Well, I got a wild hair and brewed the well regarded smooth oatmeal stout last night...was up till 1am, and the house smelled awesome!
A few issues and concerns.
Details....I brewed a half batch 2.5 gal and halved all the grains/hops/oats. used full yeast pack though...
I used 2.5 gallons in the mash with a grain bag, and 2 gal in the sparge (a small cooler I put the grain bag into with 170 degree water)
The ingrediants that Northern had for this were similar but not exact. I used
- Briess Pale ale
- Flaked Oats
- chocolate at 350L (slightly off of recipe)
- victory
- caramel (no crystal avail at 120L) 120L
- caramel 40L
- Roasted Barley 300L (slightly off of recipe)
- Williamette
- S-04
I had a hard time keeping consistant temps on the mash. Most of the time it was the proper 156. It droped to 150-152 for a few min, and I over compensated bringing it to 163 for a few min.
I killed the heat after an hour and pulled the grain bag. I squeezed out the bag of grains and moved it to the cooler to sparge along with 2 gal of 170 degree water. Covered it and let it soak for 30 min. was not sure how long to let it go. I then took the grain bag and put it in a collander over a pot. I poured the sparge wort over the grain bag once more as it went in the pot. I think I messed up after that. I was worried about final volume, so I only added enough sparge wort to the boil pot that already had mash wort in it to come to 3.75 gal which left about 3/4 of a gallon of sparge wort unused. It did not occur to me to simply add it all and boil down to the correct volume...duh. Anyway, I tossed in the hops and boiled for an hour. I then cooled the wort down to 71, stirred and took an OG reading. 1.050..it was supposed to be 1.055. I bet I can guess where my sugar went :-)
I then syphoned 2.7 gal wort to a glass 3gal carboy (left only about 10oz in the bottom of the pot. I did this through a fine mesh sieve that fits in my funnel. filtered out a lot of gunk....and aerated in the same process i think...Half way through filling the carboy, I pitched the hydrated yeast throught the funnel only. I then finished filling using the mesh screen and funnel combo. I put an air lock on at 1am. Set it in a 62 degree room with metallic bubble wrap around the carboy as an insulator. Checked at 7:30am when I awoke, and it was happily bubbling away.
Questions:
Will my swinging mash temp, or the sparge wort i did not use cause trouble. How about the filtering into the carboy, or the slightly low OG?
Is the grain difference a big issue really.
Thanks a bunch for reading this and providing input.
Other brews so far:
Apfelwein-wife loves it!
extract Pale ale with honey...my first brew. was pretty good.
working on a partial mash surly bender this weekend.
FUN STUFF!!!!!!!!!
3rd brew..first all grain! Smooth stout.
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