Yesterday I brewed a double batch of the Green Flash clone I brewed for the case swap. I’m going to a party in a few weeks so I was leaving it really late, but weather and my brew stand not being ready has ment I had to delay the brew a few times.
Overall the brew day was quite successful, but disappointingly at the end of the day, I discovered my refractometer was reading at least 5 points high – after I’d already pitched. So, pre-boil I was a little under gravity and on the refrac it was 3 points under what BeerSmith predicted, so I wasn’t too upset but that meant it was more like 7 points low.
First runnings were 1.078 on the refrac so more like 1.073 actually, a bit low for first runnings too.
So overall a bit annoying but I’ll calibrate the refractometer this week with distilled water and get that reading correctly again.
Again I had volume issues, recently i’ve been leaving wort in the mashtun, yesterday I ran it out into a small kettle and it was about 1.030 and boiled it on the stove inside to make a few litres of Mild, so it wasn’t a complete loss, but that sugar should have been in my IPA!
What i’ve been doing is simply adding too much water to the MLT in the second batch sparge and essentially diluting the sugar too much. I can work on that.
The final issue I’ve had the past couple of brews has been grainbed channeling. My mash return has simply been a silicon hose in the mashtun, but even with the recirculation speed throttled right back it’s been eroding the mashbed. This is likely also costing a bit of efficiency too. I have a return bowl to be fitted, but I need to find someone who can do custom stainless food-grade welding to come up with a mount for it. That should help.
Mash recirculating while the sparge water heats:
First runnings:
Golden clear wort into the kettle:
Grainbed channeling:
