I’ve earmarked this Thursday as my next brew day. I’ve done kits for two or three years but messed up my first AG brew and want to get this next one right (or at least, a good deal better than the first).
With sparging (I’m reading Graham Wheeler’s ‘BYORAAH’), reference is made to monitoring the gravity of the spargings to make sure they don’t fall below 1005. My questions are;
1. Am I right in assuming it’s no good just checking the gravity of the collected wort – it needs to be adjusted for the temp and it’s this adjusted reading that should not get below 1005?
2. If I get to an adjusted figure of 1005 but haven’t collected sufficient wort do I just make a much reduced brew, on the basis that my sparging wasn’t efficient enough? - On my first AG this seemed to be a problem and I topped up the boiler with cold water but, this had the effect of watering down the final brew.
My apologies for these basic queries but any advice would be welcomed. I know I’m not going to get it all right but it would be nice if Thursday’s brew was a bit more palatable than the first.
Cheers.
Questions on sparging
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Frothy
One thing I'd recommend is to measure the amount of wort you collect before and after the boil to work out how much you lose to evaporation. If your using a typical element boiler I'm sure there are other people on here who can give you a figure but with my gas burner I tend to lose 20%. 10-15% is ideal. Therefore as an example for a 19L recipe I collect ~23-25L of wort from the mash tun to produce 19L at the end of the boil, checking the gravity is a good guide to how your sparge is going.
Frothy
Frothy
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Buzz