Recent content by azeeb

This calculator is as good as any for estimating. http://seanterrill.com/2012/01/06/refractometer-calculator/ I use it, and while it may not be 100% accurate, I care more about how my beer tastes then what the FG or ABV is.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? pH of the source water doesn't make any difference, only the pH of the mash.

pH isn't really relevent when you are talking about water that has virtually no minerals in it. The pH meter used to do the testing probably isn't capable of making an accurate measurement in water with no ions in it. There is literally no buffer, so the pH can drift all over the place. The...

I agree 100%. If your pH is far out of spec (5.8-6.0 is far out of spec), the enzymes will not be active and you won't get full conversion. This will definitely effect efficiency. Remember pH is a log scale, so a pH of 5.0 is 10 times more acidic than a pH of 6.0. That is a big difference.

The maximum eff. you can get batch sparging is pretty easy to calculate. It is straight forward math. Here are the equations: http://home.roadrunner.com/~brewbeer/files/nbsparge.html I have broke 90% many times on beers smaller than 1.050. I am skeptical that you did it on a 1.080...

I'm using a march 809 food grade pump. Most big homebrew shops have them. I think I bought mine from northern brewer.

This really isn't any different than doing a no-sparge. This is what I do on my RIMS system with just one cooler and one boil kettle. I've been doing it this way for a couple years. On a mid size 1.050ish beer the eff. is about 10% lower than batch sparging. On smaller beers the difference...

I agree with this. Check the gravity of the total pre-boil wort, and stop when it gets to where it needs to be. The gravity of the runnings don't matter so much, as long as they stay above 1.010 or so.

Yes, but the original poster said he boiled the extra volume off. After the boil, there was no extra volume, only the extra sugar.

No that is not correct. If you sparge longer you get more sugar in your kettle and your final post boil gravity will be higher. Assuming you boil longer to boil off the extra water, which the original poster said he did.

Buy a turkey fryer, a chiller, and a bucket or 2. Do a search for Brew-In-A-Bag (BIAB). That and a couple other small misc. items should be all you need to get started.

I'm not sure how you figure that. Sparging an extra gallon didn't remove sugar from his boil kettle, it added it.

Try sparging slower next time. Your fly sparge technique isn't doing an effective job at rinsing the sugar, which is why you had to use more water than you intended. Most likely because you are going to fast. If you don't want to wait, try batch sparging instead.

I get that much break, especially when using german malts. I brewed an alt this week, and had to fight to keep it from boiling over for almost 15 minutes. I probably left a gallon of break material / sludge behind in the kettle. I usually brew 6 gallons to compensate.

It's not going to help you now, but the best way is not to put all those solids in your fermentor in the first place. I usually let everything settle out in my kettle after chilling for an hour or so, and then drain off the top into my fermentor.