So I designed a new Make shift RIMS system in a sense. I have a two tier setup my pot sitting above my tun, once I bring my mash water to strike temp I open the ball valve and I allow it to then drain into my tun. Once the grain bed is covered I will start my pump and send it back in my pot. I keep this up for the full 50 min mashing sequence at 160 degrees and then I mash out at 170 for 10 mins. I boil for 60 mins adding all my hop additions, once done I will put in my fermenter and add yeast around about 70 degrees. my OG was 1.028 and when I bottled today my FG was only reading 1.020. The Ale was fermented at 60-67 degrees for two weeks using safale-05. I am not sure as to why this happened any insight would the way my system is setup case it to not extract all the sugars? any insight would be helpful .
Regardless of if i used that much crystal or not is that why that happened? Or is it based off my setup, also i was making a 4 gallon batch. Started with 7.25 gallons of water ended with four this was just a test of the system to see how well it would work.
If you brewed a beer entirely crystal and honey, yes that is where the issue is. You have nothing with a significant quantity of enzymes to convert what little viable starches are available.
Crystal malt has limited fermentability. By making it the majority of your recipe (keep in mind that homey malt is crystal also) you set yourself up for a high FG.
That almost certainly explains the low attenuation, but not the ~30% mash efficiency. I didn’t see anything about stirring - are you relying on the RIMS alone to mash in? What’s the lautering setup? What was the pre-boil volume? It should have been edit: ~6 gal.
Would it be likely that the crystals have limited DP? A quick look at the Briess and Weyermann websites doesn’t even turn up a listing for DP of crystal.
Okay so crystal should only be used sparingly or not at all as a base … Now I know we’ll at least I have a NA beer haha. Also I did not know that when I built my recipe. The beer also came out hazy could that be due to little to no fermentation ?
I would definitely recommend trying a few different recipe’s from others that are in the style you want and reading some good books on designing recipe’s such as Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. This should help set you up for success and get you a feel for how to craft a decent recipe.
Starting with a known recipe, can also help you determine if there are larger problems with your system. If your OG and FG are somewhat close to the original recipe and the beer looks and tastes decent, that will confirm that your system is working as designed. If not then you can go back to drawing board on your system.
The AHA website has a lot of great recipes you can try, and if you are an AHA member you also get access to many gold medal winning recipes.
Also try Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainesheff. It’s loaded with simple recipes that will get you in the ballpark, and then you can tweak them to your liking. When you use someone else’s recipe and you tweak it, it becomes your recipe.
