Do you get rusty?

I had not brewed for a few months until Saturday. I brewed an ESB. The first thing I forgot was to keep boiling water going during mash in. I mashed at 149 instead of 152.

The next thing was forgetting that fermentation is exothermic. I hooked up to temperature control and heat wrap. The temperature climbed to 71 on Wyeast 1968. I did not put in my freezer because I did not want the yeast to drop out .

I will likely end up with a dry estery beer.

I chalk it up to not being able to brew once a month because of work.

Anybody else get rusty when they don't brew enough?

I've found I actually do better when I haven't brewed in a while. I tend to get over confident and/or lazy if I'm brewing a bunch, but I pay more attention to the process if I feel I'm out of practice.

Now that I've made a cold bath fermentation chiller and I can brew 12 months a year it's not so bad. Being in SoCal it used to get too warm to brew in the summer but no mas. I could count on screwing up on the first two batches I made in October. Albeit not disastrously but poor form nonetheless. I guess i just don't train too well. Repetition is the refuge of untrainable.

Sometimes I go 6-8 months in between brews and I defiantly get rusty. But I take good notes each time and keep a brew day check list near by. Just looking over my notes and checklist usually gets me right back up to speed.