Dead Money Duke
Member
I'm trying to move from extract to partial mash. I have a 3 kettle setup, so maybe I'm making a mistake of trying to do a partial mash in a mash tun instead of a single kettle. Anyway, I made an IPA today that came in far too low: 1.036. Target was 1.05. I believe I used too much mash water? I mashed at 153F for 45 minutes, but I couldn't get my wort pump moving with the recommended water for 3 lbs of grain. So, I had to increase the mash water which resulted in a soupy mash. The rest of the process went fine and I added 6 lbs of liquid extract to the boil. My yield was a bit over target, so I probably also sparged in too much water. I mean, I hit the calculated goal of 7G pre boil, but that may have been too high and my problem is my equipment profile in brewfather.
One problem I did not have was temperature control. The mash stayed within 2F of the HLT the entire time.
Am I doing it wrong by trying to do a partial mash + sparge, when I should just do the partial mash in the boil kettle like a steep? I will likely do this recipe again and try that method and then that will help me isolate which part of the process I'm messing up. Alternatively, I could try an all grain version of the recipe and then I'd have a larger grain bill, larger resulting mash water requirement, and less of a problem getting the mash water to circulate.
My question is: what's a good process for working through this error and isolating where things might've gone wrong?
At this point I'm brewing more than I can possibly drink, just to try and improve my process...
One problem I did not have was temperature control. The mash stayed within 2F of the HLT the entire time.
Am I doing it wrong by trying to do a partial mash + sparge, when I should just do the partial mash in the boil kettle like a steep? I will likely do this recipe again and try that method and then that will help me isolate which part of the process I'm messing up. Alternatively, I could try an all grain version of the recipe and then I'd have a larger grain bill, larger resulting mash water requirement, and less of a problem getting the mash water to circulate.
My question is: what's a good process for working through this error and isolating where things might've gone wrong?
At this point I'm brewing more than I can possibly drink, just to try and improve my process...