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Brew length 18L
O.G. 1.080

Grain
5 kg Maris Otter
450g Black Malt
450g Crystal Malt
350g Munich Malt

Hops
50g Northdown 8.4% 52.6 IBU 60 minutes

Yeast
24g s-04

All seemed to go as planned but my efficiency suffered for some reason. I wound up with 19L@1.064 when I expected 18L@1.080. I figure about 63% efficency.

Anyway it looks great so I still expect it will be near 6% in the end, not the 7.8% I was hoping for but it will still be tasty.

I made a starter at the beginning of the brew day so should be well on its way by morning.

Is it usual for efficiency to suffer on higher gravity brews when batch sparging, is it worth upping the grain bill to compensate next time?

Sorry no pics.

Glad you had a good one MM. My efficency went south today as well even worse than yours as it was in the 50's

Thanks Daab, I thought it might be that, I'll up the grain bill next time or not depending on how the brew turns out.

prolix wrote:Glad you had a good one MM. My efficency went south today as well even worse than yours as it was in the 50's

Sorry to hear that but it makes me feel better

More beer int pot...well done MM

Well its less than 24 hours later and the gravity is down to 1.028 but seems to have slowed to crawl now. I hope it doesn't peter out before getting down to 1.018 or so.

I'm sure you'll be surprised how well it gets down there MM.

My Shelobs Sting that i recently brewed(1068) got down to 1016 using 1275 & S04 yeasts combined. S04 should get it down to 1018 i reckon. I kept my FV at 20C constant for 10 days, bottled on 10th.

I hardly worry about my efficiency after a thread i posted about it. Mine is around 60-70% Sometimes 75% for no reason obvious. The more i brew the more consistent it becomes-73% seems to be the norm now. I think it's more getting used to your kit and utilising it efficiently.

Your only a few brews behind me mate so you'll be where i am in no time I still do cock up's every brew but it's all part of the fun really. I'm either over my est OG or way under. Never bang on. Yet. But i've never done the same recipe twice yet, or stuck to a recipe either. I'm having too much fun

And it all tastes damn fine.

Well the airlock is now still so I took another reading and its now at 1.020 which was the estimated FG but I was hoping as the OG was lower than estimated it might get a bit further down, I'll leave it another day and see if it might not be fermenting but very slowly. The best thing though is that it tastes superb already, It's hard to imagine it will get any better.

Just thought I would report on the progress of this brew, I know that this should not be drank yet but had a mate over for AG #4 and he wanted to try it so we wound up drinking about 8 pints of the stuff. My Mate was well impressed with the brew, he said it was the best beer he had ever had. I have to say that if anyone is looking for a stout to brew you could do worse than this one.