Great brew day today! Following a discussion with Brewfather’s creator I decided to increase the Grain Absorption Ratio in my equipment profile from the preset 0.8 to 1.2 in order to tame my mash losses, and now my volumes are bang-on where they should be. The extra water is added to the sparge amount, and when my initial increase to 1.0 only added around one litre I decided to up it to 1.2. Here’s how that compares to my previous go at this brew:
Geronimo 1 | Geronimo 2 | |
---|---|---|
Grain Absorption Ratio | 0.8 | 1.2 |
Mash Water | 22 | 22 |
Sparge / HLT | 9.71 / 11.41 | 11.71 / 13.41 |
Total Water | 33.41 | 35.41 |
Mash Volume | 25.35 | 25.35 |
The upshot of this change was that for the first time my pre-boil volume was on track at 28.9 litres versus expected 28.86, my post-boil volume was over by an identical 40 ml, and mash efficiency was up an astonishing 11 points at 93%.
The only fly in the ointment today (there had to be one) was that I made an inventory error when buying ingredients and found myself slightly short of hops, so I had to do a little bit of jiggling.
I don’t think this will ruin the brew but I was hoping to do a like-for-like one the hops and grains so that I can test the effects of substituting my last used Kveik for a sachet of Omega Hornindal and fermenting at 30℃ in order to tease out some of the supposedly fantastic flavours. As it stands any difference between the two brews will now be down to hops as well as yeast, which means I’ll have to do another one a few weeks down the line. Oh the hardship!
Finally, a positive discovery: dropping the Trubinator in upside-down, i.e. with the rubber on top, provides a better seal against the base of the kettle, since the metal edge is 100% flat whereas I can never seem to get the rubber to fully seal, leading to trub leaking out under the sieve instead of getting caught. Maybe this is how you’re supposed to use the device (must admit I never checked the instructions) but it would feel a bit wrong to drop it in during boil and have steel clattering on steel. I say ‘would’ because this only occurred to me during cleaning, so maybe I’ll do some research into the correct method.