Recap of first all grain brew day, any thoughts or suggestions?

[cpferris]

I did my first brew day ever today. I tried to make the Zombie Dust clone that I found here on the site. I did plenty of reading and preparation and I think my research served me well. What I couldn't prepare for what how my equipment would change by brew day.

Here's a quick recap of the recipe:
Batch Size: 6g
Grains: 13.75#
Hops: 5.75 oz of citra (3 more coming for dry hop)
Yeast: Safale US05
OG: 1.065
Mash Temp: 152

I have a 15g stainless mash tun with a false bottom. A 15g HLT that I later used as a boil kettle. And a 7.5 conical fermenter for primary fermentation.

According to calculations on various calculators, I figured I needed 4.5g of mash water with strike at about 168F to get my mash to 152F. I had watched several you tube videos and had seem people alternating grain and strike water while they dough in. This is where I think I made my first mistake, I poured too much water in early during the mash in, and the water just went through the false bottom into the bottom of the kettle. As the false bottom sits about 1.5-2 inches off the bottom of the MLT, this left me with not enough strike water to dough in with. I felt my mash was way too oatmeal like. As a result, my mash temp was much lower than I thought. It was around 147F, which dropped to 144F. I added about a gallon of 190F water to try and bring the temp back up, but never got it to 152. I ended up letting the mash go an extra 30 min to see if I could still get good extraction from a lower mash temp. When I mashed out, I added 0.75oz of FWH, and got about 4.25g of first run wort.

I did a single batch sparge with 6g of 180F water. I added all 6g, stirred vigorously for about 5 min, vorlaufed, then drained 4g more to get my pre-boil volume of 8.25G

The boil seemed to go fine, I added my hops at the proper interval, and then used my wort chiller to bring down the temp. I had to do the wort chilling outside, and could not add ice, so it took about 35min or so to get the wort down to about 75F. I ended up with 6g in the conical, so I lost about 2.25g in the boil. When I checked the OG, it was much lower than the 1.065 expected. I got about 1.042.

I pitched the yeast, added my stopper and airlock, and put her away. Now I wait for activity.

What I learned:
1. I didn't expect the problems I had, but tried to remain optimistic and finish the brew despite the issues.
2. I need more experience with my equipment to get better.
3. Always heat more strike water than you think you need.
4. When I dough in, I think for I need to add more grain first...then pour the water over the grains so all my water contacts grains.
5. I think my strike water needs to be hotter than I calculated.
6. I need to find a way to chill my wort sooner.

Overally, given my low OG, I am not sure what that will mean to the beer. I am assuming the lower OG means a lower ABV and probably a drier beer. But hopefully all that precious citra didn't go to waste.

Please share any critiques, or suggestions, I'd love to hear what I can do better.

You live and learn to brew another day. I will be better next time.

 

[IvanTheTerribrew]

What I learned: 1. I didn't expect the problems I had, but tried to remain optimistic and finish the brew despite the issues. 2. I need more experience with my equipment to get better. 3. Always heat more strike water than you think you need. 4. When I dough in, I think for I need to add more grain first...then pour the water over the grains so all my water contacts grains. 5. I think my strike water needs to be hotter than I calculated. 6. I need to find a way to chill my wort sooner. Overally, given my low OG, I am not sure what that will mean to the beer. I am assuming the lower OG means a lower ABV and probably a drier beer. But hopefully all that precious citra didn't go to waste. Please share any critiques, or suggestions, I'd love to hear what I can do better. You live and learn to brew another day. I will be better next time.

Congrats on your brew day! And definitely don't let it get you down, it's a learning experience. Some things I learned was that trying to pre hear your mash tun with some boiling water helps. I add like 1-2 gallons in each vessel and let it sit while I hear up my mash and sparse waters. Then when I'm ready to put them in I just dump the heating water.

I wouldn't advise adding water to grain off the bat. It should be grain to water. Just try to spread it around as you poor plus using a good mash spoon/paddle.

Get a program like beersmith and you can do a real good job of calculating your temps. But if not, preheating both your vessels and the grains by maybe putting them in the warmest room you can will help. Keep on brewing man. RDWHAHB

 

[opiate82]

Yeah, I personally just put all my water into the mash tun at a temp much higher than what I need, allow it to drop into the dough-in range. So using your numbers as an example, I would put all my water into the mash tun at 175ish, let it drop down to 168 then start adding my grain. This preheats the mash tun so you don't have any temp loss that way. Also slowly adding grain to water while stirring like crazy will avoid dough-balls. Your method seems more prone to dough-balls which could be a part of your lower efficiency.

For the amount of strike water, I always use 1.5qts per pound of grain. I use a cooler with a stainless steel braided hose as a mash tun, so I don't have the empty space you do with the false bottom, I am unsure how to account for that when figuring out your water-to-grain ratio.

As far as chilling your wort, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Pretty much any time I am doing a hoppy beer (which is every other brew for me) I do a 30+ minute hop stand after flameout before I ever start chilling. No issues whatsoever.

One other thing to check when getting low efficiency is your grain crush.

 

[opiate82]

Oh, one other note, I am guessing based on your info above you pitched at about 75? I'm not sure what temp you intended to ferment at but 75 seems high (I generally ferment in the low 60's) and I have found it is a good idea to get your wort slightly cooler than your intended fermentation temp and then allow the wort to gradually raises to the correct temp in the fermenter. My experience has been that this method makes for happier yeast and you are less likely to develop off flavors from fermentation this way.

 

[ScottG58]

I use a cooler with false bottom. I mash in backwards from what they tell you. I add the water to the grain and start stirring as soon as possible. I get pretty good efficiency. I also keep dme on hand just in case.

Congrats on first all grain. Cheers!

 

[DocScott]

I dont' see anything wrong with your process, but your yields seem off to me. You said that you added 4.5 gallons of water to the mash - which sounds right to me, at about 1.5 qts/lb. Then you added 1 more gallon to get your mash temp up, so 5.5 gallons total. Grain will absorb 0.15 gallon/lb on average, so you'll lose (0.15*13.75) ~2 gallons. This should give you 3.5 gallons of first runnings but you collected 4.25.

There is no absorption to factor in when sparging since the grain is already saturated, so what you put in, is what you get out. Once you know the boil off rate for your brewing system, you can calculate exactly how much pre-boil volume you need, and then back calculate your sparge volume.

Final batch volume = pre boil volume - boil off
pre boil volume = first runnings + sparge volume

You added 6 gallons of sparge water, but only needed 4 gallons according to the calculations. By sparging with too much water, you extracted sugars into the sparge that never made it into your boil kettle and were left in the wort in your mash tun.

Basically what I'm saying is that your process is great! The only thing I see is that your volumes are off, and you lost some efficiency and extract yield because of it. This will remedy itself as you learn your system and the process by brewing a couple of times. Brewing software can help you along the way.

Also, if you are consistently getting lower mash extraction, look to the crush of your grains. I found that when I started crushing my own, my efficiency went from 67-70 to 80+%

BTW, the equipment you have sounds WAY better than what I'm using -- I am jealous. Congrats on the first all grain brew!

 

[cpferris]

I wouldn't advise adding water to grain off the bat. It should be grain to water. Just try to spread it around as you poor plus using a good mash spoon/paddle.

Here's where I struggle. My mashtun is 15g and I am making a 6g batch. I can probably pour 1-1.25g of strike water into my mash tun before the water level even rises above the false bottom. So if I put the water in first, 25% of my stike water will never contact the grains because it's under the false bottom. How do I off set this? Do I just add ALL of the stike water to the mash tun then add it in grains gradually as I stir?

As far as chilling your wort, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Pretty much any time I am doing a hoppy beer (which is every other brew for me) I do a 30+ minute hop stand after flameout before I ever start chilling. No issues whatsoever.

One other thing to check when getting low efficiency is your grain crush.

What exactly is a hop stand? Is that just a rest period before chilling?

Good point on the grain crush. I had my LHBS do it as I do not have the equipment. That could be part of the issue.

Oh, one other note, I am guessing based on your info above you pitched at about 75? I'm not sure what temp you intended to ferment at but 75 seems high (I generally ferment in the low 60's) and I have found it is a good idea to get your wort slightly cooler than your intended fermentation temp and then allow the wort to gradually raises to the correct temp in the fermenter. My experience has been that this method makes for happier yeast and you are less likely to develop off flavors from fermentation this way.

I actually pitched at about 72. I read some other thread here that said as long as I was within 10 degrees of my fermentation temp, that would be ok. I have my conical sitting at 65 right now. I am about 22 hours in, and see no action on my airlock, Obviously the conical is stainless, so I cannot see inside. Should I try to move the conical to a warmer location due to my pitch temp? That would be easy to do. Should I be worried about my fermentation? Are you suggesting that if I had intended to ferment at 65, I should have chilled the word to a temp LOWER than 65?

You added 6 gallons of sparge water, but only needed 4 gallons according to the calculations. By sparging with too much water, you extracted sugars into the sparge that never made it into your boil kettle and were left in the wort in your mash tun.

Basically what I'm saying is that your process is great! The only thing I see is that your volumes are off, and you lost some efficiency and extract yield because of it. This will remedy itself as you learn your system and the process by brewing a couple of times. Brewing software can help you along the way.

BTW, the equipment you have sounds WAY better than what I'm using -- I am jealous. Congrats on the first all grain brew!

I definitely used too much sparge water. As I had never used the equipment, I didn't really know what to expect. I did have about 2g left of sparge wort left that I discarded. Had I just used 2g less to begin with, I would have had a higher concentration of sugar in the 4g I needed. I guess next time, I think I should check the volume of my first runnings, then if I only need 3g of sparge volume, only add that amount of sparge water. Basically I need to make decisions more dynamically...I was just trying to follow a text book approach. At this point, I downloaded BeerSmith, but I struggled with getting my equipment setup properly as I couldn't find exactly what I had listed.

Side note, the equipment is overkill for what I am doing, but I figured I'd be better getting something I can grow into. Oddly, the guy I got it from was moving acrosss the country and needed to downsize. I ended up trading hime a couple bottles of rare lambic straight up for the setup. So I got a real nice setup with no out of pocket expense. So that was a major win for me. I've always wanted to start brewing, but laying out all the cash for equip was always a deterrent.


Lastly, assuming the beer ferments, what do you expect I will end up with? A really hoppy low ABV beer? I could be ok with that....

Thanks guys for all the input....this will help me alot moving forward.

 

[opiate82]

Yeah, a hop stand is essentially a rest done after you turn the flame off before you start cooling which should help extract flavor and aroma out of the late addition hops.

As far as fermentation temperature, I would leave it at 65. You try to put it somewhere warmer you'll end up with all kinds of esters which probably wouldn't be desirable for that style. For future batches I would try to cool all the way down to your intended fermentation temperature before pitching, but not doing so with this batch isn't something I would lose any sleep over. It will be fine.

You seem like you have done plenty of homework so you probably already know this, but I figured I'd mention anyways to remember that the ambient air temperature outside the fermenter isn't going to be the same as in the fermenter. Fermentation creates a lot of heat and the temp inside the fermenter will be higher than the outside air temperature. (I've seen is as much as 10 degrees higher!) I only bring it up because proper control of fermentation temperature was the biggest single thing I did to improve my beer quality and something that I wish I would have done properly from brew #1.

You probably will end up with a low ABV IPA but that is okay, just call it an ISA (India Session Ale).

 

[cpferris]

Yeah, a hop stand is essentially a rest done after you turn the flame off before you start cooling which should help extract flavor and aroma out of the late addition hops.

As far as fermentation temperature, I would leave it at 65. You try to put it somewhere warmer you'll end up with all kinds of esters which probably wouldn't be desirable for that style. For future batches I would try to cool all the way down to your intended fermentation temperature before pitching, but not doing so with this batch isn't something I would lose any sleep over. It will be fine.

You probably will end up with a low ABV IPA but that is okay, just call it an ISA (India Session Ale).

I bet a hop stand would have been a good idea for me as I had hop additions at both 5 and 1 min marks. Just curious, after the boil, should I have expected a layer of residue at the bottom of my boil kettle? I noticed when I drained the boil inton the fermenter, I had this:

Also, what should boiled wort typically look like when you drain it? Obviously I didn't have husks or grain particals, but it was no where close to clear. Is that normal?

Quick update on fermentation. I now have lots of activity in the airlock. I am getting a bubble a second at this point....so I am assume that is a pretty active fermentation.

Lastly, the recipe called for a 10 day primary fermentation. Considering my lower OG, should I anticipate primary fermentation to end before 10 days and maybe I rack to secondary sooner? I was going to rack from the conical to a glass carboy for secondary fermentation and dry hop at that point.

Thanks again,
Chad

 

[opiate82]

Did you use pellet hops and if so did you just throw them straight into the kettle? If so yes, that is what the bottom of your kettle should look like, it is just all the leftover gunk from the hops. Some people go to a lot of effort to ensure that the gunk doesn't go into the fermenter, some people just dump the entire kettle, gunk and all, into the fermenter. I am of the latter category.

I wouldn't worry too much about your wort not being clear. One thing you can do during brew day to get clearer beer is to use either irish moss or a whirfloc tablet during the boil. Then later after fermentation you can cold crash, cold condition and/or use gelatin to further clear your beer. In most cases cloudy beer is just an appearance issue and has no impact on taste.

I know you are probably anxious to drink your beer, but time is your friend, don't rush your beer. I let all my beers sit for at least 2 weeks in the primary regardless of how quick it may have fermented. Last beer I rushed ended up with a major diacetyl issue (smells like buttered popcorn and has an oily mouth feel) and if I would have just let is sit in the primary longer the yeast would have cleaned all that diacetyl up.

Lastly, I usually dry hop in my primary and only move to a secondary if I am aging a beer. Any exposure to air gives the beer a chance to oxidize which is bad and hoppy styles are especially vulnerable to it. The less you move the beer around the less chance it has to oxidize. The yeast will have produced a nice layer of CO2 protecting your beer from air and oxidation in the primary so take advantage of that. If you *need* to move the beer to the secondary to free up your primary fermenter for your next batch, if you can find a way to purge your secondary with CO2 first that will help reduce the risk (much easier for those of us that keg to do since we have CO2 tanks laying around).

Sounds like your fermentation took off just as it should have, airlock activity isn't the best reference for fermentation activity, but lots of bubbles is a good thing.

 

[Conan]

Welcome to the forum, congrats on your first brew- your setup sounds pretty sweet.
You will certainly benefit from a program such as BeerSmith. It allows you to input your equipment, and has some presets you can modify. It will compensate for your deadspace (area below your FB, in this case) and any trub/ grain/ transfer losses you tell it about. It will also predict strike temperatures and volumes and since it's tied to your system it will be accurate.
Everyone else pretty well covered any comments I'd have added. Overall it sounds like your day went pretty well and you've already learned what to do differently. Kyle

 

[cpferris]

Did you use pellet hops and if so did you just throw them straight into the kettle? If so yes, that is what the bottom of your kettle should look like, it is just all the leftover gunk from the hops. Some people go to a lot of effort to ensure that the gunk doesn't go into the fermenter, some people just dump the entire kettle, gunk and all, into the fermenter. I am of the latter category.

I wouldn't worry too much about your wort not being clear. One thing you can do during brew day to get clearer beer is to use either irish moss or a whirfloc tablet during the boil. Then later after fermentation you can cold crash, cold condition and/or use gelatin to further clear your beer. In most cases cloudy beer is just an appearance issue and has no impact on taste.

Lastly, I usually dry hop in my primary and only move to a secondary if I am aging a beer. Any exposure to air gives the beer a chance to oxidize which is bad and hoppy styles are especially vulnerable to it. The less you move the beer around the less chance it has to oxidize. The yeast will have produced a nice layer of CO2 protecting your beer from air and oxidation in the primary so take advantage of that. If you *need* to move the beer to the secondary to free up your primary fermenter for your next batch, if you can find a way to purge your secondary with CO2 first that will help reduce the risk (much easier for those of us that keg to do since we have CO2 tanks laying around).

I did use hop pellets, so maybe that is what I saw. Seemed like a lot of sediment for the quanity of hops used (5.75oz) especially when you consider that is a 15g brew pot.

I did use the Irish Moss at the last 15 min of the boil. I just wasnt sure when I would expect to see the benefit of that.

Since I have the beer doing primary in a conical, I figured the yeast would drop then I could rack clearer beer to a carboy for secondary fermentation and dry hop. If that is wrong, then maybe I will dryhop straight in the conical.

 

[opiate82]

Yeah, those hop pellets are very compressed and expand a lot once put in the kettle, they create quite the muddy mess once wet. Looks like perfectly normal hop gunk to me.

I'm not saying moving to a secondary is wrong, I'm just saying the more you move a beer around from container-to-container the more chances you have to expose it to something that will ruin it. So I am of the opinion that unless you have a reason to rack to a secondary, it should be avoided. Now there are many legitimate reasons to move to a secondary, I'm just saying in your case for this particular brew it probably isn't necessary.

If you are worried about the books all saying that you need to move the beer off the yeast to avoid off flavors, don't. That has basically been shown to be outdated information and even some of the authors of said books have admitted as much.

Seems like other than a hiccup with your efficiency (which pretty much every new all-grain brewer has in some form or another) you brew is going very well. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[cpferris]

So I am preparing for brew #2 (another IPA) this weekend an wanted to revisit my plan based on feedback from brew #1.

Lets assume i want a pre-boil volume of 7.5g. Per beersmith, I would plan to strike with about 4.5g just like before. In my 15g mashtun, about 1.5g of water sits under the false bottom and does not have direct contact with the grains. Seems like I have two options:

1. Mash with 4.5g as planned. Add all 4.5g to mash tun, add grains and sporadically recirculate to make sure the 1.5g under the false bottom is getting contact with the grains. Say I collect about 3.5g of first runnings, then batch sparge with 4g to get to my desired 7.5g.

2. Mash with 6g (to offset the 1.5g under the false bottom) for better mash thickness (recirculate sporadically). Collect about 5g of first runnings, then batch sparge with 2.5g to get to my desired 7.5g.

Would one of these options be preferable to the other with respect to efficiency?

 

[cpferris]

Any thoughts on these two options? I want to go into brew day with a plan!