Yeast Considerations: Every yeast strain has a limited alcohol tolerance, typically around 5-8% alcohol.You may be forced to add extract in the boil to compensate Your high gravity beer will need a lot more grain which may not fit in the mash tun at all. Will The Grains Fit in the Mash Tun?: All mash tuns have a limited volume, and most are designed around brewing a standard gravity beer.a lower efficiency number) when building the recipe. To compensate for this you will need to use even more grain in the mash (i.e. Lower Brewhouse Efficiency: Because you are using roughly the same amount of water with a lot more grain in the mash you will get a lower brewhouse efficiency than a standard batch.Here are the major concerns when you step up from a regular beer to a high gravity beer: These include this article on high gravity beers, and this interview with John Palmer. I’ve written a few articles now on some of the problems you will run into when brewing a high gravity beer. High gravity beers (generally over 1.060 or so) do require some minor changes to your recipe and equipment profile as well as some process changes for brewing. I think I’ve got the bases covered after mashing – I do starter cultures, full volume boils, treat the water with Camden tablets, chill the wort within 15 minutes, oxygenate, and control fermentation temperature with a fermwrap and digital heat controller.This week I cover some of the changes you need to make to brew a high gravity beer using BeerSmith software. However, I’m very aware that I have much more to learn and any insights you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Overall, the experience of doing an all grain batch was a LOT of fun and I’m glad to leave my partial mash approach behind. Am I making some fundamental mistake that results in the mash efficiency disparity above?.Is there any way to plug in mash efficiency to BeerSmith rather than having to use total efficiency (I wonder why BeerSmith does it that way – it seems counterintuitive to me)?.Why is there a disparity in mash efficiency?.When I plug in 69% brewhouse efficiency (BeerSmith calls it total efficiency), I get an estimated mash efficiency of 78.4%, but that doesn’t jibe with my calculation of 72%. Assuming a quart of wort left behind in the mash tun (what the supply store told me), I got 345 total gravity points in 5.75 gallons, so the mash efficiency would therefore be 345/479, or 72%, correct? The brewhouse efficiency would then be 330/479, or 69%, if I’m doing the calculations correctly. (Due to the high proportion of Pilsner malt, I did a 90 minute mash and boil).īased on calculations of the recipe, a 100% efficient mash would have given 479 gravity points and with an OG of 1.060 in 5.5 gallons, I got 330. I actually got a higher mash efficiency than I’d predicted (I had hoped for 65%), so I left out the one pound of sugar the recipe called for since I had reached the recipe’s OG without it. I did my first all grain batch recently (a Saison recipe from “Brewing Classic Styles”) and got an OG of 1.60 using a 10 gallon Igloo cooler with a 10" false bottom and did batch sparging – thanks to Denny’s “pragmatic” perspective on sparging. Greetings and thanks for your patience on this one,
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