Recent content by natev

Here: "Most enzymes can be denatured—that is, unfolded and inactivated—by heating or chemical denaturants, which disrupt the three-dimensional structure of the protein. Depending on the enzyme, denaturation may be reversible or irreversible." Pertaining to the enzymes in the grain...

Ha ha ha, perhaps everyday I will have large boxes covered with question marks and filled with the appropriate ingredients. Or perhaps the secret ingredient will be people. Yes, yes that will work nicely. Soylent Ale.

Real quick, since everyone is checking this post out. If you take a mash to a temp capable of denaturing the enzymes, they are no longer able to do any starch conversions, right? If you drop back down to the conversion temp, is it still done converting? That is, once you pass lets say 170°, are...

What, you can't run a HERMS on a tiered sculpture? It was the most appropriate image to fit in the small area next to Gollum. I take offense to the Microsoft comment. But, I suppose I'll have to deal with the ridicule. I tend to add in the dry hops when I dry hop. Otherwise, I'd use the hops...

While we are all having a good laugh...

Batch Sparge is an interesting idea, that would certainly cut down on difficulties and potentially reveal where the problem lies. As for the hops, I have been adding them when we are 1hr from done, not during the boil off, but I think you figured that, and are giving me a hard time. If you say...

I figure it would've been more appropriate to have "I has HERMS?" to stay in line with the cat viral thing. If the grain actually turns into dough balls, I don't think it's that bad. I didn't notice any clumps when I emptied out the grain. As for the sparge arm I did end up cramming a pipette...

Yes quite low. What is a HERMS/Hex bath? is that the HLT water that the recirculating wort is running through?

Right on, I'll give that a try. Does anyone use iodine to check how well the conversion has worked? It doesn't increase until we boil 10 gallons of water away.

I would have to have to agree with you that it's overkill. Perhaps the stirring will help my situation. Using less water would be great, but if we find our gravity is very low we would have to continue sparging to get back up there. That has basically been the problem so far.

What are you using to crunch those numbers? Also, we've been using a ton of sparge water. I'd say we mashed with something close to your suggested 8.26, but we must have sparged with 20 gallons of water. If we were to use 4 or 5 gallons sparge we would end up with a very low gravity. As I was...

Yes 10 gallon, I've been using that "beer calculus" site and "brew pal" app since they give slightly different results.

Sorry, went to lunch. 17# 2-row 2# marris-otter 2# cara-pils 11oz crystal 40

I will definitely try stirring. Yes it's auto temp adjusting. Our last brew I got a reading of about 1.066 on the first running. This was promising since we were shooting for 1.060. It quickly dropped and we had a 1.038 at the start of the boil and a 1.052 at the end of the boil.

I stir the mash to break things up when we mash in, but that's it. The pots have thermometers on them. I have occasionally dropped a second thermometer in the mash to be sure they are accurate. Also so I get an idea of what temp the recirculated mash in coming back in at. I don't use an inline...