Hi-
So I'm on my 4th AG batch and I've been pretty lucky with hitting pretty close to my numbers etc... to date, so armed with a few efficiencies I've picked up along the way this batch was going to be spot on!
Not so much! I think I've figured out most of what went wrong, what I'm hoping to learn from the HBT community is what things I may have missed in my analysis and also a critique of what I did after things started going wrong and if I should have done anything differently should the situation arise again.
So the plan was 5.5 gallons of IPA into the fermenter mashed at 154F, 5.4 pH, pre-boil gravity 1.052, post boil gravity of 1.062. I should mention I've made this beer before and came pretty close, and had my numbers adjusted accordingly. I also use distilled/RO water with brewing salts and 2 oz acidulated malt to hit the 5.4 pH as determined in ezwater.
Doughed in and stirred, waited a few minutes, temp at 149.5, thermapen accurate and tested. Added ~1/2 gal of boiling RO water and got up to 152, figure good enough. (Note: when I went to add sparge water to HLT I noticed water left in the bottom, I didn't measure how much but assume this is why my temp came in low. I blame SWMBO as she came in and started bugging me as I was adding water. I mash loose, 1.5qt/lb, so this shouldn't have mattered that much.)
After 15 min I checked my pH: 5.1 with calibrated pH meter. Looked at what I had available and did some calcs in ezwater and added some pickling lime, apparently too much as after I stirred and let stabilize I was at 5.7. Another round of ezwater and about 0.5ml of lactic acid later I got down to 5.6. We're probably about 30 minutes into the mash at this point. Knowing this is how MJ and Elvis died, I stopped messing with it at this point.
Rest of the mash was uneventful except I had to run across the street to the store for SWMBO, so I was a little late getting the sparge water fired so the mash went longer than the planned 1 hour, I figure no big deal as I've done 90 min mashes before, it's fine.
Vorlauf, take fist runnings, add sparge water, stir, let sit for 15 minutes, vorlauf again, take second runnings, stir, take sample for refractometer, put sample in fridge, add FWH Warrior pellets, fire up the stove, drink some coffee, get back to refractometer sample, 1.036, not quite the 1.052 I was looking for, and not a problem if I hadn't added hops already, I would have just boiled it down and then added the hops as a 60 min addition. No DME on hand so I start building a spreadsheet to determine how much I'll have to boil off to get a reasonable gravity as making the changes in beersmith seems somewhat circular even when I turned off the calculate boil volume feature so I didn't trust it. I figure out if I do a 2 hour boil I should be able to get to 1.057, which is respectable and still leaves me with some beer. The calculated IBU's from boiling 1 oz of 16.7 AA hops for 2 hours however really threw off the balance. I still had a 1 oz addition of Centennial Type (9.7%) at 15 & 5 min, so I cut the 15 min addition to 0.5 oz which brought the IBUs down closer to the original target and left the 5 min addition alone as the bitterness contribution was negligible. (Note: after everything was done I went and inspected my mill, this is only its second use, the thumbscrew that locks the undriven roller in place had come loose so I was crushing at the max setting, feeler gauges going in before every crush from now on or until I'm satisfied everything is sufficiently locked down tight.)
So my boil-off calculation must not be perfect as I only hit 1.054, I would have boiled longer but I had other things I needed to get to that day and needed to start cleaning up. Get immersion chiller in, cool the wort, rack the wort off all debris in the bottom of the BK, aerate, pitch the yeast, beer happily bubbling away in fermentation corner of the basement, assuming the S-05 gets the beer down to 1.011 again I should be at 5.7- 5.8% ABV, which I can live with and the dry hops will give it plenty of flavor so the reduced 15 minute addition shouldn't hurt anything.
So what I took away from this: check you mill settings before using, have DME on hand, double check HLT to make sure it's empty, check pre-boil gravity before any hops goes in, be prepared with spreadsheets to calculate what recovery actions are required if something goes wrong, or get more familiar with beersmith to be sure I understand the calcs.
So my question, is there anything I should have done differently? I'm particularly concerned about missing the pH target by that much and what I did to the mash after that, I haven't had that happen before and I don't know enough about the science to draw any conclusions. I may do a little more research on the topic then post a separate question about that over in the brew science forum.
Thanks for any advice you may offer.
So I'm on my 4th AG batch and I've been pretty lucky with hitting pretty close to my numbers etc... to date, so armed with a few efficiencies I've picked up along the way this batch was going to be spot on!
Not so much! I think I've figured out most of what went wrong, what I'm hoping to learn from the HBT community is what things I may have missed in my analysis and also a critique of what I did after things started going wrong and if I should have done anything differently should the situation arise again.
So the plan was 5.5 gallons of IPA into the fermenter mashed at 154F, 5.4 pH, pre-boil gravity 1.052, post boil gravity of 1.062. I should mention I've made this beer before and came pretty close, and had my numbers adjusted accordingly. I also use distilled/RO water with brewing salts and 2 oz acidulated malt to hit the 5.4 pH as determined in ezwater.
Doughed in and stirred, waited a few minutes, temp at 149.5, thermapen accurate and tested. Added ~1/2 gal of boiling RO water and got up to 152, figure good enough. (Note: when I went to add sparge water to HLT I noticed water left in the bottom, I didn't measure how much but assume this is why my temp came in low. I blame SWMBO as she came in and started bugging me as I was adding water. I mash loose, 1.5qt/lb, so this shouldn't have mattered that much.)
After 15 min I checked my pH: 5.1 with calibrated pH meter. Looked at what I had available and did some calcs in ezwater and added some pickling lime, apparently too much as after I stirred and let stabilize I was at 5.7. Another round of ezwater and about 0.5ml of lactic acid later I got down to 5.6. We're probably about 30 minutes into the mash at this point. Knowing this is how MJ and Elvis died, I stopped messing with it at this point.
Rest of the mash was uneventful except I had to run across the street to the store for SWMBO, so I was a little late getting the sparge water fired so the mash went longer than the planned 1 hour, I figure no big deal as I've done 90 min mashes before, it's fine.
Vorlauf, take fist runnings, add sparge water, stir, let sit for 15 minutes, vorlauf again, take second runnings, stir, take sample for refractometer, put sample in fridge, add FWH Warrior pellets, fire up the stove, drink some coffee, get back to refractometer sample, 1.036, not quite the 1.052 I was looking for, and not a problem if I hadn't added hops already, I would have just boiled it down and then added the hops as a 60 min addition. No DME on hand so I start building a spreadsheet to determine how much I'll have to boil off to get a reasonable gravity as making the changes in beersmith seems somewhat circular even when I turned off the calculate boil volume feature so I didn't trust it. I figure out if I do a 2 hour boil I should be able to get to 1.057, which is respectable and still leaves me with some beer. The calculated IBU's from boiling 1 oz of 16.7 AA hops for 2 hours however really threw off the balance. I still had a 1 oz addition of Centennial Type (9.7%) at 15 & 5 min, so I cut the 15 min addition to 0.5 oz which brought the IBUs down closer to the original target and left the 5 min addition alone as the bitterness contribution was negligible. (Note: after everything was done I went and inspected my mill, this is only its second use, the thumbscrew that locks the undriven roller in place had come loose so I was crushing at the max setting, feeler gauges going in before every crush from now on or until I'm satisfied everything is sufficiently locked down tight.)
So my boil-off calculation must not be perfect as I only hit 1.054, I would have boiled longer but I had other things I needed to get to that day and needed to start cleaning up. Get immersion chiller in, cool the wort, rack the wort off all debris in the bottom of the BK, aerate, pitch the yeast, beer happily bubbling away in fermentation corner of the basement, assuming the S-05 gets the beer down to 1.011 again I should be at 5.7- 5.8% ABV, which I can live with and the dry hops will give it plenty of flavor so the reduced 15 minute addition shouldn't hurt anything.
So what I took away from this: check you mill settings before using, have DME on hand, double check HLT to make sure it's empty, check pre-boil gravity before any hops goes in, be prepared with spreadsheets to calculate what recovery actions are required if something goes wrong, or get more familiar with beersmith to be sure I understand the calcs.
So my question, is there anything I should have done differently? I'm particularly concerned about missing the pH target by that much and what I did to the mash after that, I haven't had that happen before and I don't know enough about the science to draw any conclusions. I may do a little more research on the topic then post a separate question about that over in the brew science forum.
Thanks for any advice you may offer.