All around Help

[benharper13]

So I have done three all grain brews, I had a broken hydrometer for the first two so they don't help much. This last brew I did a simple hefeweizen. 7 lbs of German wheat and 4lbs of German pils. I expected an OG of 1.052 and ended up with 1.041. I had a mash of about 3.5 gallons of water at 153. I think sparged about 4 more gallons at 172. I also just added about 1.5 gallons of water to the pot not sparged at all. I did an hour boil. I am not sure if my method isn't that good (I use a cooler mash tun with a stainless steel braid) I may not have the sparge part down correctly or I just simply didn't have enough boil off but I'll like some input

 

[brewdogskip]

When brewing all, grain both batch and fly sparging, I was always recommended to sparge until my pre boil volume has been achieved. The more you rinse the grains, the more sugar you get from them. Simply, I don't top up with H20 unless I plan for it. My mash and sparge always equal my pre boil volume.

 

[trigger]

At the end of your boil how much wort did you have? That's kinda key. Sounds like you started boiling with around 7 gal. If you have a very intense boil you could have got down to around 5 or 5.5 gal in an hour. If you had an average rolling boil I'm thinking it'd be more like 6, which if you were counting on 5 would result in about a 20% loss in "efficiency". Volumes are as important as extraction when you're looking at you efficiency.

 

[Pappers_]

+1 to the above advice. Have you checked out Denny's webpage on all grain brewing? Bobby M has a good one, too. Both were helpful to me when I started all grain.

 

[benharper13]

Yeah I ended up with somewhere between 5.5-6 gallons probably closer to six which would be part of the reason I was low. I was using a new burner and didn't get the amount of burn off I was use to.

It was only about 25 degree's outside and I was brewing in my garage. I know that will make it harder to get to a boil but it took a lot longer then usual and I didn't get as vigorous of a boil. My wife bought me the bayou classic sq-14 which is recommended on here so I would have thought the boil would have been quicker then what I had before

 

[JuanMoore]

+1 to accurate volumes. They have a huge effect on pecieved efficiency, so to really know what your efficiency is requires very accurate volume measurements.

Another thing to consider is how you came to expect 1.052 OG. Until you've done a few batches (with hydrometer readings) you won't know what kind of efficiency to expect from your crush and process. Once you know what kind of efficiency to expect, you can accurately build a grain bill to meet a specific OG.

 

[benharper13]

I just got that number from the recipe I stole from ed wort on here his hefeweizen

 

[coypoo]

The reason you were low was because you added 1.5 gallons of straight water to the boil kettle. You should always add water through sparging so you get some sugars out of it. By adding the non-sparged water you are just diluting your beer. That, combined with the higher final volume will drastically lower your anticapted OG

 

[cravej]

How are you measuring the volume?

 

[CPooley4]

My Brew Chart may be helpful to you. It will calculate pretty much everything you need to calculate and gives you a good brewer schedule/instructions to follow. You can find the link in my signature below.

Measuring volume is extremely important if you're going to have accurate numbers. For instance, let's assume you planned for a 1.052 gravity beer for a 5 gallon batch. If you ended up with 6 gallons of beer post boil instead you'd be around a 1.043 gravity beer.

Just a rough look at the numbers in your post and I'm assuming you had about 7 gallons of pre-boil wort. A normal 60 minute boil would have you with about 6 gallons of beer post boil which would have you at an expected gravity of 1.043. Again, it's just a rough guess but shouldn't be too far off assuming a normal boil.

Good luck.

cp

 

[benharper13]

Yeah I had too much pre boil almost 8 gallons but that is because my old burned that much off. I have a mash paddle I marked for each gallon

 

[trigger]

The reason you were low was because you added 1.5 gallons of straight water to the boil kettle. You should always add water through sparging so you get some sugars out of it. By adding the non-sparged water you are just diluting your beer. That, combined with the higher final volume will drastically lower your anticapted OG

This isn't necessarily true. When fly sparging you should stop the sparge when the specific gravity of your runnings drops below a certain value. If your sparge continues to run you can extract tannins, causing some not necessarily agreeable flavors. I won't go into that number, since it seems to be debated. After your running's SG drops below that number, the amount of sugars you're extracting is fairly small, and efficiency losses at this point should be weighed against taste considerations. I often stop my sparge early on beers that get a 90 min boil and add top up water to the kettle. With my old cooler MT/LT I could get around 80% efficiency on 1.080 beers after adding a gallon or more of top up to the kettle.

To the OP, that SQ-14 is a great burner. I used one for a long time and just gifted it to my brother for christmas along with my old keggle and a basic brewing kit. On Christmas day he brewed his first extract batch. The ambient temp was about 24 F and he accidentally added too much top up water for a final volume of about 7.5 gal. We did a 90 min boil and put exactly 5.25 gal in the bucket after chilling, so we boiled off 2.25 gal in an hour and a half with that burner. I would guess that either your propane tank was too cold, preventing the liquid from properly vaporizing, or you didn't have the fuel/air mix tuned quite right. I found that the air shutter on mine was really finicky. I had to tighten the screws down until they just barely let the shutter rotate. I also found that for the best heating I needed to tune the air shutter until all the flames were lifting off the burner about 1 cm. If you see big yellow flames there isn't enough air, and if they're way up by the pot and constantly blowing out you've got too much. Also, try to keep your propane tank as close to room temp as possible. Hoep this helps.

 

[benharper13]

Thanks trigger that makes a lot of sense with the burner I think I could tweak it to get more efficiency. I want to convert my 5 gallon mash tun to a 15 gallon quart igloo but I must not have the right parts because it leaks. I think the bigger tun will help me to mix better and get a higher efficiency. I also am very sick or carrying pots full of 8 gallons of wort around so I need to make some sort of set-up

 

[trigger]

I hear you on carrying pots. I suggest bargainfitting's weldless bulkheads. As far as the cooler MT/LT, if you can post some pics that would be helpful. The 15 gal will be nice, but having more room won't really effect your efficiency as longs as you are able to achieve the proper water/grain ratio in your mash. You should shoot for 1.25-2.00 qts/lb. Anything in there will work. For that matter, lots of guys do full volume mashes, and that's way above 2 qts/lb. In that regard what is more important is having a proper crush and stirring. If you can post a close up shot of your crushed grain. As long as you get these two down and hit and maintain your mash temp there isn't too much else to worry about. If you've done both these, fixed your volume and burner problems, and still can't get good efficiency then you can start looking into things like pH. IMO you should start from the most obvious and easiest to fix, and work your way down. Eventually you'll probably hit a point where you are happy with your efficiency, your beers are tasting great, and you just don't want to go any further. That's the butter zone (not diacetyl...)

 

[benharper13]

I am going to add blueberries to this batch it has been fermenting for about 5 days if I add them to the primary (my secondary won't be big enough to hold the extra liquid since I have about 6 gallons) with that boost my ABV? Also how many lbs would you recommend?