Brewed May 9, 2025. OG: 1.056 FG 1.008. ABV 6.3%.

Better OG than last batch, but still missed target. One adjustment made was to recirculate the wort during mash and boil.

The MASH: The total mash volume was 4.5 gallons or so and the post sparge volume was only about 6 gallons. The sparge took about 1.5 hours, much longer than in the past. Next batch, I am going to add rice hulls to the mash so the sparge water flows through it a bit better. Also going to mash with about 5.5 gallons and target the pre-boil volume close to eight gallons (kettle capacity) as the recipe calls for 9 gallons. The Mash temperature was also a bit high (160-157) while the target is 152. The mash-in was about 170F, next time we will start at 161F or so.

Pitch Temperature: The pre-pitch temperature was about 78F using a plate chiller. This could probably be reduced by chilling the wort a bit in the kettle before transferring hot-pitch in one pass. The fermentation proceeded reasonably fast, completing in about 3.5 days.

Filtering: As usual, I did not filter the beer before racking to the keg. The dry hops only added to the trub, despite transferring the wort to a secondary container after the fermentation was complete. The beer out of the keg is quite cloudy so I have a 5 micron filter on order to clarify the beer with a CO2 push to another keg. This will occur on Wednesday (Today is Monday).

CO2 Regulator: There seems to be a regulator issue as the primary tank pressure reads 0 regardless of the valve opening and the regulated pressure always reads 0 PSI. A replacement regulator is on order.