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I made a pale ale last month, the profile should have been slightly hoppy.. recipe called for 10lb base, 1.25lb 40l it was mashed at 153* at over an hour og around 1.5 finished at 1.12 I used 2 packs of safale 04 .. fermented very quickly

but the beer tastes very dry.. not much malt character at all, or at least to me.. should i have mashed at a higher temperature?

Bring the recipe and some of the beer to the Brewday Saturday and let us taste it.

What was to OG again, 1.050?

yes the numbers are off 1.050 and 1.012

Your final gravity does not seem to be out of line for a pale ale. I'd like to see your grain bill.

I said originally 10lbs

but looking at my recipe sheet


11lb 2 row
1.25lb 40l


I'm will try and make it to brew day..

I wonder if your yeast was the culprit. I don't have experience with that strain. Your grain bill and mash temperatures look fine. Even your FG at 1.012 is not out of line for a pale ale.

not sure if the culprit or not... but better heads have suggested..

the safeale 04 I thought was the american ale.. I'll have to try the recipe with the 05 next time...

I tasted Rob's beer. It did not taste dry to me. It tasted like it was just small. It did not have much body. Like the starting gravity was much lower than expected. Rob said he did not get a starting gravity and that this was one of his first all grain batches.

One of the areas you need to learn about in all grain brewing is efficiency. Everyone's is different. It takes a few batches to learn what yours is and how to deal with it.

I suggest making sure you always know the starting gravity.

I'll work on that too...

I have recently moved to all grain as well...how do you calculate efficiency? The beers we have made so far have all been very light it seems to me...almost watery. I would assume my efficiency is low but not sure and don't know how that is calculated at all or how to improve efficiency.

And I realize that my details (grain bill, temp, times, OG etc) are lacking. Needed to look at my notes before adding that information.

John Palmer's How to Brew has chapter 18, "What to Expect When You're Extracting", dedicated to this topic.

Basically your extract efficiency is the percentage of sugar you will collect from your grain when you lauter compared to the perfect extraction of sugars.

Lautering is not perfect. You are going to leave some sugar in your mash/lauter tun. How close to perfect you get is based on your equipment and your process. Once you determine your systems efficiency, you can adjust a known recipe to your system to get the correct original gravity for your wort.

You can adjust a recipe by hand or you can use software like Beersmith software to adjust your recipe from a stated efficiency to what your system's efficiency.