Okay it is in the carboy and the homebrew is being had. (Well actually it’s lagunitas gnarly wine but…) So my planned 1.111 maple barley wine ended up a 1.096 maple barley wine and a 1.032 small beer.
I realized that the amount of water Beer smith wanted me to mash in with was more or less everything I needed for my pre-boil volume for the barley wine. so I decided that I would use up some cascade I had in the freezer and stop the second runnings when I had my 7 gallons. I managed another 2-3 gallons afterwards and boiled them both up. I had to dilute the 1.75 gallons of ‘second runnings’ to make the small beer.
So I am putting my numbers into Beer Smith to see what kind of efficiency I got with my new (blue) coleman extreme 70 qt and found only 54%. But the I remembered the small beer and used the dilution tool to do the math and…
80% effiecieny!
woo hoo. Best I had managed since going all grain was 63 and with high gravity I was getting crappy (45) numbers. but I am going good now. and an extra 3.5 gallons of beer to boot.
I think I might add another pound of maple syrup after fermentation has settled down a little though. there is 1.25 lbs in there now to 25 lbs of gambrinus pale malt. so I am not worried about to much simple sugar.