cubbiebrewer
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- Nov 17, 2013
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Ok, so I have been brewing all grain semi regularly for the past 3 years. Up until this year I have been doing 5 gallon batches and have never really come across a problem with hitting my target starting gravity. I have now moved up to 10 gallon batches (only 2 so far) and the only changes to my equipment are a new 15 gallon boil kettle and a new square cooler mash tun with a ss braided hose large enough for the batches I'm doing (sorry, don't know the exact size, a little older cooler but I know its big enough).
So this weekend I did a kristallweizen recipe as follows:
12 lbs red wheat
4.5 lbs vienna
4.5 lbs us 2row
.5 lb carahells
1.5 oz hallertau - 60 min
.5 oz hallertau - 10 min
wyeast german wheat 3333
Everything went smoothly. Mashed in 8.5 gal water and settled in at 152 F and only dropped 2 degrees throughout the mash. Sparged with 7 gal water and it settled in at 169 F for an additional 20 minutes. The expected starting gravity was 1.050, but i only managed 1.040. This reading was taken twice with 70 F wort with a hydrometer. The grains were crushed at my lhbs where I have never had any issues.
Any thoughts as to what might have caused this drop in efficiency? The only things I can think of would be a bad grain crush though I feel that is highly unlikely because other than the last two batches, both of which are in the new mash tun, I have never had any issue with a crush of the grains before from my lhbs, or that it is just the cooler (although I don't know what it could be about it since it does its job and holds the heat throughout the initial mash). Any help would be greatly appreciated!
So this weekend I did a kristallweizen recipe as follows:
12 lbs red wheat
4.5 lbs vienna
4.5 lbs us 2row
.5 lb carahells
1.5 oz hallertau - 60 min
.5 oz hallertau - 10 min
wyeast german wheat 3333
Everything went smoothly. Mashed in 8.5 gal water and settled in at 152 F and only dropped 2 degrees throughout the mash. Sparged with 7 gal water and it settled in at 169 F for an additional 20 minutes. The expected starting gravity was 1.050, but i only managed 1.040. This reading was taken twice with 70 F wort with a hydrometer. The grains were crushed at my lhbs where I have never had any issues.
Any thoughts as to what might have caused this drop in efficiency? The only things I can think of would be a bad grain crush though I feel that is highly unlikely because other than the last two batches, both of which are in the new mash tun, I have never had any issue with a crush of the grains before from my lhbs, or that it is just the cooler (although I don't know what it could be about it since it does its job and holds the heat throughout the initial mash). Any help would be greatly appreciated!