Help. What am I doing wrong

[trotters]

Morning all,

I am new to all grain, two batches under my belt, and I cant figure out what Im doing wrong. I have brewed two batches of Hefe and ended up with low O.G. on both 1.034
Equipment:
7g SS Pot
10g Cooler ss braided screen (home made)

Recipe: 5 gallon
4 pounds pale
5 pounds white wheat
1 smack pack 3068
1 oz hallertauer

Brew Steps: (followed beersmith)
Heat water (2.6 gallons) 158.1 pour in cooler and add grain (stir)
Took temp which was 142 added 6 cups of boiling to get it to 145
Rest for 75 min
Set grain and drain slowly
Heated sparge water(2.32 gallons) to 168 and sparge two times (stirring on both)
When wort was collected Pre Boil Grav was 1.030
On the first batch I went though with my boil and finished the brew, turned out very weak. Second batch I added .5 pounds of DME to get my grav up.

What am I doing wrong? Do I need more grain? Why is my efficiancy so terrible? Any insite would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dmashl]

check your crush, and maybe use a higher strike water temp to get a higher mash temp to about 150 ish.

 

[Glynn]

Try mashing higher and sparging with hotter water. if that doesnt work crush finer

 

[Cyclman]

I am guessing it's your crush...

 

[Quaffman]

I had low efficiency on 2 batches after switching homebrew shops. I have to mill my grain twice to teach the same efficiency i was before. Also, make sure your pre boil volumes are not to high, this diluting your wort. Beersmith was off on those batches as well.

 

[RM-MN]

You have 2 problems at the same time. First is your temperature which I think is too low as you want the mash to end up in the 148 to 160 range. The second and probably the biggest problem in your low efficiency is the wheat. Wheat kernels are smaller and harder than the barley so you need to set the mill finer to get it properly crushed. When you do have the wheat crushed fine enough, it will like to form a sticky mess since wheat has no hulls and more glucans. To counter this, add a handful of rice hulls to help make up for the missing hulls.

 

[Smellyglove]

Unless TS went all-in and bought a grainmill for his first setup, (it's his second batch) I'm guessing the grains got crushed at the LHBS?

If you don't recirculate then you should stir the mash sometimes during the mashing.

And besides Beersmith is a software, it doesn't know how your setup performs. You should't blindly trust Beersmith. Be sure to take good notes of everything you do, volumes (boiloff, trub etc), SGs, strike temperature in your set up etc etc. With a few more brews under your belt you should be able to dial inn Beersmith so it at least can ballpark what's going on in your setup. A few more brews after that you'll see that you can trust it. BS needs a bunch of variables to be correct, if they are not you'll end up with a different result if doing as it says. You'll also understand which parts of what BS is telling you to to, to disregard.

But in between your brews, you should find threads on what affects efficiency. Like I already mentioned stirring, and others mentioned your crush, and especially the wheat. Whenever I brew a recipe of mine which calls for 57% wheat, my efficiency drops 5 points, every time, comparing to a recipe with way less wheat.

Since this is only your second brew, if I were you, I'd brew something without much wheat. To get the numbers dialed in, in BS. By the time you have your numbers, you'd probably also more or less settled on a brewing technique which yields you the most points you can get from your grains.

Now you have to think about the efficiency when brewing with wheat, and also dialing in your brewhouse efficiency. Remove the wheat from the equation, do a few beers where you hit your OG and volumes, then attempt the wheat-beer again. Then you only need one brew, to know what to adjust for wheat-recipes (or other recipes which behaves differently.

 

[trotters]

Ya I had my local brew store do my crush. Thanks for all of the helpful info. I was going to keep brewing the hefe until I dialed it in but it sounds to me like I need to start with a pale ale.

 

[charliehorse]

The procedure for a pale ale and a hefe are exactly the same. Your problem, from what you've described, is your strike water temperature. As RM-MN pointed out, you want your MASH temperature to be between 148 and 160 (actually, 158). There is no way on Earth that you can get there by adding water at 158 degrees to a cold cooler and then adding grain that is about 70 degrees. If you want to de the differential equations to work out why, feel free, but I haven't had enough coffee to do that yet. ... I haven't used BeerSmith before, but I'm sure that there's a function to calculate your strike water temperature. If there isn't, my rule of thumb is to heat the water to about 16 degrees hotter than I want my mash temp. So, I mash at 154 so the water gets heated to 170.

All of that said, I really think that your major problem is an issue of vocabulary. Strike water is the water that is heated to be added to your mash tun. Mash is the porrage that you get when you mix your grain with water. Likely, BeerSmith said that your MASH temperature should be 158 degrees, not your strike water. When you're using software to help calculate something and you see the numbers, STOP for a minute. Ask yourself, do those numbers make sense based on what I know (or what I think)? If the answer is "no", your next question should be, "Ok, then what do those numbers represent?" Once you get that answer, then move forward.

Most of all, and I can't stress this enough, learn the characteristics of your system. With a new set up, take the time to add 4 gallons of 160 degree water, stick a thermometer (the kind with a cable) in, and every 5 minutes, record your temperature (or every 15). I plugged my numbers into Excel and graphed them and noticed that my temperature dropped quite a bit in the first couple of minutes until the cooler reached an equilibrium.

If all that sounds technical and like a third year course in hydro engineering, don't worry. There are apps and lots of websites out there that can give you a fairly accurate strike water calculation. Most of all, figure out what your string temp is and have a beer. Relax, this stuff is supposed to be fun.

 

[acidrain]

The procedure for a pale ale and a hefe are exactly the same.

Not true.
Crushing the wheat finer than the barley is important, and unless Your LHBS will let you adjust the crush (unlikely), you're not going to get there.
Also, fermenting Weihenstephan yeast requires 1/3 headspace, temperature control, and blow-off.
Weihenstephan is nasty, but makes a wonderful product. I like the clove flavors, so I ferment at a lower temperature.

 

[jtratcliff]

just to reiterate what everyone else is saying.... crush and Mash temp.

I mash in with 162+ water (depending on grain bill) to get mash temps of 156F

You need to learn how to use some calculators... It really helps.

I use brewtarget which is a multi-paltform, open source program similar to beersmith. I set up my equipment, add my recipe, the mash wizard tells me how much water at what temp I need to to hit a certain mash temp.

There are other calculators out there. Use one. It take the guess work out.