Dude! Where's my efficiency?

So, we brewed the 2nd batch on January 20th, and again ran into a few gremlins. The Thermosights decided they wanted to leak, and it was a real pain to get them to be drip free. We wound up using a plenty of pipe sealant, and that seemed to do the trick, although Ryan said it was leaking the next day. I think the fact the water was about 40F at that point may have done that, but we read a few posts online that recommend extra teflon tape and/or extra washers to fix it. We can give that a shot for next time. Regardless, we calibrated them, and are quite pleased overall.

Next up was the installation of the bottom heat shields. That went pretty well, except I tore the sheet aluminum while drilling the hole for the second one. A quick patch job and we were up an running. No problems now with the plywood.

Now, for the real problems... It started with the milling of the grain. We didn't have a clean bucket around so I suggested just grinding right into the mash tun.
Adding to the excitement, when doing the mash in we added 171F water to 25.63 pounds of 68F grain, which *should* have given us a 154F mash. Our digital thermometer said something closer to 160F. Not good. We dropped the temp with a bit of cold water, but I was afraid of dropping too far like the last time, so we just dropped it to 158F on the digital, and stopped.
I'm fairly certain we were able to mix the mash pretty well, but the tun was pretty well topped up, and the plastic spoon just wasn't up to the task. We grabbed a length of copper pipe, gave it a quick wash and mixed away. It's quite possible, of course, that we missed a dough ball somewhere down in there... unlikely, but I'm not going to discount it as a possibility.
The rest of the brew went according to plan, with plenty of hop goodness added in.

Our new 9% evaporation rate seemed to match reality, and the chilling went well. We wound up with 10.5 gallons in 2 fermenters. We pitched a 2 day old starter of Wyeast 1056 and oxygenated.

After toting the carboys downstairs, I took a gravity reading and was quite disappointed to read 1.059 when my original calculations had been for 1.073. I checked just now, and to get that OG we would have had to hit 85% efficiency, and I'm thinking I had it set to 75 or 80%, so I'll chalk that up to differences in the water needed portions of Promash and reality. I've set that correctly at this point, so that should take care of that issue for future runs.

Even though I was unhappy losing those points, the taste of the raw beer is pretty amazing. Some of the hops we used had been fridge bound for a while, so I think the loss of gravity will pair up with the loss of IBU to create a balanced beer.

The next day Ryan checked the temperature on the HLT at a boil, and the thermometer there was off by 4F, so it seems the digital was right. Next time (I keep saying that) we'll have a clean bucket, proper temps, and a more conservative efficiency setting. Perhaps we can finally have a worry free brew :)


The recipe for Not Quite Stupid:

%	Amount	Name	Origin	Potential	SRM
91.7	23.50 lbs.	Pale Malt(2-row)	Great Britain	1.038	3
2.9	0.75 lbs.	Crystal 80L		1.033	80
0.5	0.13 lbs.	Biscuit Malt	Great Britain	1.035	35
4.9	.25 lbs.	Wheat Malt	America	1.038	2

Amount	Name	Form	Alpha	IBU	Boil Time
0.50 oz.	Simcoe	Pellet	12.00	13.3	60 min
0.38 oz.	Warrior	Pellet	15.40	12.9	55 min
0.50 oz.	Simcoe	Pellet	12.00	12.4	50 min
0.75 oz.	Chinook	Pellet	12.00	17.8	45 min
0.50 oz.	Amarillo Gold	Pellet	8.40	5.8	35 min
0.50 oz.	Simcoe	Pellet	12.00	6.8	30 min
0.50 oz.	Amarillo Gold	Pellet	8.40	3.7	25 min
0.50 oz.	Simcoe	Pellet	12.00	3.5	15 min
0.50 oz.	Centennial	Pellet	9.60	2.1	10 min
0.50 oz.	Centennial	Pellet	9.60	1.8	5 min
0.50 oz.	Crystal	Pellet	3.70	0.0	0 min

WYeast 1056 Amercan Ale/Chico