Hi everyone,
Warning, long post.
I posted a year or so back about having continuous mega low SG when brewing with all grain. I've still got problems with it and tried again today with a Belgian Dubbel recipe so while it's all in memory will try and explain what I did and some queries about what I might be doing wrong/possible changes for the next brew.
The recipe was the one from beerandbrewing.com but I had to change a couple of malts as I didn't have the ones specified:
5lb Maris Otter
4lb Pilsner Malt (didn't have Belgian, so used German)
1lb Munich
1lb Wheat (didn't have any malted red wheat)
1lb Aromatic (didn't have any Victory)
0.5lb Special B
0.5lb Carapils
28g Black Patent
28 Styrian Goldings 3.9% AA at 60mins
14g Sryrian Goldings 3.9% AA at 20mins
1lb Dark Candi syrup pre boil (went slightly higher as hoped it might help the SG)
Yeast Wyeast Belgian Ale 1214 with a 2 litre starter.
I mashed at 65°c / 149f for 75mins with 18.5 litres water. Mash tun is a 5 gallon Cube style cooler, with a 12" bazooka screen.
It said 64°c at the end, so didn't lose much temperature.
I did batch sparging and ran 2.5 uk gallons of wort before adding 19.4litres of sparge water at around 76°c/168f before running enough to reach just over 5 gallons (my brewing kettle I think is about 5.5 gallons, but I'm not 100%. I inherited it and original thought it was 6 but probably should check it). There was about another half gallon but I left that in the tun.
These water amounts I've used are from beersmith3. I also didn't open the valve fully when sparging but have seen people say if you batch sparge to let it drain quickly?. I let it flow about half open.
I added the candi syrup and took a SG reading which when adjusted for the temperature said it was going to be about 1.050. The recipe suggests around the 1.070. So if I used beersmith3 to work out my BH efficiency it'd be about 41% which is horrific!
Boiled for an hour, chilled and took SG again and it was 1.050. I added the yeast and with the starter it's almost 5 gallons worth.
I've attached a picture of the recipe in beersmith, it suggests it will be virtually black in colour but it isn't. The picture of the sg is with the flash so appears lighter and I know the hydrometer is crooked but it was 1.050 when it was stable.
So last time I queried this, most said it probably was the crush with the malt, I've since changed to using the Malt Miller website which has a pretty decent following. All grains are crushed pretty well as far as I can tell.
My water is 7.6 on the ph, is hard water and not treated with softener, which some thought might be iffy. I'm going to try adding some lactic acid to bring it down to 5.6 for the next attempt.
Am I using too much water when sparging? the second running's are always considerably lower in colour. I know it's the norm for it to be less but just wondered.
Is my mash tun not great, should I try and upgrade to one of the rubbermaid style ones with a false bottom?
I even emailed my local brewery and their head brewer got back to me. He said my last brew at 66°c is at the higher end and might impact extraction. He asked about things like how much sparge water/method I sparge and offered to check the recipe I was using. But unfortunately didn't reply afterwards. Corona etc I imagine and they've been making some new beers of late so probably took priority. I didn't want to email again and appear pushy.
Sorry for the long post, I just tried to get as much detail to help anyone who might have a suggestion for me. It's a bit disheartening as whenever I've tried to brew a bog standard middle of the road IPA at around 4.5% or so it comes out at about 3% and the only ones I've had marginal success with in the past have been big abv beers that still at times have required me throwing dme at it once it's done.
A huge thanks if anyone can help again, and sorry for asking the same question (albeit a year or so later).
Cheers,
Howard
Warning, long post.
I posted a year or so back about having continuous mega low SG when brewing with all grain. I've still got problems with it and tried again today with a Belgian Dubbel recipe so while it's all in memory will try and explain what I did and some queries about what I might be doing wrong/possible changes for the next brew.
The recipe was the one from beerandbrewing.com but I had to change a couple of malts as I didn't have the ones specified:
5lb Maris Otter
4lb Pilsner Malt (didn't have Belgian, so used German)
1lb Munich
1lb Wheat (didn't have any malted red wheat)
1lb Aromatic (didn't have any Victory)
0.5lb Special B
0.5lb Carapils
28g Black Patent
28 Styrian Goldings 3.9% AA at 60mins
14g Sryrian Goldings 3.9% AA at 20mins
1lb Dark Candi syrup pre boil (went slightly higher as hoped it might help the SG)
Yeast Wyeast Belgian Ale 1214 with a 2 litre starter.
I mashed at 65°c / 149f for 75mins with 18.5 litres water. Mash tun is a 5 gallon Cube style cooler, with a 12" bazooka screen.
It said 64°c at the end, so didn't lose much temperature.
I did batch sparging and ran 2.5 uk gallons of wort before adding 19.4litres of sparge water at around 76°c/168f before running enough to reach just over 5 gallons (my brewing kettle I think is about 5.5 gallons, but I'm not 100%. I inherited it and original thought it was 6 but probably should check it). There was about another half gallon but I left that in the tun.
These water amounts I've used are from beersmith3. I also didn't open the valve fully when sparging but have seen people say if you batch sparge to let it drain quickly?. I let it flow about half open.
I added the candi syrup and took a SG reading which when adjusted for the temperature said it was going to be about 1.050. The recipe suggests around the 1.070. So if I used beersmith3 to work out my BH efficiency it'd be about 41% which is horrific!
Boiled for an hour, chilled and took SG again and it was 1.050. I added the yeast and with the starter it's almost 5 gallons worth.
I've attached a picture of the recipe in beersmith, it suggests it will be virtually black in colour but it isn't. The picture of the sg is with the flash so appears lighter and I know the hydrometer is crooked but it was 1.050 when it was stable.
So last time I queried this, most said it probably was the crush with the malt, I've since changed to using the Malt Miller website which has a pretty decent following. All grains are crushed pretty well as far as I can tell.
My water is 7.6 on the ph, is hard water and not treated with softener, which some thought might be iffy. I'm going to try adding some lactic acid to bring it down to 5.6 for the next attempt.
Am I using too much water when sparging? the second running's are always considerably lower in colour. I know it's the norm for it to be less but just wondered.
Is my mash tun not great, should I try and upgrade to one of the rubbermaid style ones with a false bottom?
I even emailed my local brewery and their head brewer got back to me. He said my last brew at 66°c is at the higher end and might impact extraction. He asked about things like how much sparge water/method I sparge and offered to check the recipe I was using. But unfortunately didn't reply afterwards. Corona etc I imagine and they've been making some new beers of late so probably took priority. I didn't want to email again and appear pushy.
Sorry for the long post, I just tried to get as much detail to help anyone who might have a suggestion for me. It's a bit disheartening as whenever I've tried to brew a bog standard middle of the road IPA at around 4.5% or so it comes out at about 3% and the only ones I've had marginal success with in the past have been big abv beers that still at times have required me throwing dme at it once it's done.
A huge thanks if anyone can help again, and sorry for asking the same question (albeit a year or so later).
Cheers,
Howard