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I brewed mud!

I brewed last night with 4.5kgs of grain in 10 or so litres. I took the gravity of the wort prior to boiling, and after 75 mins boil topped up in the fermenter to 12 litres and pitched yeast. Problem is, due to it being close to midnight come pitchig time, I forgot to take the OG.

Is there any way to calculate the ABV ?


Cheers,
G

Ha! Midnight brewing - always fun .

As to your OG problem... Probably too late to take a reading now as the gravity can drop a fair bit even in 24 hours.

If you know how much top up water you added, there are two ways to go. Firstly, if you took a volume and gravity reading into the kettle (which is always a good check) we could work off that to a degree. Secondly, if you have the recipe (and what software you used) we can play with that a little bit.

Either of these ways will just be educated guesses and do rely totally on knowing how much top up water you added.

Certainly nothing to worry about Gyro. All that's happened is that you have missed a measurement opportunity, nothing more. A single reading can never be relied on anyway .


PP

P.S. What do you mean, "You brewed mud?"

Pistol, this was my first attempt at getting a bigger batch from a smaller mash, if you see what I mean. Seeing as I can only mash in a max of 12litres, and I lose at least 3 or so of that in the boil, I went for a pretty hefty grain schedule and then a top up with water, to hopefuly get a reasonable ABV (ie. something around 5%). I didn't use any software, just shot from the hip, but this is the recipe:

10litre mash:
1.5kg Maris Otter
1.5kg Vienna
1kg Pilsner
All above at 67c for 90 mins, and then sparged with approx 1.5-2 litres

Then a boil of 75 mins:

Saaz - 20g for 75 mins
Liberty - 30 for 75 mins
160g demerara sugar
Saaz - 15g for 50 mins
Liberty- 25g for 25 mins
Saaz - 20g for 2 mins

The gravity of the wort prior to boil was 1.090


The reference to mud was because that's what it looked like pre-boil. Presumbly because of the amount of grain compared to liquid.

Ah, I think that one is going to be pretty impossible to guess at with any accuracy. The best guess I can give you is somewhere around 1.047 and this assumes that you topped up with 6 litres during the boil and/or in the fermentor. (It assumes quite a few things actually ).

That's good you took a pre-boil gravity reading. Try and get a volume one as well on the next brew. Sounds like you'll be pretty much in the ballpark so no worries .

Yeah, I'm loving the move over from Extract.

Mind you, if I hadn't accompanied my mashing and boiling with the Weizenbock I made a month or so back, it might have gone a tad more to plan ......

There was a little clumping to start with when I added the grain, but it still seemed to move reasonably well. So, is the theory of making a more 'concentrated' wort from grain and then 'diluting' in the FV a reasonable sound one? I must say, I have a very large amount of sediment in the fermenter; up to about the 2 litre mark or so.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it all Gyro .

I personally think when you want to get more out of your kettle than a full-volume mash will allow, the rule to follow is to add as much water as soon as you can and allow as much of this water to touch the grain before the boil.

You have allowed as much water as possible to contact the grain from what I've seen. I think though that after you did your sparge, it would be much better to top up your kettle before the boil as much as you can. (This increases hop utilisation and also means you have a more sterilised wort before going to the next step).

Doing the above also allows hop additions to be calculated more accurately assuming you don't top up during the actual boil.

From memory, there is a general guideline that you don't really want to dilute what you get in the fermentor by more than 30%. In other words, if you end up with 10 L in the fermentor, you really shouldn't be adding more than another 3 L. This rule makes sense to me but rules are made to be broken I suppose.

Maybe before your next brew, let's try and plan it out a bit and see what happens.

I'm working on a "temporary" calculator at the moment (while we are waiting for the BIABacus) that allows for top ups throughout the brew day and might even have it ready for a test run before your next brew.


PP