With the brewday behind me and fermentation going strong, it’s time to reflect on what went well and what didn’t, as always.

First of all, the recipe got altered on brewday. I had originally scheduled for only 4 pounds of wheat, but upon calculating what I was going to get for an original gravity, and noting that it will be September before this hits the keg realistically, I decided to go for 7 pounds to push the ABV up around 6%.

Second of all, my buddy brought over his scale (yes, I still don’t have a scale), which allowed me to stop my guesstimating of wheat volume, and actually know *exactly* what was going in. As I expected, my efficiency goes down whenever I use my own milled wheat, but more on that later.

Lastly, whenever I’ve been using more than 30% wheat, I’ve been doing a protein rest. This has thrown my game off everytime, as I am used to a single infusion and ramping up to mash-out. I keep doing my protein rest, going to saccharification rest, then forgetting my mash out. This time I got my whole mash transferred to my lauter tun before realizing it, and decided to skip the mash out rest. This may have contributed to my low efficiency more than I want to give it credit for, but it’s a factor nevertheless.

Instead of my expected 75% efficiency, I hit 65%, which made me glad I bumped up the grain bill. I also had way more hops than I needed for the lower grain bill, so I’m glad to have more gravity points to balance it out.

As to my wheat efficiency, well, I bought a Corona mill a few months back, and I’ve been pretty disappointed with it overall. It seems unable to produce a good crush for barley (big chunks or totally mangling the hulls), and on the wheat, well, I have it cranked down to it’s finest setting, and some bigger chunks still come out. Before I write it off forever as unable to provide good efficiency, I’m going to try double-milling the wheat next batch. My alternative is just use more wheat to make up for the lack of efficiency, and as I have a surplus of free wheat malt at the moment, it’s not really a big deal to do that, it’s just more grain to manage in the mash and lauter tun.

And as for the hops, well, it’s going to be hoppy. Never one to let hops sit on their laurels, I structured my additions to keep the IBUs down, but to use all my hops (2oz each Cascade and Centennial). I’m looking forward to the flavor and aroma profile.