WolfMan69
07-25-2006, 01:37 PM
(Sorry for the long post... kinda excited.... don't have my notes so this is from memory) (All OG temp corrections done using brewhead's calculators)
Well... I made my jump to All Grain this weekend (attempted Denny's Rye IPA).
Got off to a bad start.... my grain arrived "unmilled"... so I had to make the 2.5 hour round trip to the LHBS to get it milled (the traffic gods were with me cause on the way back I saw a 1-2 hour backup at the tunnel going the way I just came....). (the shop is going to ship me a whole new batch for my troubles..)
I then didn't notice until I was laying everything out for the brew day that the recipe "kit" I ordered did not include the 1 oz of hops for the FWH the original recipe called for (still around 60 IBUs though...).
So Sunday morning I woke up nice and early (6AM) did some more reading over my checklists and such...getting the chores out of the way and started around 10AM....
Started heating 5 gallons (and 1 pint) of strike water to 168F (preheated MLT (50qrt Coleman with SS Braid). Grain was at 82F.
I doughed-in and the temp dropped more than what my calculations said it would (dropped to 152F). So I slowly added 1 G of 200F water until my temp stabilized at 154F. I then mashed for 60 min (stirred about every 20 minutes). Volaufed and collected 4.25 gallons with a temp corrected OG of 1.077... batch sparged with 4 G @ 170F (15 minutes) and collected up to 6 gallons total for the pot with a temp corrected OG of 1.065 (target was 1.061).
Boiled for 30 minutes before starting my bittering hops (60 min)... and then proceeded with the normal hop additions per the recipe.... (so a 90 minute boil).
Finished with just a hair below 5 gallons in the pot.
Cooled with immersion cooler...could only get down to 82F after 30 minutes (its hot here and the ground water is warm...).
Strained into fermenter and got 4.25 gallons (Man! the hops and stuff soaked up a ton of water!!!). Temp corrected OG was 1.080 . I ended up topping up fermenter with .75 G of cold water and after aeration the OG was 1.074 (which was my target OG).
Placed fermenter into swamp bucket and capped... waited about 30 minutes for internal temp to drop to 70F and a pitched my Nottingham yeast 100ml starter (around 7PM). Had decent foam and airlock activity Monday morning.
So here is what I think/questions:
To avoid having to top off the fermenter (would have liked to have 5.25 G going into the fermentor...) so I'm assuming I need more volume in my boil... the issue with that is that I only have a 7.5 G boil pot and boiling the 6 G was scary enough (the rolling boil would just come shy of the lip of the pot sometimes...)... so until I get a bigger pot (got a keg being converted in about 2 weeks)... the only thing I can think of is a shorter total boil (60 minutes instead of 90?) and less violent boil (less evaporation....still rolling but less heat?)
BeerSmith said overall I was like 60% but going into the pot I was 74%... is that right? My calculations say 64% (overall)....
How can I improve my efficiency?
PS - I forgot to mention a tip I was given from another brewer at another site on the boil volume. He mentioned that as the wort evaporated during the boil... I could add some more runnings from the MLT to "top-up" the volume and finish with more volume.
Any downside to this?
Well... I made my jump to All Grain this weekend (attempted Denny's Rye IPA).
Got off to a bad start.... my grain arrived "unmilled"... so I had to make the 2.5 hour round trip to the LHBS to get it milled (the traffic gods were with me cause on the way back I saw a 1-2 hour backup at the tunnel going the way I just came....). (the shop is going to ship me a whole new batch for my troubles..)
I then didn't notice until I was laying everything out for the brew day that the recipe "kit" I ordered did not include the 1 oz of hops for the FWH the original recipe called for (still around 60 IBUs though...).
So Sunday morning I woke up nice and early (6AM) did some more reading over my checklists and such...getting the chores out of the way and started around 10AM....
Started heating 5 gallons (and 1 pint) of strike water to 168F (preheated MLT (50qrt Coleman with SS Braid). Grain was at 82F.
I doughed-in and the temp dropped more than what my calculations said it would (dropped to 152F). So I slowly added 1 G of 200F water until my temp stabilized at 154F. I then mashed for 60 min (stirred about every 20 minutes). Volaufed and collected 4.25 gallons with a temp corrected OG of 1.077... batch sparged with 4 G @ 170F (15 minutes) and collected up to 6 gallons total for the pot with a temp corrected OG of 1.065 (target was 1.061).
Boiled for 30 minutes before starting my bittering hops (60 min)... and then proceeded with the normal hop additions per the recipe.... (so a 90 minute boil).
Finished with just a hair below 5 gallons in the pot.
Cooled with immersion cooler...could only get down to 82F after 30 minutes (its hot here and the ground water is warm...).
Strained into fermenter and got 4.25 gallons (Man! the hops and stuff soaked up a ton of water!!!). Temp corrected OG was 1.080 . I ended up topping up fermenter with .75 G of cold water and after aeration the OG was 1.074 (which was my target OG).
Placed fermenter into swamp bucket and capped... waited about 30 minutes for internal temp to drop to 70F and a pitched my Nottingham yeast 100ml starter (around 7PM). Had decent foam and airlock activity Monday morning.
So here is what I think/questions:
To avoid having to top off the fermenter (would have liked to have 5.25 G going into the fermentor...) so I'm assuming I need more volume in my boil... the issue with that is that I only have a 7.5 G boil pot and boiling the 6 G was scary enough (the rolling boil would just come shy of the lip of the pot sometimes...)... so until I get a bigger pot (got a keg being converted in about 2 weeks)... the only thing I can think of is a shorter total boil (60 minutes instead of 90?) and less violent boil (less evaporation....still rolling but less heat?)
BeerSmith said overall I was like 60% but going into the pot I was 74%... is that right? My calculations say 64% (overall)....
How can I improve my efficiency?
PS - I forgot to mention a tip I was given from another brewer at another site on the boil volume. He mentioned that as the wort evaporated during the boil... I could add some more runnings from the MLT to "top-up" the volume and finish with more volume.
Any downside to this?