Help with TEA wheres all the grain going?

[Andy-H]

Hi all,

I've finally got back round to brewing (all grain) after the small disruption in operation homebrew, after becoming a Dad for the first time, moving house and getting married!!

As it's coming up to Summer I wanted some nice summer Ale to hopefully be able to drink in the nice summer evenings. So I looked through my stock and the recipes on here for a while and opted for Summer Lighting currently in secondary fermentation and is looking good.

I also somehow managed to have another brew day and let the wife pick a recipe, even though I wanted to do a clone of Kelham Island Pale/Easy Rider. Anyway as the wife happens to be a serious chain drinker of tea (the hot stuff in a mug) she found it rather fitting for me to do a clone of Hpback TEA. The brew day went Okay - it seemed to take longer then the summer lighting but got there in the end.

As I didn't have an opportunity to set up the plate chiller I couldn't crash cool it, instead it got left outside under airlock to cool overnight, I came to it this morning to pitch the yeast I thought just before I do I'll check the gravity of it. I normally don't pay that much attention to the original gravity as long as I have enough liquid at the end - perhaps this be another thread under technique - I was a little surprised at how high the gravity was at 1080! I checked the Alcohol content of TEA and found it to be 4.2% if the yeast attenuates mine could be like 10%? Have I got something wrong here, here’s the recipe I followed;

O.G. 1.044
Pale Malt 4500g
Crystal Malt 350g
Goldings 5.17 26g 90 mins
Fuggles 4.95 28g 90 mins
Goldings 5.17 15g 0

As there were some comments about not enough of a toffee taste I boiled 2l of the first run off wort down to 1l in about an hour and added this to the boiler. I sparged with about 20l of water as well!!??

Maybe I somehow over weighed the malt but I know I didn't I used 4.5kg. Although I have looked at the 25Kg sack of grain that I've used and only done these brews with so at most I should have used 10kg leaving 15kg - looking at the sack looks like maybe 10kg or something might have to weigh the bag see what's left?

[Parva]

Sounds to me like you took the SG at the temperature of the wort that had been left outside overnight. Assuming the wort was at 9c when you checked then I suspect that this is enough to throw the hydrometer well off actual gravity. Most hydrometers are calibrated to read correctly at 15c or 20c but there are calculators to correct this based on the wort temperature.

Other than a massive miscalculation in grain I can't see how you could end up with such a super high OG. Something's amiss somewhere.

[Andy-H]

Hi Thanks for the replies. I've checked the hydrometer by reading water and this gave an acrurate reading. I checked the tempreture of the wort in the morning before pitching the yeast to make sure it was at a good pitching temp and it was 17 deg c. I couldn't have used over 5Kg of grain as it wouldn't have fitted in the mash tun - it was a fairly lose mash too and I had collected about 15l before sparging.

Now that I've pitched the yeast (yesterday morning) there are the signs of fermentation provided everything is sterilised will it be OK to take another reading - I know it might have dropped a few points but I just want dubble, dubble check the reading again as well the remaining malt.

I'm in two minds as to whether I should just leave it as it is and hope for the best - worse case I'll end up with some potent stuff or should I add water to it? I suppose I could leave it see what it's like to drink and if rediculasly potent I could blend it to a small beer what you think?

[Parva]

Taking a reading now (assuming it's wildly fermenting away) would be pointless. One thing neither me nor Chris asked / spotted though, you said you sparged with 20l of water but what was your final post-boil wort volume?

[Andy-H]

Post boil volume was 25l and ended up with aprox 23l after 90mins

Would taking a reading now be complete waste of time? - it's only been about 24h so I wouldn't have thought it would have dropped that much in this time woulod it - given it's starting from such high gravity - but I know the reading was right!

Would the reduced wort made that much difference I guess not cos I only had 2l boiled down to 1l and added this to the boiler.

What do I do - just leave it and see what happens?