I typically order my grain through austin homebrew but I got a wild hair up me keester to brew this weekend, so I went ahead and bought from the LHBS and crushed on their mill. The first thing I noticed was that I was able to get a much finer crush using their mill. It was almost too fine.
I have been steadily in the 72-75% range with my beers, with I am perfectly fine with, but I thought I should be able to go higher. I had a barley crusher on the Xmas wish list, to test different crushes with, but I guess I wasn't a good enough boy and Santa didn't bring me one.
So, I brewed this weekend and my starting gravity was quite a bit higher than expected. I was shooting for somewhere around 1.052 and ended up at 1.061, or 83.6% (according to tastybrew.com's calculator).
Also, on top of all that, I was making a lighter bodied beer, mashing around 150, so I am probably looking at a final gravity around 1.014. Going to be one strong, easy drinking beer...
I have been steadily in the 72-75% range with my beers, with I am perfectly fine with, but I thought I should be able to go higher. I had a barley crusher on the Xmas wish list, to test different crushes with, but I guess I wasn't a good enough boy and Santa didn't bring me one.
So, I brewed this weekend and my starting gravity was quite a bit higher than expected. I was shooting for somewhere around 1.052 and ended up at 1.061, or 83.6% (according to tastybrew.com's calculator).
Also, on top of all that, I was making a lighter bodied beer, mashing around 150, so I am probably looking at a final gravity around 1.014. Going to be one strong, easy drinking beer...