Lordy... lordy... lordy...
Well, did my first AG today. It was a modified Zombie Dust clone with all Citra with a target OG of 1.073. All kinds of stuff went wrong.
Let's start with efficiency; it wasn't great (read: kinda horrible actually). I nailed my sach. rest temp (152) so that was awesome but I think my eff. sucked for two main reasons: 1) had the grain milled at LHBS and they need to get a better crush - going to look into some way to mill my own grain but don't have the moola for a mill at this point and 2) I think I sparged waaaaaay too quick. Instead of allowing an extended period of time to sparge, I wound up shooting through it with about 15 minutes. To boot, I used way too much strike water; used about 1.75 qt per lb (13.5lb grist). Needed to let it sit and sparge for a good long time but didn't. Learned my lesson there.
Q1: How long do you guys sparge for (IE: drain off your spage)? Is there a rule of thumb like: If your sparge water is 5 gal, your grain bill is 13lbs, magic calculation... sparge for X minutes? Based on my calculates, my efficiency was under 60%. BOO!
Q2: Home made grain mill ideas under 50 bucks?
So after this, I was left with 8.5 gallons for a projected 6 gallon batch. I figured, "No sweat. Just extend the boil 30 minutes to boil off a bit more water and then after that, bulk up with DME to try to your my numbers...". Simple. Naw. Daddy duties popped in and my additional 30 minutes morphed into over an hour. So my total boil time was around 120 or 130 minutes. I know there will be a very pronounced caramel flavor...
Q3: Are there negatives with having a boil for that long? Over double what I wanted... is there going to be a problem with tannins? Anything else? I know I am pretty much locked into it at this point but just looking to know what the negatives are going to be in advance.
All of this said, I did learn a couple of things:
- For all that is holy, if you have a little one running around, wait for mommy to play baby wrangler! Doing both is impossible. I know the order: daddy duties and then beer....but it sucks to know that your beer is not at all turning out the way you want because you tried to cram in a brew day. Just wait when the timing is better
- START EARLY! Wake up and brew. If you like sleep and you are not a night person (or you have a little one that has involuntarily made you a morning person) just wait. Don't cram it in.
Well, did my first AG today. It was a modified Zombie Dust clone with all Citra with a target OG of 1.073. All kinds of stuff went wrong.
Let's start with efficiency; it wasn't great (read: kinda horrible actually). I nailed my sach. rest temp (152) so that was awesome but I think my eff. sucked for two main reasons: 1) had the grain milled at LHBS and they need to get a better crush - going to look into some way to mill my own grain but don't have the moola for a mill at this point and 2) I think I sparged waaaaaay too quick. Instead of allowing an extended period of time to sparge, I wound up shooting through it with about 15 minutes. To boot, I used way too much strike water; used about 1.75 qt per lb (13.5lb grist). Needed to let it sit and sparge for a good long time but didn't. Learned my lesson there.
Q1: How long do you guys sparge for (IE: drain off your spage)? Is there a rule of thumb like: If your sparge water is 5 gal, your grain bill is 13lbs, magic calculation... sparge for X minutes? Based on my calculates, my efficiency was under 60%. BOO!
Q2: Home made grain mill ideas under 50 bucks?
So after this, I was left with 8.5 gallons for a projected 6 gallon batch. I figured, "No sweat. Just extend the boil 30 minutes to boil off a bit more water and then after that, bulk up with DME to try to your my numbers...". Simple. Naw. Daddy duties popped in and my additional 30 minutes morphed into over an hour. So my total boil time was around 120 or 130 minutes. I know there will be a very pronounced caramel flavor...
Q3: Are there negatives with having a boil for that long? Over double what I wanted... is there going to be a problem with tannins? Anything else? I know I am pretty much locked into it at this point but just looking to know what the negatives are going to be in advance.
All of this said, I did learn a couple of things:
- For all that is holy, if you have a little one running around, wait for mommy to play baby wrangler! Doing both is impossible. I know the order: daddy duties and then beer....but it sucks to know that your beer is not at all turning out the way you want because you tried to cram in a brew day. Just wait when the timing is better
- START EARLY! Wake up and brew. If you like sleep and you are not a night person (or you have a little one that has involuntarily made you a morning person) just wait. Don't cram it in.