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- Oct 28, 2023
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Hi! So I'm a brewer from the early 1990s who fell asleep for thirty years and awoke to an amazing world of information, supplies, and gadgets!
Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading Palmer's How to Brew on the subject.
Here's the thing I don't quite get. I mash, I sparge, I end up with sugary wort ready to boil. But for an all grain batch, should I somehow be shooting to get a mashed wort volume equal to my pre-boil volume? I'm typically shooting to boil 3.5-4 gallons right now. So is that how much wort I should be shooting for by volume? Or do I just get as much as I can out of the lbs of grain in my grain bill, and then dilute up to the pre-boil volume?
Does that make sense?
Background: I tried the countertop mashing strategy recommended at BYO magazine, which is fun. The basic scheme is 4 lbs of grain in a 2 gallon cooler. But the result has been that I've ---way--- missed my OG targets. I've been taking the roughly 2 gallons of wort I get by this method and diluting it up to 3.5 to start boiling. I initially thought it wouldn't matter, because the sugar is all from the grain, and it's not volume dependent (right?), but now I wonder just how profoundly I am confused.
So is it that my mash efficiency is catastrophic -- like 22% or something -- or is it that I'm just profoundly confused?
THANKS!
Back in the day, I was pretty much exclusively extract brewing. Now I'm starting to do partial mash & building toward all grain. I've been reading Palmer's How to Brew on the subject.
Here's the thing I don't quite get. I mash, I sparge, I end up with sugary wort ready to boil. But for an all grain batch, should I somehow be shooting to get a mashed wort volume equal to my pre-boil volume? I'm typically shooting to boil 3.5-4 gallons right now. So is that how much wort I should be shooting for by volume? Or do I just get as much as I can out of the lbs of grain in my grain bill, and then dilute up to the pre-boil volume?
Does that make sense?
Background: I tried the countertop mashing strategy recommended at BYO magazine, which is fun. The basic scheme is 4 lbs of grain in a 2 gallon cooler. But the result has been that I've ---way--- missed my OG targets. I've been taking the roughly 2 gallons of wort I get by this method and diluting it up to 3.5 to start boiling. I initially thought it wouldn't matter, because the sugar is all from the grain, and it's not volume dependent (right?), but now I wonder just how profoundly I am confused.
So is it that my mash efficiency is catastrophic -- like 22% or something -- or is it that I'm just profoundly confused?
THANKS!