AG #2 100% Satisfaction, hopefully

[erebus]

Now you're probably thinking "AG #2? What happened to #1?". Well let's just say I took Papazian's advice of "relax have a homebrew" a little to far and woke up with a hang over, the last of my milestone IPA gone, a messy kitchen and what I hope is a hobgoblin clone sitting in my fermenter.

So on to #2, 100% Satisfaction.
I popped into my local HBS, Matchless Homebrew, to pick up some more supplies and as soon as I walk in the first thing he says to me is "I've been looking around this Jim's homebrew forum, have you seen it". Yes, yes I have. So hi if you're reading this, and cheers to for supplies and encouragement.

Anyway I choose 100% Satisfaction because a lot of people here seem to like it, and the recipe is pretty simple;
4500g Palt Malt
79g Golding Hops (3.8%) Start of boil
15g Golding Hops (3.8%) 15 mins
5g Irish Moss 15 mins
I adjusting the goldings due to the lower alpha acid content.

I paid close attention to what I was doing this time, and nearly managed to hit my mash tun temperature. I've got to admit I do wish I'd gone for a dual element boiler now, waiting for the water to heat up is a bit annoying.
I'm still not 100% confident with regards to sparging. I put 11L into the tun, and had to top up with 2L from the kettle to raise the temp, but after that the temperature help solidly over 90 minutes. I batch sparged and on the first run only got 7L out. My MT has 1L of dead space, so this means that the grain absorbed 3L, does that seem about right? Second sparge I used the remaining water, 12L, making my total wort 19L.

What should I be doing in order to hit the magical 23L result?
1) Putting more water in during the second sparging
2) Topping up before boiling (which is what I did this time).

Other than this everything seemed to go well, with the small exception of when I was pre-heating my MT I realised my foot was getting rather warm and wet. Guess who forgot to check the tap was closed.

[Garth]

Guess who forgot to check the tap was closed.

you're not a proper brewer until you've done that. I do it every other brew or so, just to keep my hand in.......

well done with your brew erebus, looks like you have things sorted.

[Buzz]

Well done erebus, my next will be AG#5 and I find I'm learning all the time. Each brew just keeps getting better.

I tried batch sparging on my last one and collected far more wort than I had done with my fly technique - I whole-heartedly recommend Daab's batch sparge calculator - have a good read through this beforehand and you'll get the drift http://www.18000feet.com/batch_sparging ... ing_p1.htm

Hope the 100% satisfaction does what it says on the tin for you.

[erebus]

Cheers for the info on batch sparging Daab, things are a bit clearer now. I was getting confused by Ollosson's 11L Mash liquor/liquor grain ratio. So next time in order to get 23L out I should, aim for 30L in the boil. (Rough figures of course)

1) Mash in with 11L, wait 90 mins.
2) Add 9.5L (4L + 4.5L for grain absorption + 1L dead space), stir and wait 15 minutes (do I need to stir and wait?)
3) Hopefully I should hit 15L with my first sparge
4) Add 15L, stir+wait
5) Drain off another 15L with second sparge.

Seems to make sense.

Now how exactly does the water/grain ratio effect things? Why not simply add the 9.5 during the mash?

Anyway my OG came out as 1.050, rather than the 1.040 from Ollosson's recipe. Is this due to my faffing about with adding extra water? I'd have assumed this would have lowered the OG if anything, so does it actually mean I'm hitting around 80% efficiency (Ollosson's recipes are based on 75% I believe). Not that I'm complaining about having a stronger beer, but I'd like to figure out what's going on so I can compensate for it on my next brew.

[BarryNL]

Guess who forgot to check the tap was closed.

you're not a proper brewer until you've done that. I do it every other brew or so, just to keep my hand in.......

well done with your brew erebus, looks like you have things sorted.

At least he just did it with water - I managed to do it when making PoPs stout recipe - wow, that stuff is black!