Today was my second AG recipe. 11 lbs 3 oz of grains. Milled it last night at the preset settings on a malt mill. Today I preheated my mash tun. Added 3.5 gal of 170F water and mixed in the grains. I stirred for only about 2 min until temp hit 155F. This ended up sitting for 1.5 hrs while I ran to the store. I then heated 3.5 gal to 170F while I drained off my first running. I dumped that 170F on the grain bed after and stirred it up real good then let sit for 20 min. I did a final batch of sparge water at 165F and another 3.5 gal. This third batch I stopped draining when I had 6 gal of wort. OG after boiling was 1.062 but only 4 gal of beer. OG should have been 1.060 with 5 gal of beer. I did lose a bit when siphoning but not that much. I was thinking I should have kept sparging and ran off another gal or so from that third sparge and also try adjusting for more crush of the grain maybe? I used this exact same method last week and had to add some top off water to hit my OG with just over 4.5 gal of beer. So it seems I actually got worse? What should I do to get better at this? Anything I am doing that is just wrong or bad?
My process needs improving. Ideas?
- Thread starter Cimerian
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If you left a lot of liquid in the mash tun from the last sparge, that would seem to account for less efficiency.
I would aim for 6.5-7 gallons preboil, and if you need to boil 75-90 minutes to reduce the wort, so be it. It's better than ending up with 4 or 4.5 gallons in the carboy - which I did my last batch and won't do again!
I would aim for 6.5-7 gallons preboil, and if you need to boil 75-90 minutes to reduce the wort, so be it. It's better than ending up with 4 or 4.5 gallons in the carboy - which I did my last batch and won't do again!
I use a double batch sparge all the time. My advice is to calculate the amount of water you need by working backwards. Target amount + boil off + trub loss + equipment loss + grain absorbtion = the amount of water you should start with. to figure the amount to sparge with, I just subtract the strike water and divide by two to get each batch sparge amount.
Yeah my equipment limits the amount of grain I can do on a single mash too. You can play around with the grain to water ratio, or just supplement in some extract of youre doing a higher gravity beer. Or both.
So, if you have 10lbs of grain, you can mash at 1.5 qts per lb, which gives you a little less sparge water to use than if you used 1:1.
So, if you have 10lbs of grain, you can mash at 1.5 qts per lb, which gives you a little less sparge water to use than if you used 1:1.
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