Wheat Wine OG WAAAYYY off

[london1o1]

I just started brewing all grain, and am still running into some probably pretty basic problems. I just attempted to make a wheat wine, and ended up with an OG of ~1.055 when my intended OG was 1.105.

As far as I can figure, there are a couple of things I don't understand that may have led to this.
1: I don't think I "mashed out". I'm not entirely sure what this step does, but I did a mash with 170F water, recirculated, and then sparged with more 170F water. But I forgot to add 200F water to the mash before recirculating (I think this is when this is supposed to happen) -- also, the mash tun was already full of 170F water from the mash, so I don't fully understand where the additional 200F water is supposed to go, or how much of it I'm supposed to put in.

2: I may have mashed/sparged with too much water. I was looking for a 6 gallon boil, so when sparging, I sparged until 6 gallons had been poured into my brew kettle. But I used 6 gallons of sparge water and had 10 gallons of mash water, so there was still a lot of water left in the mash ton after sparging (which means I didn't get ALL of the sugars into the wort in the brew kettle). I figured this wasn't necessarily wrong, since the earlier poured wort is richer in sugars than the stuff that remains in the mash tun, but I wondered if I was only supposed to put about 6 gallons in the mash tun to begin with.

3. Also, there's always the possibility that I did something else wrong without even noticing. What else could have happened to lead to a far lower OG than expected? I ran the recipe through BrewTarget to come up with the expected OG. It included 10lbs of Wheat Malt, 7lbs of 2Row, and 6oz each of Caramel Malt, and Honey Malt (for a 6 gallon batch).

 

[pkeeler]

the mash tun was already full of 170F water from the mash, so I don't fully understand where the additional 200F water is supposed to go, or how much of it I'm supposed to put in.

You mashed at 170F? That could be your problem.

I was looking for a 6 gallon boil, so when sparging, I sparged until 6 gallons had been poured into my brew kettle. But I used 6 gallons of sparge water and had 10 gallons of mash water, so there was still a lot of water left in the mash ton after sparging (which means I didn't get ALL of the sugars into the wort in the brew kettle).

Sounds like you are fly sparging in some sentences and batch sparging in others. What you did would be okay for fly sparging, if a bit wasteful. However, if you were batch sparging, I don't think it would work well.

 

[london1o1]

I'm pretty sure that was a typo. Sparge was 170F. Mash was ~150F. Still don't understand the "mash out" concept.

I believe I fly sparged, in that I definitely didn't work out any calculations ahead of time, and just sparged until I hit my desired preboil volume (6 gallons). But it's also likely that I really don't know what fly sparging means.

Also, fwiw, though I don't see how this could be relevant to the issues with the wheat wine OG, but I continued to pour the remaining wort from the mash tun into a separate brew kettle, did a separate boil for that, and am attempting to turn it into a Berliner Weisse (it seemed wasteful to me not to use that left-over water/wort for something too). I just didn't mention this in the original post since I actually lucked into hitting my intended OG pretty dead on for the Berliner Weisse.

 

[pkeeler]

I believe I fly sparged, in that I definitely didn't work out any calculations ahead of time, and just sparged until I hit my desired preboil volume (6 gallons). But it's also likely that I really don't know what fly sparging means.

If you drained the mash tun, added sparge water, and ran that off, you were batch sparging. If you slowly drew off the mash tun, while slowly adding water to the top, until you collected your volume, that is fly sparging. If you ran off your entire mash tun, added your sparge water in some quantity, then drew off until you reached your volume, that is some hybrid of the two. Most likely, your problems lie there.

Mash-out is simply raising the temp. of the mash to near 170 to facilitate draining. It is not necessary and I doubt it would effect your efficiency much if you didn't do it. I think you just left a lot of sugar in the tun.

With about 18 lbs. of grain, and a not perfect understanding of the process, I would expect your OG to be around 1.088 (5 gal. @ 70% efficiency). The problem with all brewing software is that if you don't understand the questions it is asking (or the inputs in other words) you won't get the right answer.

 

[devilishprune]

Seems like you got around 50% efficiency on that batch.

How much water did you end up with in your boil? If you sparged with 6 gallons and only put, say, 2 in your BK at the end, then you diluted your runnings a lot there and may have lowered your efficiency. You only want to sparge with enough water to hit your target preboil gravity. No mashout isn't going to affect your efficiency that much

Could you describe your mash/sparge process more? I'm still a bit confused.

Something else could be the problem is that without 95%-ish efficiency, you ain't gonna get no 1.105 in 6 gallons with that grain bill. With a beer that big, most people plan on lowering their efficiency by about 10% (so it's common to have around 65% efficiency for a beer that size). What is your usual efficiency?

 

[TXCrash]

First off: brew some lighter beers while you're getting the hang of all grain brewing. Big beers can be a bastard...

You had 16 gallons of brew water for a 6 gallon batch. You had 20 lbs of grain. Most folks figure about 1.25 quarts of water absorption per lb of grain (about 6 gallons) You stated that you collected about 6 gallons - which tells me you left about 4 gallons in the mash tun. With a big beer, you should expect to collect more runnings than with a normal beer and boil em down for a while.

Here's my basic process:
1. Heat strike water (this is the ~170* water that you add to the ground malt. This should bring your malt to your desired mash temperature. You can use online calculators or brew software to figure this out based on the temperature of the grain and the thickness of the mash).

2. Add strike water to the mash tun and grain. I add water to grain that's already there - just easier for me because of how my system is set up. Most add water then stir the grain into the hot water. At this point you should let the grain sit there at ~150-160* for about an hour. This is called mashing and gives the enzymes in the grain a chance to turn the starches in the grain into sugars.

3. An hour's up. Now I transfer the wort into the boil kettle. I then start heating what's in the boil kettle. I then add ~180* water to the mash tun and grain. This process (or whatever process you use to raise the temperature of the grain to above conversion - again, conversion of starches to sugar - temperature) is called mash out because you are stopping conversion. If you have a metal mash tun you can also apply direct flame to raise temperature.

4. Transfer sparge water into mash tun. This will rinse residual sugars from the grain. Let it sit for a bit, then drain into boil kettle.

5. Determine amount of wort in the boil kettle and how long of a boil you'll need to do (once your system is dialed in you'll know how many gallons you boil off per hour).

I'd highly recommend some brew software such as brewsmith. It takes a lot of the guesswork outta the brewday. The above process is nothing more than a drunken list of how I do it. I'm sure I do a million things wrong, I'm sure I missed most of what I do right etc.