Forgot this part.

Looks like a very solid recipe to me. I've got a couple of ideas on what I'm gonna do with mine. I'll post them when they're run through ye olde Beersmith.

How much equipment loss do you have? 7g for a 60m boil is at least .5g above the norm. How are you measuring your OG? Post boil yes? I think you've got way too much water in your boil and that's where your assumed poor efficiency is occurring. If you're actually putting in 7g in the boil you should be boiling for at least 90m. I'd take a reading then and you'll be a lot closer to your 1.063 OG target. If you're still not at 1.063 and you've got anywhere north of 5.5g I'd let it rip for longer

But really you've got way, way too much water in your system for a 5g batch:

You've got 20 qts in your mash and 16 qts in your sparge. Using the 1.5 q / lb grain forumla you've got enough water for 36 / 1.5 = 24 lbs of grain and your recipe is only ~15 lbs of grain

Your water should be more like 4.5g mash and 2g sparge

I agree with you, and part of this is me being a beersmith newb and the other part is I dont know what my equipment loss is yet even after 7 all grain batches. I have an idea but I have not worked out the kinks of my system. The mash profiles especially have been giving me fits in beersmith, I cant figure out the proper way to set all of this up.

I appreciate the info for sure, Im going to run this through again and post it again to see if things look a little better.

Fwiw Im using a 15.5 gallon keggle with a 10G round Rubbermaid MLT.

Don't worry about thinking about equipment loss just yet. Just put 75% efficiency into BeerSmith and use however much water it says to. Brew, take notes and adjust BeerSmith for different efficiencies if need be.

I did that for my last 2 batches, first 2 using beersmith to build the recipe, and got 64 and 63% efficiency so figured thats what id run with.

Brag: going to this on Saturday

/csb

You put 75% efficiency into Beersmith, put in your 15lb grain bill and it told you to use 9 gallons of water on your brew day?

Edit:

I just saw this part of your post. I use the Single Infusion, Full Body ( 2 steps ) for everything. I agree the mash profiles are a little overblown in Beersmith.

I have an iPhone app called Sparge Pal which has been very good to me. A casual plug in of your #'s said 4.5 gal for mashing & 4.3 gal for sparging.

You might want to double check though.

I primarily do single infusion batch sparge and my efficiency is about 68% so I don't think you're that far off a reasonable number if you're batch sparging. If you're even losing a quart or two to equipment loss that you're not accounting for your efficiency could easily be around the same as mine.

As long as you're consistently getting the same efficiency you could choose to forget about equipment loss and just plug in your 64%. (Make sure you don't change whatever number you plugged in as equipment loss though. If you left it as zero then leave it be.)

Also in my system I boil off 1.25 gallons-per-hour and I was boiling off more before I realized I didn't need such an insane boil - so you're not far off there either imo.

Brag: I am going to this on Saturday.

We both win!

I would kill for some Celis Grand Cru
I might call in a favor and find my way to that thing. I'll let ya know.

which kölsch are you drinking? i am from cologne and kind of suprised that somebody outside of germany knows it.

No I used one of the default equipment profiles for the other 2 batches and both times I ended up with a 6.25 G boil. But those times I just generally plugged in a recipe but used Sparge Pal like Markus to calculate my water, not the best way of doing it but I was lost in Beersmith.

I think I have my equipment and mash profiles set up properly now. I had originally set it up based on Brads how to video and that's how I ended up with the 7 G boil. I'm glad you pointed it out though bc it looked a little whack to me but wasn't sure really.

In my travels I've found Reissdorf to be the most common kölsch available in the US.

In the last few years, kölsch has been an increasingly popular style for American craft brewers to make. It's sort of a gateway from the Bud crowd to get into craft beer.

I posted this article here before, but it goes into a bit more deatil about American breweries trying their hand at the style.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/di...-the-pour.html

I had a Lancaster Kolsch in a can the other week, it was probably one of the worst kolsch Ive ever had, however the Stoudts Karnival Kolsch is fantastic though.

Drank the Chainsaw Ale from Left Hand and it was phenomenal. Highly recommend it if you can find it.

I think I am going to do an American Strong with the mason jar of honey I have. It weighs around 22 ounces and I am going to add it all at flame out. Debating whether I want to add 4oz of honey malt as well, but think I want to try to taste the pure honey itself.

Drinking my own homebrew.

That was my exact thought when I drank it. "I can give this to one of my friends that doesn't like 'good' beer, and they would probably enjoy it". Meanwhile, those of us that like craft beer are still pleased with it.

Thoughts?

http://hopville.com/recipe/772950/sp...cipes/10-10-10

Lose the corn imo.

Here are some pics to go with my TR. I apologize for the nonprofessional picture quality, didn't have a great background to capture both color and head, plus it's a cheap digital, didn't grab my good camera and I didn't bother to rotate before I loaded to photobucket. Took one flash pic and one non flash pic of each.

Kolsch: don't have a proper glass but this one will serve the purpose and get about as close as I can:

With no flash


With flash. Color comes through better with no flash but head looks better with flash:


Hefe: For some reason the head on this glass isn't as thick as on some of my other bottles. Still great carbonation and good lace on the side of the glass as I drink though. With flash:



and without


Flash picture shows color better here imo.

Feel free to critique!!

2>3>1>4 imo.

just brewed my first own beer with 2 friends on monday.a german pilsener which shall come out at around 5% alcohol.we were aiming for 20l but probably fell short by 3l.the wort had 12,3% plato(around 13 brix i think).we used a big 25l winebottle with an airlock for the first fermentation and our yeasty friends seem to be doing a great job.we will probably bottle the beer in 6 days or so and put some of the saved wort(1,5l) to the fermented beer to let it carbonate in the bottles.will probably take another 5 weeks to carbonate and really finish it off.

we used 4,1kg pilsener malt
50g 4,7% hops(66% for bittering on the first boil and 33% after 80minutes of boiling,and then just had them boil for 10 more minutes).
12g of dried yeast which we rehydrated in 1/4lwater+1/4l wort, after boiling it up and cooling it down to 30°C.
we put the 25l winebottle in a big bowl of water with icecubes added to get the temperature down as quickl as possible.its now fermenting at 12°C in an old cooler