Grain Weights

[leigh1919]

ok, i'm new to this so bear with me -

i brew 25l batches (well, to start with), and normally utilise 5kg of grain - so far, mostly MO with additions.
I've sorted a recipe for a dark mild, and my grain bill weighs in at 3.7kg - much less grain.

now, to my newbie mind, won't this make a weaker/thinner wort? or am i just learning that grain bill weight is not fixed and it's what you use that gives the beer it's makeup, not the weights involved?

im my mind, before this recipe, it was pretty much 25l batch, 5kg of grain needed, sort of thing.

will someone educate me - the recipe looks ok (it's over in the recipes section if you wanna have a look)

[alefric]

Yes it will be weaker than your usual beers but as long as you watch the bitterness units you should still end up with a nice balanced beer. I often brew beers with not much more than 4kgs of malt and they're fine. I just dont like strong beers.

Good luck with the brew

Andrew

[leigh1919]

Cheers andrew. .

[Parva]

3.7Kg for a mild is a fairly common figure. I base all of my brews on 4.8Kg to 5.2Kg (depending on what other grains / sugar are being added) to end up with my 5% brews or so (for a 23l brew). Mild is of course expected to be a much lower alcohol content and 3.7Kg looks fine to me.

[clogwog]

Don't forget to adjust for your usual extraction efficiency.

5 kg of grain with an efficiency of over 90% gives you a higher gravity than say 75% efficiency.

[BarryC]

Good Day
All other things being equal, the variation of the amount of grain in each batch will affect the OG of the batch. The mash temp and type of grains will affect final gravity, therefore alcohol, and mouthfeel/body. For example 3.7 kgs of just pale malt mashed at 65oC will have a lighter body and possibly less flavour than a batch, of the same weight, with crystal malt and other specialty malts mashed at 68oc.
For example I recently brewed a 60/- scottish ale with 3.2 kg of assorted malts, mashed at 70oc, and its OG was 1.034. Yesterday I brewed a Weizenbock with 8 kgs in two mash tuns (total 16 kg). I did a no sparge and just collected the first runnings. Its OG is 1.090. The second runnings was used for a dunkel weizen (OG 1.046, a bit low).
I hope this helps.

[leigh1919]

yeah, it does. I think i'm gonna have to simply give it a whirl and see how it turns out. MOst of my beers usually take two attempts to really nail anyway. I always work to 75% efficiency.