Lower than expected SG

[mulld]

Made a clone recipe of Jedi Juice yesterday, My SG was quite abit off i ended up with 1.054 rather than 1.069.

This was my first brew on my brew rig i have made. Also the first time i have used a pump to vorlauf the mash, Done that for 10 mins. Then sparged with the pump aswell it was around the litre per min mark matching the flow in and out.
Ended up with a 29L boil.
First brew i have had where i have massively missed the mark.

I normally aim for a higher SG then add water to bring it in line.

Just trying to figure out what would be the reasons, what changes would i need to make to the set up as i go. There where alot of whole grains floating around the top of the mash.


Cheers

 

[MHB]

Without a lot more information about your setup and recipe; any answer is going to be guess work.

The one exception being; if you have lots of uncracked malt floating around; that points at a crappy grind. Poor milling can easily change your yield by 25% or even more.
As part of my brewing process I look at the grain bed after its sparged, sort of dissect it looking for any signs of channelling and count uncracked grains in a handful of expended grist from a couple of placed through the grain bed. There will usually be 1-2 in a fairly coarse grist that is suitable for a recirculating system. If for no other reason that there will always be a few undersize corns in any malt (part of most malt specifications should be less than 2% smaller than 2 to 2.2mm).
If you want to dig in a bit deeper, post your recipe and maybe some pictures of your system, but a long hard look at your grind would be a good place to start. When doing some commercial brewing I go so far as to fraction the grist through a sieve set. Even a couple of percent adds up, one place I worked changing the milling upped the yield by 20%, which means every 5th grain bill is free.
Mark

 

[yankinoz]

Could be one or more of several factors:, but you'd need large error to come up that short. Troubleshoot your new rig. Could it have created hot and cold pockets within the mash?

Your liver may actually thank you. Weanwhile. check all the instruments you use before you brew again.

 

[golfandbrew]

More to MHB's point of providing recipe and details of your new rig am I right to assume you have brewed this same recipe on a different rig? Might then also be helpful to know what that rig was.

 

[mulld]

Never brewed this recipe before just bought the clone recipe on a whim And it had princess Leia on it.
The equipment is all the same i have just got it set up better on a rig, still a work on progress tbh.

I Am thinking what MHB said is the most likley issue. There was alot of unmilled grain floating around on top. More attention to be paid to the mill if i buy pre ground malts etc.

The only info i could find was 6.6kg of gladfeild malt. No types etc.

Thanks for that info its always a learning experience brewing.