice thin foam after about 7 hours (maybe earlier even, that is just when I woke up), and by 12 hours it was rippin'!