Today I opened my first 25kg sack of Minch Pale Ale malt. Previously, I have only used Crisp Maris Otter. The Minch malt seems to have a finer crush than I am used to and this led to some issues with both the mash and the sparge.
I still made beer, but perhaps not the beer I was intending to make, and rather more of it, to boot.
Mash
I was mashing 4.7kg Pale, 1kg Munich, 360g Crystal and 120g Chocolate and used 3.75L per kg of grain, as I read on here a fortnight ago.I may have underestimated the volume of the mash and so had a slight problem with the extension rod not being quite long enough. This was combined with a grist that did not seem to be as porous as usual and there seemed to be a lot of water on top of the top plate and a lot of grains seemed to be falling down the tube in the middle onto the boiling plate. After the experience on GF #2, decided to "bail out" after about 10 mins of ever worsening mashing. I lifted the inner cylinder out of the boiler and balanced it on a 15L pot to drain a bit. Tried fishing out some grain with a sieve, but ended up pouring the whole lot into a BIAB bag lining a FV, then pouring the strained wort back into the boiler and resuming the mash. I seemed to need to remove a couple of litres of the wort to get the internal cylinder to sit OK, so I put this into the 15L pot and boiled it outside the main GF vessel, during the mash. The mash took 80mins elapsed time and the temps dropped a fair bit whilst I was pratting with it and when it resumed in earnest, the mash temp was about 60C. It did get back to the target 67C soon enough, though.
Sparge
The previous GF sparges have run almost "straight through" the grain in a few minutes, but this one took ages and the main boil had started before the sparge was finished (I started to boil shortly after lifting the inner cylinder).
Fretting about maintaining sparging temps in the Peco boiler and the slowness of throughput led to a situation whereby I has a small main boil in the GF, about 2-3L in a small pan (from the 10 mins mashing, as above) and about 8L in the 15L pot. It all ended up in the main boiler. I over-sparged and ended up with a little over 30L.
As a consequence of these factors, I ended up with with 27-28L in the FV and I added a lot more demerara sugar than I intended (800g) to get to an OG of 1058. BrewMate estimates I got 65% efficiency in the FV, which seems pretty good, given the amount of manual intervention.
I was a bit worried about the clarity of the final wort, but the hops (20g Herkules @60, 40g Fuggles and 10g WGV @ 15mins) seemed to make for a very effective filter. Hopefully all is well.
I still made beer, but perhaps not the beer I was intending to make, and rather more of it, to boot.
Mash
I was mashing 4.7kg Pale, 1kg Munich, 360g Crystal and 120g Chocolate and used 3.75L per kg of grain, as I read on here a fortnight ago.I may have underestimated the volume of the mash and so had a slight problem with the extension rod not being quite long enough. This was combined with a grist that did not seem to be as porous as usual and there seemed to be a lot of water on top of the top plate and a lot of grains seemed to be falling down the tube in the middle onto the boiling plate. After the experience on GF #2, decided to "bail out" after about 10 mins of ever worsening mashing. I lifted the inner cylinder out of the boiler and balanced it on a 15L pot to drain a bit. Tried fishing out some grain with a sieve, but ended up pouring the whole lot into a BIAB bag lining a FV, then pouring the strained wort back into the boiler and resuming the mash. I seemed to need to remove a couple of litres of the wort to get the internal cylinder to sit OK, so I put this into the 15L pot and boiled it outside the main GF vessel, during the mash. The mash took 80mins elapsed time and the temps dropped a fair bit whilst I was pratting with it and when it resumed in earnest, the mash temp was about 60C. It did get back to the target 67C soon enough, though.
Sparge
The previous GF sparges have run almost "straight through" the grain in a few minutes, but this one took ages and the main boil had started before the sparge was finished (I started to boil shortly after lifting the inner cylinder).
Fretting about maintaining sparging temps in the Peco boiler and the slowness of throughput led to a situation whereby I has a small main boil in the GF, about 2-3L in a small pan (from the 10 mins mashing, as above) and about 8L in the 15L pot. It all ended up in the main boiler. I over-sparged and ended up with a little over 30L.
As a consequence of these factors, I ended up with with 27-28L in the FV and I added a lot more demerara sugar than I intended (800g) to get to an OG of 1058. BrewMate estimates I got 65% efficiency in the FV, which seems pretty good, given the amount of manual intervention.
I was a bit worried about the clarity of the final wort, but the hops (20g Herkules @60, 40g Fuggles and 10g WGV @ 15mins) seemed to make for a very effective filter. Hopefully all is well.
![BREWING THERMOMETER STICKERS ACCURATELY MONITOR FERMENTING BEER & WINE LIQUID TEMPERATURES 5PCS HOME BREW SPIRITS WINE LCD ADHESIVE [US]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/311DDjo2X3L._SL500_.jpg)
