Ha! I could see that. You aren’t judging at Jeffco fair comp are you? I could never judge even if my palate was up to the task. Good on you.
Usually i mash in 3,57 a 3 qt/lb in a mash tun of 12 gallon (20l/5,6kg), do the recirculation for at least 25 minutes, and then do batch sparge with 20 qt water, do recirculation again. I did the iodine test to check conversion, at this time, i had spent, 2 hours in a rest, trying to get a better efficiency, but in final process my average was low. In two weeks i will do another batch, so i will take some pictures to post of whole process, so if you guys could check looking something to improve i will appreciatte tips.
I'm gonna suggest milling finer. If your iodine tests shows conversion one thing I can think of is there is still sugar locked away in big pieces that can't get rinsed out. The other suggestion is switch to fly sparging and see if that increases your efficiency any.
Arapahoe County Fair. Our homebrew club puts it on for them. We're Aurora City Brew Club, by the way...
Heaps of uncracked grains in there efficiency would of suffered because of it. Don't be afraid of them crush em or waste em! Next brew just run a bit through the mill at a time then run your fingers through the crush and check for in milled grains if there's a heap getting through either run it through again or (I don't have a mill) tighten your tap I mean gap.
I think those are just husks. If there are no whole grains then it looks fine. The husks keep the sparge water clear and prevent a stuck sparge. The the difference between crush and grind.
Yeah, really hard to tell from the photo. Looking at the center and bottom right appears to be crushed well.
It's always hard to tell from a photo, but I tend to agree with @Trialben . About hops for the recipe: I'd try Loral here. What do you guys think about that? I've used it in a cream ale, and it had a very nice discrete hint of citrus, without moving into apa/ipa-territory. As for this being a boring style: No well-made beer is boring. (But I'm pretty bored by a current tendency to brew fancy beers by putting all sorts of fruits, spices and other sorts of tasty additives into them. That's boring to me.)
As mentioned above, nothing wrong with boring.... My preference in beer is boring. There. I've said it. I like boring beer.
I wish more peole were clear about this. Much better than those who tie themselves up in knots saying how one thing is better than another because of a or b when it's really just a preference. And also remembering that preferences change.
Amen, brother. And preferences are just that: I love a well-made IPA as much as the next guy, it's just not my go-to beer. I have a roasty, toasty beer with coffee and chocolate fermenting in the basement (the infamous Kentucky Breakfast Stout failure) and it tastes good - a coffee-chocolate IPA! If it's a thing a few years from now, you know where it started.... ;-)
I do find myself enjoying the standard basics more and more. I think the neipa, milkshake haze craze kinda ruined it for me.
When today's pale ales are yesterday's IPAs, when guys throw so much mosaic in the beer tastes like you'd imagine cat urine would, when the bitterness goes over to metalic, when I have to hold my nose to drink it due to the "funk" then it tastes like brake fluid... Back to that slow-pour pils....
