dantheman39
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Long time reader, first time poster. Sorry it's a novel:
I just recently did my first brew in about 10 years (partial-mash) and had a few issues during the process. I had only done a few extract recipes in the past with decent success (one failure due to poor sanitization), but I'm back at it and already hooked this time, although I seemingly should have chosen a simpler recipe to get started again.
The recipe was supposed to be a light and slightly citrusy American wheat style beer similar to Goose Island 312, which I adapted from a few recipes found on several different brewing forums. Planned Recipe was as follows:
Since I don't have an all-grain setup, I modified the recipe by deciding to mini-mash the 3lbs of Torrified Wheat, and replaced the 5lbs of 2-Row Malt with 3lbs of Briess Light DME, per a conversion table that I've seen widely distributed. I added .25lbs of Light DME to make a total of 3.25lbs, thinking I wanted slightly more than 5 gallons in the fermenter to account for loss, and because I wanted the wheat malt to be a slightly lower percentage of the final batch to keep the brew lighter.
Issue #1 came with the mini-mash of the Torrified Wheat. I brought one gallon (4 quarts) of mash water water to a strike temperature of 165degF in a clean and sanitized dutch oven limed with a grain bag on the stovetop. I removed from the burner, poured in the 3lbs of torrified wheat, stirred, and re-checked the temperature which was down to about 153degF after adding the grain... Perfect! I closed the lid on the Dutch Oven and placed it in my kitchen oven, which was warmed to a stable 150degF to maintain my mash temperature.
About 30 minutes into the 60 minute mash, I opened everything up to check the temperature again and stir the grains-- this is when I realized I may have a problem. Temp was good, but it seemed like I was pretty low on water, but thought this might be normal as it was my first mash and I had followed the 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound guideline to the tee. I closed it up and put it back in the warm oven to finish. 30 minutes later at the end of the mash, there was absolutely no water left in the pot. The grains were very saturated and "puffed up", and there was a tiny bit of sugary syrup in the bottom of the pot, but no water remained. Temperature was still right on at 150.
I "tea bagged" the grain bag in my pre-heated 2 gallons of sparge water, let it soak for 10 minutes while lifting or agitating it often, and squeezed the grain bag gently (despite conflicting reports of whether this increases tannins or not) to try to get as much water and sugar as I could out of the grain. I added this sparge water and any sugary syrup that I could get out of the dutch oven to 3 gallons of water that I had ready in my brew pot just shy of boiling, along with 1.75 lbs of the pale DME to make sure I'd have enough pH for the 60 min hops to work properly when I started the boil.
Realizing that I had a major efficiency problem, I took a sample and waited for it to cool to 70 deg, which I encouraged by running cool water along the outside of the thief containing the sample. Hydrometer reading seemed pretty low to me, at only 1.020. I used a formula and calculation (seen here: http://i.imgur.com/32FCHfw.jpg) to determine that I needed 2.875lbs of additional DME to reach my target OG of 1.041. Knowing I only had planned on adding 1.5 more pounds of pale DME, this meant I only achieved about 26% efficiency with the partial mash, as the remaining 1.375lbs of DME that I would need to achieve my OG should have come from my torrified wheat mash. (Sound logic, I think).
As luck would have it I had purchased 1lb of Briess light Wheat DME as well on a whim, but my local store is not exactly local so I had to make up the extra .375lbs with more plain pale DME that I had on hand. I added 1.875lbs of pale and 1lb of wheat with 15 minutes left in the boil. I owe it to my assistant brewer for keeping to my hop schedule while I worked through the chaos of all of this algebra that I hadn't done since high school to figure out how to fix this mess we had gotten into.
Cue issue #2: At the end of the boil, still worrying about the mixture but thinking things had calmed down finally, I ran around the side of the house to turn on the water to my brand new (read as: untested) wort chiller that I had put into the boiling wort at the 10 minute mark. I returned a few moments later to find my assistant brewer shouting and shielding the water that was shooting out of the leaky hose clamp away from the brew pot, and estimating that about a quarter to a half cup of water sprayed in there before she caught it. F%*#. I hope the copper of the chiller and the wort itself was still hot enough that anything that could have come from the hose water in those first few seconds post boil would be killed. That hose is new two months ago and used very regularly, so there shouldn't have been any sediment or anything like that in the line and the tiny hole it was spraying through between the copper and plastic tubing at the site of the loose hose clamp would have filtered out all but the smallest particles anyway. I hope. It also took the wort about 45 minutes to cool down, which I think is because my ground water here that was running through the chiller isn't super cold. Not exactly the "cold break" I was going for.
In the end, I transferred the wort to the clean and sanitized fermenter at 70 degrees, topped it off from 4.75 up to 5.25 gallons with sterile water, stirred and took a hydrometer reading, and was almost exactly on the mark at 1.042. How that happened I'll never know. I aerated, pitched the yeast, and called it a day.
It's been fermenting in a water-bath (swamp cooler?) in my basement with a stable temperature of 69 degrees for about 35 hours and the airlock is bubbling nicely.
Here is a Beersmith recipe that I recreated with "what actually happened" on brew day, with the torrified wheat amount modified to account for the amout that I believe I actually got out of it, and the increases to the DME included: http://i.imgur.com/uQU2qmP.jpg
Amy input from more experienced brewers on what we did right or wrong, or on the outlook of our final product given the few issues I had would be much appreciated. I am mostly curious why I had such a problem with the torrified wheat soaking up every drop of the mash water, as its got me spooked a bit about trying another partial-mash brew. It seems the quick mid-brew adjustment was successful since we achieved the correct OG, but any input on that is welcomed and appreciated as well.
Cheers!
I just recently did my first brew in about 10 years (partial-mash) and had a few issues during the process. I had only done a few extract recipes in the past with decent success (one failure due to poor sanitization), but I'm back at it and already hooked this time, although I seemingly should have chosen a simpler recipe to get started again.
The recipe was supposed to be a light and slightly citrusy American wheat style beer similar to Goose Island 312, which I adapted from a few recipes found on several different brewing forums. Planned Recipe was as follows:
Since I don't have an all-grain setup, I modified the recipe by deciding to mini-mash the 3lbs of Torrified Wheat, and replaced the 5lbs of 2-Row Malt with 3lbs of Briess Light DME, per a conversion table that I've seen widely distributed. I added .25lbs of Light DME to make a total of 3.25lbs, thinking I wanted slightly more than 5 gallons in the fermenter to account for loss, and because I wanted the wheat malt to be a slightly lower percentage of the final batch to keep the brew lighter.
Issue #1 came with the mini-mash of the Torrified Wheat. I brought one gallon (4 quarts) of mash water water to a strike temperature of 165degF in a clean and sanitized dutch oven limed with a grain bag on the stovetop. I removed from the burner, poured in the 3lbs of torrified wheat, stirred, and re-checked the temperature which was down to about 153degF after adding the grain... Perfect! I closed the lid on the Dutch Oven and placed it in my kitchen oven, which was warmed to a stable 150degF to maintain my mash temperature.
About 30 minutes into the 60 minute mash, I opened everything up to check the temperature again and stir the grains-- this is when I realized I may have a problem. Temp was good, but it seemed like I was pretty low on water, but thought this might be normal as it was my first mash and I had followed the 1.25-1.5 quarts of water per pound guideline to the tee. I closed it up and put it back in the warm oven to finish. 30 minutes later at the end of the mash, there was absolutely no water left in the pot. The grains were very saturated and "puffed up", and there was a tiny bit of sugary syrup in the bottom of the pot, but no water remained. Temperature was still right on at 150.
I "tea bagged" the grain bag in my pre-heated 2 gallons of sparge water, let it soak for 10 minutes while lifting or agitating it often, and squeezed the grain bag gently (despite conflicting reports of whether this increases tannins or not) to try to get as much water and sugar as I could out of the grain. I added this sparge water and any sugary syrup that I could get out of the dutch oven to 3 gallons of water that I had ready in my brew pot just shy of boiling, along with 1.75 lbs of the pale DME to make sure I'd have enough pH for the 60 min hops to work properly when I started the boil.
Realizing that I had a major efficiency problem, I took a sample and waited for it to cool to 70 deg, which I encouraged by running cool water along the outside of the thief containing the sample. Hydrometer reading seemed pretty low to me, at only 1.020. I used a formula and calculation (seen here: http://i.imgur.com/32FCHfw.jpg) to determine that I needed 2.875lbs of additional DME to reach my target OG of 1.041. Knowing I only had planned on adding 1.5 more pounds of pale DME, this meant I only achieved about 26% efficiency with the partial mash, as the remaining 1.375lbs of DME that I would need to achieve my OG should have come from my torrified wheat mash. (Sound logic, I think).
As luck would have it I had purchased 1lb of Briess light Wheat DME as well on a whim, but my local store is not exactly local so I had to make up the extra .375lbs with more plain pale DME that I had on hand. I added 1.875lbs of pale and 1lb of wheat with 15 minutes left in the boil. I owe it to my assistant brewer for keeping to my hop schedule while I worked through the chaos of all of this algebra that I hadn't done since high school to figure out how to fix this mess we had gotten into.
Cue issue #2: At the end of the boil, still worrying about the mixture but thinking things had calmed down finally, I ran around the side of the house to turn on the water to my brand new (read as: untested) wort chiller that I had put into the boiling wort at the 10 minute mark. I returned a few moments later to find my assistant brewer shouting and shielding the water that was shooting out of the leaky hose clamp away from the brew pot, and estimating that about a quarter to a half cup of water sprayed in there before she caught it. F%*#. I hope the copper of the chiller and the wort itself was still hot enough that anything that could have come from the hose water in those first few seconds post boil would be killed. That hose is new two months ago and used very regularly, so there shouldn't have been any sediment or anything like that in the line and the tiny hole it was spraying through between the copper and plastic tubing at the site of the loose hose clamp would have filtered out all but the smallest particles anyway. I hope. It also took the wort about 45 minutes to cool down, which I think is because my ground water here that was running through the chiller isn't super cold. Not exactly the "cold break" I was going for.
In the end, I transferred the wort to the clean and sanitized fermenter at 70 degrees, topped it off from 4.75 up to 5.25 gallons with sterile water, stirred and took a hydrometer reading, and was almost exactly on the mark at 1.042. How that happened I'll never know. I aerated, pitched the yeast, and called it a day.
It's been fermenting in a water-bath (swamp cooler?) in my basement with a stable temperature of 69 degrees for about 35 hours and the airlock is bubbling nicely.
Here is a Beersmith recipe that I recreated with "what actually happened" on brew day, with the torrified wheat amount modified to account for the amout that I believe I actually got out of it, and the increases to the DME included: http://i.imgur.com/uQU2qmP.jpg
Amy input from more experienced brewers on what we did right or wrong, or on the outlook of our final product given the few issues I had would be much appreciated. I am mostly curious why I had such a problem with the torrified wheat soaking up every drop of the mash water, as its got me spooked a bit about trying another partial-mash brew. It seems the quick mid-brew adjustment was successful since we achieved the correct OG, but any input on that is welcomed and appreciated as well.
Cheers! 
