Buckwheat BPA Brew Day

So, I brewed Buckwheat's BPA today. I got started before church by printing out the brew sheet from Beer Smith. Then, I heated up 8 gallons of water and put it in my 10 gallon cooler. I let it sit in there until I got home from church.

This is how I measure my water volume: a pvc pipe with marks at each gallon.

Transferring water from the Brew Pot into the cooler.

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We stopped by this new playground on our way home from church

When I got back, the water was higher than my desired strike temperature. I wanted to mash my grains at 150. To get a 150 mash temp, the Beer Smith software told me that I needed to put the grains into 156 degree water. So, I added ice to the water to get it down to 156, and when I got it there, adding the grains got me to exactly 150F. It is like magic!

This is the second time that I am using a BIAB method in this 10 gallon cooler. The cooler kept the temperature right at 150 for the whole hour + time of the mash. I love it when a plan comes together.

After mashing for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, I took the bag out and then dumped the liquid from the cooler to the pot. I took a sample and brought it down to my freezer to cool it down for a gravity reading. While it was cooling, I turned on the burner to get the wort to boiling.

Once the wort is boiling, I started the timer on my watch for a 90 minute count-down. My first hop addition was to be 40 minutes into the boil (the 50 minute addition on the recipe). Sometime in that first half an hour, I measured my gravity and found it to be 1.040 which was 9 whole points below what I wanted it to be.

That is far enough off that I wonder if I under-measured my grain at the home-brew shop. The other thing that I maybe should have done is held back a couple of gallons of water from the mash and "sparged" with it. Maybe things were just not going my way today.

I used large hop sacks today for my hops today. I did this for my last brew day too. I am not sure that this is a new part of my process or if I will end up not using them. I guess I'll see. 

I believe I made my 50 minute addition at 60 minutes instead. I am just used to always doing 60 minutes for my bittering. I suppose I can see if the Beer Model notices extra bitterness in this beer. I sort of doubt it, but we'll see. That 10 minutes probably is not that noticeable.

At 20 minutes, I added about half a pound of extra light DME (dry malt extract) to make up for the missing gravity points. I added another half a pound at 2 minutes or so.

Filling up the carboy from the pot.

Just like last time, the wort chiller didn't bring my wort down cool enough to pitch the yeast, so I got the wort down the rest of the way using the ice in the 10 gallon cooler. I got the carboy wort down to about 65.

Then I pitched 2 packs of S33 yeast, shook up the carboy and am letting it sit. My OG ended up right where the recipe plans for it to be (1.053). Too bad I had to use some DME to get it there, but at least I have the ability to adjust if need be.


I just wish I knew why I was so low in my mash efficiency.