Mini-Mashing and MASSIVE extraction woes...

Long post, I know, but you'd be a LIFE SAVER if you could give me any advice here!


So in the last 2 weeks I've done more brewing than I've done in the past year or so, as I have a couple of weeks before summer classes start, and I have very little time to brew during school. I turned a Special Bitter that I brewed a week ago Thursday into my Tap-A-Draft system today (it was clear, at FG, and DELICIOUS) to condition, and moved a Cream Ale I brewed the same day over to a secondary to clear (apparently 1056 doesn't drop bright as quickly as I remember it doing). It was quite tasty as well. Both beers tasted GOOD out of the fermentors, which has NEVER happened to me before and, after several ruined/infected batches over the last couple of years, I was positively euphoric about these results.
Nonetheless, both of those beers were mini-mashes, as was the barleywine I did today, and I had HORRIBLE extraction on all three. I hadn't done a mini mash since about a year and a half ago, when I'd done two, and had above expected extraction on both of them (i.e. with my extract added my OG was actually a bit high). Those mashes were, I believe, 2 lbs or 2.5 lbs of grain. My 'system' is a stainless steel Emeril's collander which fits inside a matching 8 QT stainless pot. It's a spaghetti strainer, basically. So I mash, drain the runnings, and slowly run a stream of water (via my auto-siphon) over the mash-bed to sparge. My mash temps were all good, as were my sparge temps. In fact, today, I even mashed (3.5 lbs) for 90 minutes at 150, hoping to get better extraction, and I was still some 10 pts. shy of my pre-boil target gravity as per Beer Smith. I had to (as last week) add DME, but today I ran out, and so I opted for a longer boil (see my other post).
WHAT am I doing wrong? The grains come pre-crushed from NB, who seem to know their stuff. Last week in both beers I used small amounts of flaked adjuncts, without rice hulls. Is this a mistake? I was told for a mini mash, I prob. wouldn't use rice hulls, and so I didn't use them. I figured the gummy flaked maize and flaked barley might have been responsible, but today, I just had Maris Otter and Carapils, as well as some crystal. Same issue. Is it because I'm using MORE grain than the 2 lbs originally used? What can I do, if anything? I have a 5 gal. cooler mash-tun and COULD almost do AG, but I don't want to until I (a) find a way to insulate it better, and (b) figure out WHAT I'm DOING WRONG, so I don't ruin a whole batch! Thanks for ANY help you can give me!

 

For that particular mash...

-3 lbs Maris Otter (Warminster, if that matters)
-8 oz. Carapils
-16 oz. crystal, 4 oz. pale chocolate (I forgot to mash these steeping grains until the end...let them go another 30 min, on top of the already 60 min of the mini-mash). Mash temp was between 149-152. 42oz of water for each pound of grain, and same for the sparge, as per what I read long ago in some clone book. Measured the gravity after all fermentables were added to boil kettle with the water. Stirred well, took measure with eyedropper from a measuring cup full that I pulled out. Let sample cool to pretty much room temp (bulb of eyedropper submerged in cold water), measured via calibrated refractometer. My OG that I was shooting for was 1.077; I think I hit 1.066. I added extracts and a touch more sugar, and got it up to 1.071. I was out of extract, and the recipe already had a decent amount of sugar in it, so I just decided to go with it. Later I decided to do a 2-hr boil, which Beer Smith somehow didn't correct for, and my OG was WAY high, back into the barleywine range and far beyond what I'd originally expected, even without my mash woes. Anything else, juts ask!

 

Oh, and Vikeman, sorry, I forgot to mention the method! I add the preheated water to the grain in the small kettle, bust out all the doughballs and mix thoroughly, cover with tinfoil to maintain mash temps, put on the burner if I need to bump up the temp, etc. After the mash is complete, I pour the grain/water into the strainer (which is held above another pot) to drain. After this, I sprinkle the heated sparge water (170 degrees) via some tubing over the grain, draining it into the pot.

 

Thanks! I thought I'd always read that sparge water was to be about 170 degrees, and that anything much higher could extract tannins and other nasties. Am I way off here? What's a better temp?

 

For the way I'm doing it with the mini-mashes with this particular equipment, would it be better/easier to submerge the 'collander' piece the kettle-full of sparge water instead, and then drain it, doing more of a 'batch sparge' thing?