Happywanderer
Well-Known Member
Well. It is official. I am in to AG now.
Brewed up my first recipe and came out with a total brew house efficiency of 71%. Give or take a bit. Not shabby. Batch single sparge. I was planning on 60% but got 71-ish. Which means my ABV will likely now be 8%-ish ... Pushes me out of bounds on the IPA style by a bit. Oh well.
Learned important things.
1) Make sure you know how much water is in the pot. I misread my markings and thought I had 8 gallons in there. Was really 7-ish. So I boiled the holy crap out of it for 100 mins....and was left with 4.5 gallons. I'm making a depth gauge for next batch out of spare copper pipe.
2) I should have checked temp of my grains. My mash tun dropped 3 degrees in 30 minutes and would have likely held steady there. But since I undershot my temp goal by three degrees I was now at minus 6. So I added 1 gallon of 170 degree water and stirred to bring it back up. Worked nicely. (I preheated my mash tun too...). So, instead of mashing at 152, I mashed at 149-146-149.
3) I LOVE my huge whisk. It made doughing in a breeze. I let it mash for 80 minutes with an initial mash thickness of 1.5 that bumped to 1.7ish with the extra gallon. Doughed in slow. Stirred about 2-3 minutes then let it rest. Stirred again at 30 minutes then left it alone till the sparge (then I stirred again for 5 minutes).
4) hydrometer temp conversions aren't necessarily accurate. (Or I just need a refractometer). I took a reading of preboil OG at 124 degrees. It was 1.050. Which converted is 1.060 !?!?! I cooled the sample and at 90 it was reading 1.052. It held at 1.052 all the way down to 71 degrees.... Weird right? I spun it and dunked it and did everything to make sure no bubbles were affecting the reading. 1.052 spot on. I even checked my spare hydrometer to make sure the first one wasnt calibrated incorrectly.
5) MORE ICE. I've got an immersion chiller and a pond pump in a cooler with ice. My mistake was letting the really hot return dump into the cooler which shot up the water temp. Next time, leave the return line out till temps drop a bit and have more ice on standby. Stil, got from boiling to 100 degrees in 20 minutes. Next time, probably 15.
6) messing with water chemistry is easy when you start at RO and use Brewers Friend calculator.
7) AG is definitely a longer brew day. I was fairly tired by the end and after cleanup I was ready to have a homebrew. Luckily I had 1 bottle of my Pale Ale left. Woohoo.
Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
Brewed up my first recipe and came out with a total brew house efficiency of 71%. Give or take a bit. Not shabby. Batch single sparge. I was planning on 60% but got 71-ish. Which means my ABV will likely now be 8%-ish ... Pushes me out of bounds on the IPA style by a bit. Oh well.
Learned important things.
1) Make sure you know how much water is in the pot. I misread my markings and thought I had 8 gallons in there. Was really 7-ish. So I boiled the holy crap out of it for 100 mins....and was left with 4.5 gallons. I'm making a depth gauge for next batch out of spare copper pipe.
2) I should have checked temp of my grains. My mash tun dropped 3 degrees in 30 minutes and would have likely held steady there. But since I undershot my temp goal by three degrees I was now at minus 6. So I added 1 gallon of 170 degree water and stirred to bring it back up. Worked nicely. (I preheated my mash tun too...). So, instead of mashing at 152, I mashed at 149-146-149.
3) I LOVE my huge whisk. It made doughing in a breeze. I let it mash for 80 minutes with an initial mash thickness of 1.5 that bumped to 1.7ish with the extra gallon. Doughed in slow. Stirred about 2-3 minutes then let it rest. Stirred again at 30 minutes then left it alone till the sparge (then I stirred again for 5 minutes).
4) hydrometer temp conversions aren't necessarily accurate. (Or I just need a refractometer). I took a reading of preboil OG at 124 degrees. It was 1.050. Which converted is 1.060 !?!?! I cooled the sample and at 90 it was reading 1.052. It held at 1.052 all the way down to 71 degrees.... Weird right? I spun it and dunked it and did everything to make sure no bubbles were affecting the reading. 1.052 spot on. I even checked my spare hydrometer to make sure the first one wasnt calibrated incorrectly.
5) MORE ICE. I've got an immersion chiller and a pond pump in a cooler with ice. My mistake was letting the really hot return dump into the cooler which shot up the water temp. Next time, leave the return line out till temps drop a bit and have more ice on standby. Stil, got from boiling to 100 degrees in 20 minutes. Next time, probably 15.
6) messing with water chemistry is easy when you start at RO and use Brewers Friend calculator.
7) AG is definitely a longer brew day. I was fairly tired by the end and after cleanup I was ready to have a homebrew. Luckily I had 1 bottle of my Pale Ale left. Woohoo.
Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
