I there a way to figure out what the gravity of your first running should be. It would be a big help in hitting the numbers consistently. My normal procedure is to mash at 154 with 1.50 qt/lb. knowing it should hit x after 60 min
Sadly i didnt understand any of that. is there a sight i can go to and just enter stuff in and it will give me the first running gravity
It all comes down to the recipe and potential extract of the grains and the volume and the % of efficiency you are achieving. Honestly, most AG brewers use brewing software instead of doing everything long hand.
I use beersmith but there are a few free on line tools and recipe creators you can use. Visit the brewing software forum and see the ones mentioned and the recommendations of the ones that work well The software will then give you the estimated pre-boil OG as well as post boil OG and estimated FG.
Kai's table gives the SG for 100% mash conversion. As I understand from his article, if you have a decent mash you should be within 90% of this value with the rest of the difference in individual efficiency actually coming from lautering issues. So I would say you want to be withing 90% of the value in the table on the first runnings, knowing that you will lose some effiiciency to lautering. If you are not within that, work on mash conversion issues. If you are within that on the first runnings but end up short overall, work on lautering issues.
This is my understanding as well but in all honesty I do not really pay any attention to first and second runnings, only pre-boil OG and in addition, if my numbers are off a point or few then I make adjustments in my boil. I'm not really one of those number freaks as long as I'm close, I'm happy. If the beer is 6.0% or 6.2% I'm really not losing any sleep over it
All that being said, I have been using the same brewing set up for several years and my process is pretty dialed in at 82% efficiency across the board so I pretty much know I'm hitting on all cylinders each batch.
I hear ya, at this point I've got about 25 batches in a row at 78-82% efficiency so I set my recipes to 80% and never miss by more than a point or two. Last couple batches I didn't even take a gravity until chilling. But it sounds like a good method to try for the OP if she wants to troubleshoot or dial her system in.
What made you think i was female -_-
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