I'll try to keep this short...
I brewed a Black IPA this past weekend. I went with a 2-gallon BIAB approach because I knew I'd be losing a lot of beer to trub through dry-hopping.
Last time I did BIAB I hit about 75%. I presumed I'd do the same but then didn't do a separate hot-liqour pot to "sparge" in because instead I did a separate hot-liqour pot for steeping the dark grains. So as a result I hit 70%. I had a temp-adjusted hydrometer reading of 1.050 prior to the boil instead of 1.06 as Beersmith expected. I adjusted my brewhouse efficiency number on the "Design" screen of Beersmith to the new number of 70%, then added DME to the recipe until I got back to the OG (into the fermenter) that I had originally. It only required 4 oz of DME.
I added the DME, ran my boil, added all my hop additions - everything went fine. I cooled, dumped into a fermenting bucket, and started taking final measurements. I had WAAAAAY more boil-off than I was expecting - from 2.54 gallons down to 1.45 or so. It was only a 60-minute boil. I wrung the crap out of my kettle hops, too... OG was 1.078 instead of the 1.07 I was expecting due to concentration of the sugars. So I added my fermenter volume and my OG readings into Beersmith, and suddenly it tells me my measured efficiency was 56%?! Now, this is with the DME added to the recipe. If I take out the DME, it goes up to 62%. Why isn't it still around 70%?? It seems to me like I've literally lost sugar in the boil... But that makes no sense... (I checked, and the wort temp was 68 degrees.)
I did add about 22 ounces of water to bring my OG back to the planned 1.07, added the dry-hops and tossed a lid on. My fermenter volume is only 1.7 gallons or so instead of 2.
The recipe I made is posted here - but I scaled it down to 2 gallons and did BIAB instead of a traditional mash/sparge. Anyone have any idea what either happened or what I'm putting into Beersmith wrong?...
I brewed a Black IPA this past weekend. I went with a 2-gallon BIAB approach because I knew I'd be losing a lot of beer to trub through dry-hopping.
Last time I did BIAB I hit about 75%. I presumed I'd do the same but then didn't do a separate hot-liqour pot to "sparge" in because instead I did a separate hot-liqour pot for steeping the dark grains. So as a result I hit 70%. I had a temp-adjusted hydrometer reading of 1.050 prior to the boil instead of 1.06 as Beersmith expected. I adjusted my brewhouse efficiency number on the "Design" screen of Beersmith to the new number of 70%, then added DME to the recipe until I got back to the OG (into the fermenter) that I had originally. It only required 4 oz of DME.
I added the DME, ran my boil, added all my hop additions - everything went fine. I cooled, dumped into a fermenting bucket, and started taking final measurements. I had WAAAAAY more boil-off than I was expecting - from 2.54 gallons down to 1.45 or so. It was only a 60-minute boil. I wrung the crap out of my kettle hops, too... OG was 1.078 instead of the 1.07 I was expecting due to concentration of the sugars. So I added my fermenter volume and my OG readings into Beersmith, and suddenly it tells me my measured efficiency was 56%?! Now, this is with the DME added to the recipe. If I take out the DME, it goes up to 62%. Why isn't it still around 70%?? It seems to me like I've literally lost sugar in the boil... But that makes no sense... (I checked, and the wort temp was 68 degrees.)
I did add about 22 ounces of water to bring my OG back to the planned 1.07, added the dry-hops and tossed a lid on. My fermenter volume is only 1.7 gallons or so instead of 2.
The recipe I made is posted here - but I scaled it down to 2 gallons and did BIAB instead of a traditional mash/sparge. Anyone have any idea what either happened or what I'm putting into Beersmith wrong?...