well, I just finished my first all grain batch. I had crazyprsn over and we bottled his WCPA before we brewed. Bottling went fine.

Then we started my AG Blonde Ale. Recipe is posted below. things went fine until we got to the end. I put in some whirlfloc but it never seemed to clear up. Chiller got it down to 80* pretty quickly but the beer was still cloudy. I then measured the OG and it was 1.048 when qbrew estimated 1.059!! What the heck happened?!?! Anyways, pitched the yeast and it's in the LBK now, ready to start fermenting.

I may have mashed a little higher than I wanted to mash, which might explain why the OG was so low. Am I supposed to measure the temp in the grain or in the water?

ya know what, either way I made beer!! I did my first all grain and it will make good beer!! It was also my lightest brew by far and that made me happy.

So, how do I measure temps while mashing? And how do I get my whirlfloc to work better?

Brewer:
Style: American Pale Ale
Batch: 2.50 galAll Grain

Characteristics
---------------
Recipe Gravity: 1.059 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 29 IBU
Recipe Color: 6° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.015
Alcohol by Volume: 5.7%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.5%

Ingredients
-----------
CaraPils 0.25 lb, Grain, Mashed
Crystal 20L 0.25 lb, Grain, Mashed
Two-row (US) 5.00 lb, Grain, Mashed
Vienna (US) 0.25 lb, Grain, Mashed

Cascade 0.30 oz, Pellet, 7 minutes
Cascade 0.30 oz, Pellet, 20 minutes
Cascade 0.40 oz, Pellet, 60 minutes

English Ale yeast 1.00 unit, Yeast, Danstar Nottingham

side note, this was my brew process:

bring 3 gallons water to 161.3*, add grain, let sit at 151* for 60 mins. Bring 1 gallon strike water to 170*. pour over grain and let drain into wort. Add hops, bring to boil and go from there.

I thought the sparge would let me get better efficiency but that didnt happen.

Next time, try heating to 170° for a mash out before you sparge...or, if you've got room in your kettle, do all the water at once and do it no sparge.

But as long as you're getting around 70% efficiency, I wouldn't worry about it and just adjust your base grains to compensate in future recipes.

the 1.059 figured from qbrew was based on 70% efficiency. I have room to do 4 gallons of water and grain and no sparge. I was thinking about doing the mash out next time for sure, regardless of if I sparge or not.

I actually do the "Teapot" sparge too. I pour the teapot onto the suspended grainbag to rinse them. I get quite a bit of wort out of it.

just make sure to stir when you up the heat, so the heat gets distributed to the whole mash, not just the grains/wort at the bottom of the pot

so, based on info from the shoutbox, next time i will heat the strike water to the right temp and then add the grain, still well, cover with a towel and just let it free fall. from there I will raise temps to mash out and then sparge if I want to. Should make things better.

Right on Brotha!

ok, what about the whirlfloc then? added 1/2 tablet with 15 mins left in boil and it just wouldn't separate out very well.

Did you see the weird, thick cloudy crap in the bottom of your kettle? That's what whirlfloc is supposed to help separate out. In my experience, it separates out fine on its own...but I've never used any kind of fining myself, so I can't give you any more feedback than that.