My wheat beer had an original gravity of 1.053. So I was looking for an FG around 1.012ish. It ended up 1.009. Why did it ferment so far? Not that I am complaining I am just wondering what I did so I can duplicate or fail to duplicate at will. Was it something in the way I mashed it?
A difference of .003 is negligible and I certainly wouldn’t worry about it. Why were you expecting 1.012? If some software told you that’s what you’d get, just ignore it in the future. An FG prediction by any software doesn’t take into account all the variables in a mash.
I’ll add that Brewing software only ever ESTIMATES what you will get on your system. There are parameters you can tweak to come closer, but it is a calculation, not a measurement of that you do on brew day.
Actually I was going by a rule of thumb estimate. I figure 1/4 of last two digits of OG for FG is a good ballpark estimate. And up until now it has been really close every time. I wasn’t so much as worried about it as I am wanting to learn from it. The beer tasted really good out of the fermenter before going into the bottling bucket.
As far as procedure I used 5lbs Rahr 2 row and 5lbs Rahr malted wheat. Mashed at 152 for an hour, then batch sparged at 170 for 10 minutes. Ratio was 1.25 qts per pound. I did have 3 stuck sparges and had to empty contents into another container, clean my mash tun, pour contents back in to drain all 3 times. So being precise on proceedures would be pretty difficult.
Yeah, because of the stuck sparges and all, it sounds like you really didn’t mash at 152 for an hour. At 152 for an hour, like you I would expect the FG to be a little higher. Try some rice hulls next time, if you haven’t tried them before. They really help, and seem to improve efficiency also.
What they’re saying is that, unless you did a true mashout to denature the enzymes (and just adding 170F sparge water doesn’t accomplish that), then your mash was still mashing the entire time you were sparging. So your total mash time was the original one hour plus however long it took to complete your sparge.
After a week in the bottle I sampled some of this beer after work last night. It is freaking incredible. After all the problems I had with it I was just sure I was going to end up dumping it.
That’s the way it works. It seems like so often when you make all the stupid mistakes, suffer all the issues, the world steps up and delivers a great result.
Of course the irony is: how the hell do you duplicate it?
This was also the batch where my wort chiller broke when it was 90 degrees. I had to let it air cool, I didn’t want it to sit too long before pitching my yeast so I pitched at 77 degrees. Then the fermentation was so hot it didn’t drop below 75 for 2 days in a room that was 68 degrees ambient temp.
Speaking of throw-away brews, I racked the ill-fated IPA yesterday. This is the batch that I wasted several hours trying to chill the wort with huge hop cones clogging everything and finally gave up and poured the whole thing, hops, break an all into an unsanitized open European keg that would fit into my fridge then sprinkled 2 packs of US-05 on it. Surprisingly it tastes very good going into a secondary for dry-hopping.
Sometimes the mistakes taste better than the plans.