I did my first all grain and here’s what I ended up with.
After grinding 11.5 lbs of Maris Otter and 11 oz crystal, I mashed it and ended up with far less wort than I expected.
I was shooting for 5 gallons of about 1.048 or 1.050. I ended up with about 4 gallons, maybe a touch less of 1.072. Obviously I need to sparge with more water. I used 1.25 quarts per lb (I think - I used 60 cups of water with a 2 cup measuring cup) and added 6 more cups to get my water temp right. Then I sparged with 20 cups (I wish the world was metric…) which I now realize was too little. Should have used at least 30 again.
Assuming I got about 4 gallons post boil, what would my % extraction be and how do I calculate that for future reference?
Then, can I just top the brew up with boiled water to make 5 gal? This is far stronger than I wanted. I am sure that this would be alright but I’m deferring to the forum for your thoughts.
Yes, you can add water to top it up. Next time top it up during the boil if you have to, it affects your hop extraction efficiency.
If you want to talk liters instead of quarts and cups, then do it. We get it.
Extraction efficiency . . . I use beersmith. According to that, with your grain bill and 5 gallons of 1.049 you were expecting about 56% efficiency. You should expect better than that. Your actual 4 gallons of 1.072 is ~66% efficiency. That’s not bad for your first batch, well done
Simplest is to use the idea of “gravity points”. A good average to use for grain is 36 points per pound per gallon. So, your 12.1875 pounds of grain would have 36 x 12.1875 = 438.75 gravity points. In 4 gallons, 100% efficiency would have given you a gravity of 1.109. Since you ended up instead with 1.072, your efficiency would have been 72 / 109 = 66%. Not too shabby for a first shot although you’ve got room to improve. Oh, and sparging with more water like you mentioned would most likely be one thing that’ll help get you that improvement.
First of all, regarding the cups/liters question, it’s not the people on the forum that I’m worried about, it’s me. I know you guys will get it, my worry is me working backwards from directions. So, if something says sparge with X.xx quarts, then I have to work back to figure out how many cups that would be in my 2 cup measuring cup which is all I have. Just worried that I’m gonna do the math wrong. My wife once made soup that called for so many quarts of water and she used pints…mmmm - salty! But, it is the American Homebrew Association so I will have to learn to live with it.
Another area that I know will likely help with efficiency would be mash pH. I used my pH meter and got 6.2 in the hot mash at about 5-10 minutes into the mash. I then read Kai’s excellent work on mash pH. So my first learning for next time is to adjust my pH with some phosphoric acid or something (maybe I’ll just cut open a couple batteries and throw them in). But, that’s the point of trying to do the same recipe repeatedly with small changes so that I can learn to get all the aspects right.
Just for your interest, here’s a couple shots of how the mash tun was made.
Good job on your first all-grain batch! Just my 2 cents, the ~$8 spent at Walmart for a 2 quart glass measuring implement was one of the best brewing investments I’ve ever made! It makes the math a lot easier, two of those suckers equals a gallon. ;D
If you’re wondering how it turned out, here’s what I have to report.
The beer itself is pretty cloudy. Probably a lot of that is due to large amount of hops that I ended up with in the primary. I didn’t think too much about that when I was preparing my tools and so I wasn’t really ready when it came time to put it into the primary.
The beer tastes pretty good. Surprisingly bitter given the hops (1.5 oz of EKG at 60 mins for bittering). Also, the beer seems quite thin. If I had to guess why, I’d suggest that my mashing temp was probably lower than I thought and I have decided not to use the thermometer that I used with this batch again. I’m guessing that if I can get up to 152/153 with the next brew it may be better (lower temp gives more attenuation doesn’t it???). Also, I am going to up the crystal slightly and drop the EKG volume at 60 mins.
Despite these little glitches, it tastes pretty darn good to me even though it’s not gonna win any contests. It’s been a dream of mine for almost 20 years to get to all grain brewing and no that I’ve tried it, I’m hooked.
Thanks once again for all the advice and support along the way. Especially to Euge, Denny and Tschmidlin. Really appreciate the advice.
