AG#1 - SPNA - collection volume issues

[verno]

Today I did my first AG. It went pretty well up until collection where I only managed to collect 16 litres and it took about an hour for it to drain from my boiler. I am wondering if someone could look through the below and see where I went wrong:

Mysterio SPNA recipe
1) 5.45kg lager malt, mashed in 13litres with top up of 8. This never ran clear having taken 2 litres out into my jug 3 times
2) 2nd batch 15 litres (I reckon my mashtun has 1.5 litres dead space).
3) Not sure how much I collected but it was more than half of my 50litre boiler.
4) Added 0.45kg crystal malt and hops to boil
5) Post chill, tested wort and it was 1.050 OG at 28 degrees.
6) Collect wort into fermentor, only managed 16 litres and it took about an hour, really slow draining.

I was using a brand new boiler from the malt miller and it went like the clappers. The wort was really churning. I wonder if the evaporation was more than the 15% I was expecting. Having had a play with calculators it must have been about 30% which seems silly?

Can anyone suggest anything or highlight any mistakes?

Thanks
Verno

PS I took lots of pics, so will post soon.

[pas8280]

Verno one of the things i noted was that you put nearly half a kilo of crystal malt in the boiler it should have been mashed with the lager malt, this will have soaked up some of your wort and may account for the slow run off from the boiler with the grains blocking the filter. How long did you boil and mash for ? it would have helped if you could have measured how much wort you actually got from the mash pre boil as i dont think the malt miller boiler would evaporate so much over a 60 or 90 min boil

[floydmeddler]

Verno one of the things i noted was that you put nearly half a kilo of crystal malt in the boiler it should have been mashed with the lager malt, this will have soaked up some of your wort and may account for the slow run off from the boiler with the grains blocking the filter.

#

AGREE!!!

[trucker5774]

You state your 2nd batch was a 15 litre top up if I read correctly.......................it stands to reason that this will be the same amount that you drained out for the first batch assuming you topped to the same level...................therefore the 2nd batch will also drain 15 litres as yor dead space is already accounted for. Sounds like you collected a total of 30 litres. As already said, you should have mashed the grains. The hops and grains will have absorbed some wort and there will be some dead space which may account for a combined total around 3 litres and a similar amount to evaporation. That should leave around 23 litres!

If you had a very vigorous boil and a wide boiler you may have doubled the evaporation. Even with all that taken into account there is still 4 litres missing based on collecting 30 litres from the mash tun.

[verno]

well I measured water into the mashtun fairly well but didn't measure it out. I will have another go in a couple of weeks and make sure I measure my boil volume and mash all grains. To be honest this was my first go at AG, so it was an experiment in many aspects. At least I have 16 litres which will ferment away.

If a recipe calls for flaked rice or something then should I mash that as well? Coming from an extract background I am used to boiling it all.

[mysterio]

No grains or cereals go in the boil, everything goes in the mash tun if there is starch in it.

Sugars like honey, molasses etc go in the boil, as there is no starch to convert.

[captain wassname]

I think the malt miller boiler has 2 3kw elements. Did you turn one off when you got to the boil.

Jim

[verno]

I did turn one of them off but it still boiled like crazy. I noticed after that one element was black (the main one I used) and the other wasn't, so maybe its also a case of breaking them in slightly and they won't be as vigorous after a few goes.