I'm Confused

[davidkrau]

This morning I brewed a Kolsch all grain. I had previously crushed the grain myself, using a new Corona grain mill. I thought I cruahed the grain too fine and that I'd have trouble but everything went fine. No cloged mash tuns and my strike temp was perfect. No apparent problem with the sparge. I measured the volume of the wort and SG in the kettle both before the boil and after the boil and after the wort had cooled. According to Promash the SG should be 1.044 to 1.050. Fine, mine was 1.042. Now the problem, when I plug the 1.042 into the Promash efficiency determinator, check the box for sample taken from kettle and fill in the volume amount, Promash tells me that I have 50% efficiency that ideally I should get a 1.062 SG. If that's true why do they originally say that the SG should be 1.044 to 1.050 Also is there any explanation why I got such a lousy efficiency. 50% really stinks. This beer will probably taste like pond water or worse yet like Bud Light

 

[chillHayze]

Hmmmm..... I don't do AG but I'm compelled to say RDWHAHB.

 

[McCall St. Brewer]

Ditto on that. Sounds to me that you are going to have some excellent brew in a few weeks.

 

[MrSaLTy]

You may be looking at the thing that says what the guidlines for that particular style are. When you pick a style, it will tell you what the max and min gravities are for that style near the top of the ingredients page. The SG that it figures yours should be is displayed on the right side in a red box about half way down.

The blue boxes at the top are the guides for the style you chose. The red boxes at the right are the calculated figues your recipe worked out to.

 

[Glibbidy]

Dig you add the correction for the wort temperature? Otherwise it sounds like you simply undershot your gravity. No big deal , as you are only slightly out of the range. Sounds like you made a mighty fine beer to enjoy on a hot summer day. Save at least a dozen bottles for the hottest day in July.

 

[Lost]

What's the design of your manifold/false bottom? How thick was the mash? How long was the mash? Batch or fly sparge? How fast? What temp? How many lbs of grain and how many qts of sparge water? Did you check the gravity of the last runnings?

1.042 seems fairly low to me but a lot of people around here brew beers that start in that range.. I think it'll be fine. Make sure and carbonate it good, that tends to aid in the mouthfeel department.. at least for me it does.

 

[Brewsmith]

The 1.044-1.050 is the style guidelines for kolsch in promash. Promash does not give you a range for actual OG, it gives you one number based on an efficiency you can specifiy. What was your grain bill? If OG maximum was 1.062 and actual was 1.042, it's about 67% efficiency. There are other variables like loss to bottom of kettle and other parts of the brewing process to find Brewhouse Efficiency, but that is different from the efficiency of the grain. Check all of your settings in the brew session. There is probaly something in there that isn't right.

 

[weberju]

The recipe assumes some efficiency less than 100%. After you learn the efficiency of your system, you should correct all subsequent recipes (by increasing the amount of grain used) to match the efficiency of your system, such that you get the correct original gravity. Also, just because you have a low efficiency, that does not mean that the beer will be bad or watered down (its your original gravity that is important). I think most people get between 60-70%. I usually get 60-65%. The efficiency just means how good your system is at extracting all possible sugars out of your grain. It looks like you just barely missed your original gravity, and now you should be able to correct it in subsequent batches. It looks like your beer will turn out fine, although it will be only about 3-4% alcohol by volume. Good Luck.

 

[S.O.B.]

I believe that the promash program automatically adjusts for temperature for SG taken during the boil or just before. That adjustment will change the gravity reading that it gives you and adversely affecting your mash efficiency. Try taking your SG readings at the calibrated temp of 59-60 deg. F. There may be a place in the program that you can enter the temp of the wort during the reading but i've never used promash. I use the old school method of pen and paper. Good Luck.

 

[davidkrau]

In answer the questions to the replies: Grains in brew were-7 lbs Pilsener 2 row, 2 lbs wheat malt, 1 lb Munich malt 1lb Crystal 10 ie 11 lbs grains total.

I used a 5 gal square insulated water cooler, with a cpvc manifold in the bottom. the grain depth was 10 or 11 inches. I doughed in 3.5 gals water, let sit for 60 mins @152 degrees. I drained the wort into a 7.5 gal kettle I then sparged with 5.5 gals water ( I probably on sparged with about 4.5 gals since the cooler that held the sparge water had a loose faucet and leaked - I since fixed it) The fly sparge took about 25 mins. The total volume of wort in kettle prior to boil 6.5 gals. Volume after boil 5 gals Sg at 60 degrees 1.042 I boiledfor 60 mins. I pitched Wyeast kolsch yeast. The beer is happily fermenting at 60 degrees F after 24 hrs, with a full head of kreusen and the air lock bubbling away. This is my 3rd all grain brew and I want to thank everyone in the forum who have helped me over the past month with my questions regarding amiriad of subjects rangingfrom Corona grain mills.Promash, lauter tuns, manifolds etc.

 

[Mudd]

If I read your procedure correctly; you were mashing in with abt. 1.25qt/lb.

11 lb of grain should absorb abt 1.33 gal of sparge water, leaving a .8qt/lb
ratio in the tun.

I would suggest adding abt 1.3 - 1.5 gal of water @ mash/doughin, for a total of
5 gal. Fly sparge as normal for you boil volume.
This should allow a little better extraction before you rinse out the remaning extracted sugers.

 

[weberju]

You should take atleast 45min to an hour to do your sparge. This could be why your efficiency was so low. You probably did not thoroughly rinse all of the sugars out of the grain.

 

[Lost]

I'm inclined to say that you sparged too fast.. I don't think I've ever gotten it done in under 45 min. But I did the math and you sparged with either 18 or 22 quarts in 25 minutes.. you kept it under 1 qt per minute which is the palmer's suggestion. Anyhow, the slower you go the better your efficiency, so consider slowing it down a bit next time. Did you check the gravity of your runnings at any point? My guess is that you had complete conversion.. you had a fairly thick mash and I'm sure you obtained complete conversion in an hours time.

I'd still like to know what was the configuration of the manifold - any chance you had some channeling problems? I know my efficiency went from good (70 - 73%) to great (77 - 80%) when I corrected a potential channeling problem in my setup. I had the manifold pipe just sitting loosely in the cooler outlet valve so the sparge water could just run down the cooler wall at that point and run right out the valve and avoid the manifold entirely. Anyhow, just a thought.

What was the efficiency of your other brews?

While I don't use promash so I'm not familiar with all the fancy calculations it does for you I do know that 11 lbs of grain should yield a higer OG than 1.042 with decent efficiency. I'd say something in your setup/process needs improving/fixing.

 

[davidkrau]

In answer to your reply. I don't know if I have channeling or not. The plastic manifold is from a design that I got from a book. This was the first time I'd ever crushed grain and this was with a Corona mill. The only other time I measured efficiency the grain was crushed by Midwest Home Brewing, a mail Order in Minnesota. At that time I had a 68% efficiency. As I mentioned I lost anywhere from a quart to a gal. of sparge due to a leaky faucet which I 've fixed. The sparge waterat the end of thesparge did not taste sweet. The Corona grain mill has been retired. I ordered a grain mill with adjustible rollers which should come tomorrow. If I don't have better results next time I'll buy a round cooler with a professionally built false bottom. Thanks for your reply