Allow me to be the first to say, “rookie move.”
I mentioned in a prior post that I have been chasing a mysterious loss of efficiency in my brew process lately. About a year ago, I acquired a bunch of new equipment and more or less completely changed my brew day process. Around that time, I started using fly sparging instead of batch sparging. I started using BeerSmith 2 to design and track my brews. I also acquired a refractometer that I began using to monitor my mash process. It was about that time I also noticed that my efficiency seemed low for some reason. It seemed reasonable to me that it probably had something to do with the process I was using around the new equipment, and I started to fuss over my gear. Was the sparge arm really working out for me? What a waste of cash! Is the crush right? Try a different brew shop, and another, and another! Are my thermometers reading right? Get new thermometers! Calibrate all the things! Then I started to obsess over the numbers. I was always 15-20 points low on my gravities. I started to dread brew days. I obsessed over little mistakes, which in my mind became the reason this particular brew fell flat. I was making some great beer, sure, but I knew it wasn’t what it could have been. That IPA of mine that you liked was really supposed to be an IIPA. It felt like I was serving lies, and it made me sad.
Then one day I realized I hadn’t brewed in months because I actually dreaded it. Every session was a reminder that I was a failure as a brewer. Somehow I was losing sugars, and I wasn’t competent to find my own mistakes Then an opportunity arose to contribute a batch to a regional event. It gave me a purpose, and an opportunity to fix my broken system. I was going to do this brew by the rote and I was going to find that bug in my system.
A buddy came over to observe the brew day. I went back to all of the basics. First, it was a work day: no beer until after we finish. There are rice hulls in the grist. I carefully measured all of my volumes. I kept an eagle eye on my temperatures. I ran timers to stir and recirculate regularly. I weighed out to tenths of ounces, and triple checked every little thing to make sure it was all right. I gave the mash an extra few minutes after the last stir to settle down before worlauf. My buddy, who is a seat-of-the-pants kind of brewer was clearly getting bored with my shenanigans. Shit was getting technical.
The readings on my first runnings seemed low. A couple of points. Not too low, but low. Maybe close enough that we have this problem licked. I keep a close eye on the sparge. It’s too fast. I have to dump water too fast into the lauter tun to keep the sparge arm turning. No, it’s gonna channel! Then the sparge water runs out, and it’s just wort draining out of the lauter tun now. Now it seems like my volumes might be low. Now the wort is starting to run a little thin. The lauter keeps on lautering. Finally, we hit the target volume just as the last of the wort drains from the tun. Booyah. I give the wort a good stir and let it settle. I pull a 2 cup sample and stir that. It’s low, 1.017 when I wanted 1.032. Dammit.
I decide to let it ride. The volume is right, and I can make up the gravity on the boil. Or, I can admit to my failure as a brewer and add DME near the end of the boil. We start raising heat and chuck in the first charge of hops. Then my buddy makes his first observation: dude, what’s the mud on top of your grain bed? Oh, it’s just flour and grushed germ. He’s never seen it before, but he doesn’t stir his mashes, and he batch sparges.
The boil goes down to the minute. My buddy takes off to get ready for a party later, have fun. I finish the boil and the chill, and start racking into the fermenter. Moment of truth, what’s my OG? 1.044. Damn, it was supposed to be 1.056. To boot, it was a bit on an aggressive boil, so my volume might be a little low. Double damn.
It’s winter here, and the CFC seems to have really done its job well, maybe too well. As I bring the fermenter inside, it feels too cold to pitch. I decide to pull a sample and get a temperature reading with my hydrometer. OK, yeah… gotta let it sit, it’s at 58 degrees F. Bummer, I’ll start cleaning up, and then I’ll make a top up of water and DME, and then… Then I notice something: the hydrometer is reading 1.060! What the hell?
I cross check the chilled wort against the refractometer. 11% Brix, 1.044 SG, same as before. 15 points difference versus the hydrometer. Sonnuvabitch. I noticed my efficiency was low when I started using the refractometer, always by 15-20 points SG. I never calibrated against the hydrometer. It’s been a systemic error all along. Facepalm.
As frustrating as this whole little saga has been, many good things have come out of it. I really know my process very well now, and have learned a lot of good tricks to get a brew back onto its tracks. I need to go back and figure out what’s the deal with this particular refractometer. It’s an ATC type, so it’s not a temperature problem. It only reads Brix scale, so it’s not the kind with the bad SG scale. I calibrated it first thing with distilled water, so I don’t know why it consistently reads low. It’s likely not equipment error, but pilot error.
That being said, I feel SO much better about my brew day yesterday that I’m going to rip off a quick extract kit while everything is out and the weather is nice. And I’m not going to sweat the numbers.
I still hate cleaning, though.