Post
by Barley Water » Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:29 pm
Well Dr., I feel your pain as your experience mirrored my first all grain attempt. I remember trying to make an IPA and ended up with a very hoppy bitter. Don't worry, it only gets better from here.
If you are willing to throw a little money in the interest of avoiding this problem in the future, here is what I do and it works out very well. First, purchase a refractometer (maybe $80 US). I like these because they are easy to use, you don't need to mess with temperature correction and you don't pull a big sample, just a couple of drops. Once you collect the required volume at the end of sparging, take a reading. Do the boil for the usual lenght of time (in my case 90 minutes, I do it for all my beers) and take another reading (this one will be your O.G.). You now know the relationship between your initial reading and final gravity due to evaporation and other process losses for say a 90 minute boil. Armed with this knowledge, you should now know at the start of the boil if you are going to hit your gravity or not and you can adjust accordingly before adding any hops. Better living through technology I always say.
Drinking:Saison (in bottles), Belgian Dubbel (in bottles), Oud Bruin (in bottles), Olde Ale (in bottles),
Abbey Triple (in bottles), Munich Helles, Best Bitter (TT Landlord clone), English IPA
Conditioning: Traditional bock bier, CAP
Fermenting: Munich Dunkel
Next up: Bitter (London Pride like), ESB
So many beers to make, so little time (and cold storage space)