Hello I am new to the world of all grain. I have done many extract brews and thought I would move up. I just recently did my first all grain batch and things went ALMOST perfect. My OG fell a little low. I was going for about 1.052 and it ended up around 1.048. Are there any tricks to bring it up when sparging. I noticed that the mash wort looked great but when i was batch sparging it came out like clear water.
One of the toughest things with AG is hitting OG. It's one of those things where you just need to learn your system's efficiency and correct for it in future batches. Count yourself pretty lucky (or skilled) since a ~9% miss is not that bad. Also keep in mind that some of that miss could come from under-evaporation, i.e. higher final volume than you planned. If it was all from mis-estimation of your mash efficiency, then it's not that bad at all. For instance, if you were planning on 75% eff, based on your numbers you actually got 70%. And I'd advise don't go chasing after higher efficiency. If you find that by keeping all variables the same you consistently hit 70%, then just plan for it. Sometimes keeping all the variables constant isn't very easy, e.g. if your not in control of your crush, or you have widely varying grain bills, etc. In this case you can learn to adapt on the fly. There a couple of main ways. Firstly I'd recommend you invest in a refractometer, so that you can measure SG quickly multiple times. Then as you find where your SG is relative to predicted you can make adjustments. Here are some:
1) Monitor your SG during mash to make sure it actually gets to where you need it to be. If it isn't completely converting on-time then you can extend mash time.
2) If your pre-boil SG is low, then you can add extract to make it up.
3) Adjust the intensity of the boil to end up with more or less final volume. If pre-boil SG is higher than predicted don't boil off as much. If pre-boil SG is lower than predicted, boil off more. Obviously this one can only get you so far.
Also I screwed up the measurement of irish moss. Has anyone put too much in? and if so did it still come out ok?
I haven't done that, so I can't really say. Not to get you worried, but generally excessive kettle finings can strip away flavor. But I don't know how much would be required to strip flavors to a noticeable extent.
