Could Jamil be Wrong? or Super ESB

[John Sand]

I brewed the ESB from Brewing Classic Styles today. I over heated my strike water, the over cooled it. A little heat brought it up nicely. I intentionally mashed high, many of my brews over attenuate. Anyway, my preboil gravity was quite high, higher than the the post boil should be. Much higher, 1.068 vs the expected 1.048 preboil, 1.056 post. I ran some quick calculations and added a few quarts of water, and some hops to keep the balance. Here is the recipe:
12# English Pale
.5 C15
.25 C120
2oz EKG@60
1ozEKG@0
When I first read that 12 pounds, it seemed high to me. I even started to do a quick mental calculation, but stopped, thinking: "Hey, it's BCS!" Well, when I found the gravity so high I checked a sliderule, and an internet calculator. Both showed this recipe producing an OG about 10 points high. I think I got good extraction efficiency too. I may yet add some more water to this, but otherwise it's a Super Extra Special Bitter.

[MadBrewer]

What is your recipe batch size and efficiency? BCS is based on 6 gal recipes at the end of the boil and 70% efficiency. Could this be your diffetence?

[John Sand]

That helps. I did have 6gal post boil, 5.5 into the fermenter. Brewer's Friend calculated my efficiency at 82%. I sort of figure 75% as normal. Using the numbers you mention brings the OG down to 1.061. A lot closer, though still out of style.

[MadBrewer]

For the recipe you posted above for a 6 gal batch at 70% efficiency I get an OG of 1.056. Hmm

[John Sand]

Which calculator? On Brewer's Friend I choose the volume option of "fermenter" at 5.5. That is specified in the book too: 6 gallons post boil, 5.5 in the fermenter. But I don't know how they allow for hops and break, kettle trub. In any case, more of the difference was caused by high efficiency, and my use of 75% as a default.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Which calculator? On Brewer's Friend I choose the volume option of "fermenter" at 5.5. That is specified in the book too: 6 gallons post boil, 5.5 in the fermenter. But I don't know how they allow for hops and break, kettle trub. In any case, more of the difference was caused by high efficiency, and my use of 75% as a default.

Sounds like they allowed .5 gallon for kettle trub loss/hop absorption leaving 5.5 gallons for the fermentor and .5 gallon for fermentor trub loss....which sounds kind of high to me...but guarantees you'll have 5 gallons of beer to package.

If you don't mind my asking was this BIAB? If so did you double crush your grain and remember what was your mash thickness?

[John Sand]

Always happy to talk brewing. It is BIAB, I "crush" my grain in a blender. This time it was finer than usual, which seemed to happen pretty quickly. I don't know if Maris Otter (10#) or Crisp Pale or Munton's Pale (1#@) are more crumbly than Briess Pale, my go-to. The mash was 12.75# in 5 gallons, 1.57qts/lb. It seemed rather thick, maybe because of the fine crush. My efficiency is usually in the mid 70s.

[MadBrewer]

I calculated that just on my phone using BrewR.

The thing that gets confusing is some software or brewing calculators is they calculate things differently based on batch size, amount going into fermenter, amount at end of boil...etc. In a case like BCS, like I mentioned all the recipes are based on 70% efficiency with a 6 gal batch size. That's 6 gals at the end of the boil, regardless of how much wort you lose in the kettle, how much shrinkage you have after cooling, how much ends up in your fermenter or in your keg or bottling amount. All that is irrelevant, I find it easiest to calculate my batch size for what I will have at the end of the boil. Whether I put 5, 5.5 or 3 gals in the fermenter doesn't mater. Whatever the wort is at the end of the boil is my beer, whether it's 1.050 or 1.055, that's what I got and that's my end result or my batch size.

It sounds like you simply had much higher efficiency than you are used to. I was just explaining all that because I see it confuse others as well.

[John Sand]

I packaged this today. To further confuse the volume/efficiency issue, there was a massive trub, more than a gallon. Because of the high gravity, I put some in a small keg as an English IPA. The rest was put in a 5 gallon keg with one gallon of bottled water to bring it back down to ESB specs.