I have been noob-ing with my mashes up to this point. This time i did my first all grain mash on the stove. I used a steel tun and wrapped it in towels. My mash temp only dropped by two degrees the entire hour. Batch sparged in the same vessel.
Interesting note, however, for those who might try this. Recirculating is difficult without HSA when using a colander as the strainer for the grain. What i did was to use a smaller wire strainer and remove the grain from the wort and added the grain to the colander. I set the colander over a shallow bowl so the wort wouldn’t splash as it went through the grain. Then i scooped out the wort with a measuring cup and slowly poured it over the grain in the colander. Did the exact same thing with the batch sparge. Got nice clarity after this.
ah. yes. i was wondering if someone would notice that. No, my colander does not, in fact, hold all 8.5 pounds of grain. The most it can seem to muster is 5 pounds. So as the grain forms a huge pile, i scoop it off and add it to a second bowl, the add more “fresh” grain from the tun.
aaaand yes the bowl will only hold one gallon of wort. So what i did was use a long siphon tube to siphon the hot wort into the boiling bucket (which is 8 gallon capacity) so as to not HSA it. I kept doing this every time the little bucket filled up. Good catch. Worked out well though. Nice clarity in the end.
Yes, the calc was ppg. 50 points X 5 gallons / 8.5 pounds = 29.411. How did you get that into a percentage?
1.050 was not a bad based for a simple beer…oh, see, then i added 8 lbs LME and 1 lb DME to kick the OG to 1.110 (NIIICE). If all goes well, the abv of this Belgain Style Summer Ale should be 11.2%. That will relax you at the end of a hot summer day (might want to keep a glass of water handy as well).
The typical potential of a pound of malt is 36-37 points per pound per gallon, depending on the malt.
29.4/36 *100%= 82% for an average grain bill or 79% if you used all high potential base malt.
