Hello, 1st post here,
I am an All grain brewer and don’t seem to get a high enough original gravity to start. I will follow a recipe, but consistently come out too low. I mash at approx 155 degrees in a pair of Igloo coolers for 90 minutes, sparge with 170 degrees but come out too low. Any hints?
How low? .1 or .01 off? Are you correcting for temp on the hydrometer?
Yes on adjusting for temp. wanting a 1070 OG getting a 1022 Og
Do you have a calibrated thermometer for checking your mash temp?
Something is WAAAYY off. Thermometer or hydrometer…
How’s your grain crush?
Thermo or hydro could be off I would gather a thought around maybe -/+ 1.005 OR -/+ 5f unless its totally defective. I am going to venture a guess that crush is where the fault lies on this one.
As he is seeing conversion of some sort so he is somewhere from 145-160f. I say look towards a really bad crush or actually not run through the crusher at all sounds like 1.020 to me. If you are shipping all the grain bills from a vendor then I would suggest posting a photo of your next grist and folks can tell you at a glance whether your grains are crushed, poorly crushed or not crushed at all. Make sure to get a good close up shot so its easy to see whats shaking.
Also, sorry to hear about the problems. Hope we can all get you up to snuff.
Lastly Mash PH might be a good thing to start looking at if you are not yet. It does have major impacts to “fine” beer making and helps reinforce efficiency of the grist. There is some new science
found lately that helps newer AG brewers understand and control the mash without high powered PH meters or etc… I have used this application along with others on this board and find even though I have a high powered bench mounted PH meter. Every time I check my mash ph parameters it pretty much agrees with the Bru n water spreadsheet told me it would, So it makes mashing with salts/ acid/ acid malts a sure thing instead of a guessing game. Martin has some good tutorial information within the suite. Also the program is free for all no gimmicks or tricks etc…
Checkout:
