batch number thirteen, and what happens? the power went out in my building, for no apparent reason. for some other reason i also thought it would be a good idea to start drinking while i was waiting for my water to come to temp. usually, if at all, i at least wait to start drinking until the wort has been lautered. less time for me to become a slobbering, depraved mess.
i awoke the next day, foggy and a little worse for wear. the apartment was a mess. nothing was put away. somehow, the yeast had been pitched to the wort and was beginning to attenuate nicely. looking over my notes i realized i failed to record the OG. luckily, i have started to accumulate a pretty good record of figures. with some detective work, i believe i will at least be able to make an educated guess. lets go, follow me.
i did record the pre-boil gravity at 1.058. in the last batch i brewed, the ESB, my base grain bill of 12 lbs. came in with a pre-boil gravity of 1.052. this batch, only had a base grain bill of 11 lbs. and the pre-boil gravity reading came in 6 points higher with a whole pound less. my efficiency has sky rocketed. i believe this has to do with a modification in my lautering process. it is a hybrid of a batch and continuous sparge.
after the wort is draining at the correct speed (approximately one gal/min), i replace each gallon of wort lautered with a fresh gallon of hot water back on top of the lautering wort. this gives me four or five minutes to do whatever needs to be done in between gallons (in this case, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at a furious pace) of lautered wort. this prevents me from having to hover over the mash ton trying to keep an inch of liquid over the grain bed. since i do not have a sparge arm set-up, this method seems to be one that works quite well. and considering the significant jump in efficiency witnessed by using this method, i believe i'm on the right track. as long as i keep the fresh water i add on top to replace the volume of the lautered wort at or around 168ish, i shouldn't have to worry about drawing any tannins off the husks or the mash becoming too viscous because it starts to cool down.
as i mentioned before, the ESB had a lower pre-boil gravity, with a larger amount of grain. the OG ended up being 1.060, not too shabby. this being the case, i am going to make an educated guess and conservatively estimate my OG for lucky number thirteen at 1.070. i still haven't learned how to calculate my efficiency, but i will in these next few batches. i have a feeling with this new hybrid sparge method i am going to continue to use, efficiency is going to be pretty good. the real test of improvement will come when i adjust my grain bills for my new efficiency percentage and compare the next vertical series i am going to brew, the scottish shillings, to the old efficiency i was getting with the english bitters vertical series. is anyone else rabid with excitement?
lucky number 13 irish red
11 lbs muntons pale
6 oz. caramel 40L
6 oz. caramel 120L
4 oz. chocolate 375-450L
mash @ 151, 60 min.
mash out @ 168, 10 min.
pre-boil gravity: 1.058
OG: ?? (1.070)
FG: not done fermenting yet
uk kent golding (4.9%), 2 oz, 60 min.
note about the hops:
the hops i acquired are from last years harvest. also considering their slightly lower alpha acid levels than i normally brew with, as well as my suspected spike in gravity levels, i went ahead and bumped up my hop addition to a full two oz rather than palmer and zainasheff's suggested 1.25 oz.
Wyeast 1084 irish ale, 1 pint starter, ferment at 64 degrees
something that i haven't mentioned yet, but that i was thinking about when the power was off, is people learned how to make beer without electricity or power. people made beer for a looong time without power or electricity. i think it would be cool to make beer without these things. just having the power out for three hours while i was trying to brew made me really think about the things we take for granted- like the resources that allow us to do amazing things with relatively little expenditure of personal effort. i really hope us human can get our shit together.
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