Brewing Activities (2019)

Last 2019 day of brewing for me and got a lot done. Bottled my first try at an india pale lager with huell melon and mandarina bavaria hops, moved the milkshake ipa to secondary on top of some pureed mango and strawberries, and brewed up a porter that i plan to move to 5 one gallon fermentors and add something different to each.

It's been a good year of brewing so looking forward to brewing some new things in 2020!

 

Got the yeast pitched with 3 hours to spare. Straining wort out of wet bread crumbs is not easy. Kvass must be Russian for sparging cement. This seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a 1.031OG batch. Smells really good, though. The wheat, rye, and molasses of the bread are evident. The sour is pleasant. Collectively, there is something that reminds me of honey. I've had oxidation on my mind, so I can't help wondering if that is part of the character I am smelling. At least at this wort stage, the spices are fragrant; coriander, ginger, and orange peel were steeped at flameou, cooled t and held at 180 F for 20 minutes.

 

Just now starting the mash on our 4th annual New Year’s Imperial Stout. Shooting for a FG of 1.035. Adding dutched cocoa late in the boil and some combination of coffee, bourbon, maybe vanilla, and maybe cinnamon at kegging. Gotta tread lightly with the cinnamon though.

 

First beer of the new year. Was hoping a new 2020 thread would have been started. This is my first all-grain beer. It’s a Northern England Brown Ale.
8lbs Marris otter
1lb British cara-something 60L
.25 lb chocolate malt
Had a local homebrew shop grind for me so not sure of the brands or mill gap.
Used 1oz Kenting hops and 1oz fuggle
White labs London ale yeast
Don’t know if I hit my OG gravity the recipe called for. Seemed like I read 1.060 after it cooled and the recipe said shot for 1.043 will post pics when it’s bottling day

 

https://imgur.com/a/O2YFrhr Paste where you type. Don't use the link or image button.

 

Is it possible to get a 1.060 beer with just over 9 lbs of grain (assuming 5 gallon batch)? I’m guessing you misread your hydrometer. Congrats on your first all grain.

 

I bottled a mixed culture sour the other day that was aged on blueberries and vanilla bean. And that concludes 2019 brewing activities. Cheers!

 

Plugging in those items into a calculator says you'd need 86% efficiency for 5 gallons to get 1.060. Certainly very high and maybe not likely but it is possible.

 

Yep, possible but unlikely, particularly for a first all grain batch. More likely, and I see this all the time, is that the wort was boiled down to something less than 5 gallons.

 

Got it lol

 

So I had a little over five gallons after the boil. I took a reading after the mash in and sparge and it was 1.050 which I didn’t think was right. I figured I just ain’t doing it right. I let it cool also. Then after the boil I read it at what I think was 1.060 when cooled. I added a link with photos. Also I forgot to put in my OP that I added 2lbs of raw honey at the end of the boil.https://imgur.com/a/XAYoTwi

 

What was the wort temp when you read the hydrometer, and did you use a gravity correction calculator to adjust hydrometer reading? That might make a considerable difference if your wort was well above 100°.
Did the recipe call for the 2 lbs of honey? If I entered it correctly in BrewCipher that would add about 14 points.

 

Gravities actually read lower than they should when the temp is higher than the calibration temp.

 

So that's at least one reason for a higher than expected gravity reading. Or put another way, computed mash efficiency would be quite a bit lower if accounting for the honey in the gravity reading.

 

^ ^ What he said ^ ^

 

Right click on pic, click "copy image", paste where you type.

 

^for the 2nd pic, does that protein break effect the gravity reading? I’ve gone so far as to cold crash the tube, and then bring it back to room temp to take the OG reading.

 

Anything that serves to buoy a hydrometer affects the reading. So if there's enough material suspended in the wort, it could cause a measurement issue (i.e. cause a higher reading).

 

I don’t know how to right click from an iphone10? Can’t figure it out.