Today I switched over to all grain by brewing up a 1 gallon batch of a simple American wheat. I used a grain sock to mash the grains in, so I guess it would be considered the "BIAB" method. After mashing, I rinsed the sock over the boiling pit with hot water to extract the rest of the sugars. Apparently, the OG is support to be around 1.048, but I ended up with an OG of 1.022!! Why could I have done wrong?
Og very low!
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woknblues
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Was your sample warm? That can thin your wort and leave you with a low gravity reading. Also, your crush. How did it look?
woknblues
Well-Known Member
85 would only drop a couple of points. I suspect the crush.
I'm not really sure how fine it should be... This is my first all grain batch but my LBS is known for its quality and I'm there quite frequently picking up extract batches. The guy milled everything up for me right there when I picked it out
woknblues
Well-Known Member
You mash for an hour or so?
This... and what temp?
woknblues
Well-Known Member
I find it unlikely that the majority of it didn't convert in a BIAB scenario with lots of stirring, but I always mash for an hour in general. Strange. I just wonder if you volume calculation was off or something. Your mash temps are right on for a good extraction. It looks like you "mashed out" and rinsed the grains and THEN, topped to a gallon. Something might be off. A 1 gallon bath doesn't have a lot of wiggle room in error. Not saying thats what it is, but..
Or it was just old grain? Another unlikely given your description, but I don't really know.
True, I normally wouldn't wanna do a 1 gallon batch, but I wanna try to experiment with some mangoes and various things and don't feel like messing up an entire 5 haha. And yeah I mashed in 3 quarts, then rinsed grains with a gallon on 160 degree water. After boil off, it was just a little under a gallon, so I added about 1/8th of a gallon water to top it off
Hmmm, im leaning towards the crush of the grain then.
Could be not all the grain got exposure having it In a muslin sack. Could if had dough balls or dry clumps of grain in the middle of the sack. Could be another possibility. Even with a poor crush missing 20points of OG seems like a lot to lose just due to bad crush.
Just my .02. No expert by far.
Just my .02. No expert by far.
How much grain in the 3qt? Also, like GilSwill said, how tightly compacted in the bag was the grain? If it was really tight, you may not have rinsed all the sugars out during the rinse, or quite possibly not even converted all of the sugars. If you had it all really tight in a bag, you basically created a big doughball. When you get doughballs in traditional mashes, you'll instantly lose efficiency. Also, if you did have it too tight, then while rinsing the grains you probably didn't get through the center of the bag/grains. The water will take the path of least resistance, which would be the outside of this tightly compacted grain bag.
Do you have a link to which bag you were using, and can you provide how much grain went into the bag? I don't think the crush of the grains would throw it off by 20 points either...
We'll figure it out! My best advice: Don't give up on all-grain brewing!
Cheers.
Do you have a link to which bag you were using, and can you provide how much grain went into the bag? I don't think the crush of the grains would throw it off by 20 points either...
We'll figure it out! My best advice: Don't give up on all-grain brewing!
Cheers.
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