SE Mass - 60 Gal.: Turbid Mash Lambic Brew Day

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Cape Brewing

DOH!!! Stupid brewing...
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One or two folks may have strubbled across the ever-so-informative "Brewfest so big you can see it from space" tomes. This brew-day is a continuation of those debacles. I wanted to change the title of the thread to be a little more informative and give it a little extra pizzazz... you know.. drum up some good publicity.

We have six brewers who are going to attempt a traditional lambic by using a turbid mash schedule (specifically the one described in Wild Brews) which we will then age in the barrel currently keeping our Russian River Consecretion clone nice and comfy.

Out of the six brewers, five are HBT members:

me
Paulthenurse (aka Nepoleon the Oompa Loompa)
Babalu
Drinkswellwithothers
homebeerbrewer

This event is on the calendar, in pen, for Saturday June 12th.

Rumor has it we are starting at some sort of unGodly hour of 5:00 AM or something and it should be a pretty interesting day.

A few things folks might want to take note of:

1) live webcast... we GOTTA. The last one was a blast and this is gonna be too good not to share.
2) Likely to relive the whole "drunken power tool usage" events of the last webcast with hilarity to surely ensue
3) There's been talk of stripping Paul down to his thong, greasing him up with Crisco and offering a brand new 14 gallon Blingman conical for the first person who can wrestle him to the ground. The assumption is the conical will go un-claimed due to lack of anyone trying.
4) there should be a fair amount of meat thrown on the grill.
5) we are expecting at least some turn out from our HBC... SSBC... (all six of us are members) representin'!!! :rockin: so my guess is there will be some good beer on hand.

Any local HBT'rs who have any interest in swinging through, lemme know and I'll give you directions. Anyone else... stay tuned for the webcast details..

seriously... how often can you watch a turbid mash AND a greased up chubby guy? NOT often.


:mug:

:tank:
 
From someone who has done this exact thing (minus webcam and greased chubby guy) - good freaking luck.

Very anxious to see how yours turns out. If it wasn't $80 each way, I'd certainly think about coming up for such an event.
 
From someone who has done this exact thing (minus webcam and greased chubby guy) - good freaking luck.

Very anxious to see how yours turns out. If it wasn't $80 each way, I'd certainly think about coming up for such an event.

So I take it you're day didn't go well??

What were some of the problems you had?

We had a couple very minor things we were going to do to try to taek out some headaches... We're having the raw wheat crushed at North Country Malt where we're getting the grains from. No sense in fighting our mills for three hours.

And we're planning on using a ton of rice hulls to try to prevent REALLY stuck mashes.

I think we're going to use a "community" pot for any wort drawn off during the process with one guy watching that pot and maintaining it's temp. We have a couple good size rigs and between my HLT and BK, I'll have 90 gallons of boiling water that we can run off into other rigs/pots.

I'm hoping we'll make it through the day in one piece.
 
We should get a MOD to combine threads

Yeah, we'll need a watch this pot guy.

Other thought is I can bring the electric and that can hold all the wort we're pulling and holding at 190 in the community pot.

I need to make up a cord to go from your dryer to my rig though.
 
I'd recommend a designated (sober) person with multiple alarm clocks, a clip board, and full mash schedule for each mash tun in use.

Timing this one was a nightmare.
 
It's a harder job than you would think!

I'm tempted to road trip down again. Have to see how many projects I've got going, though.

Oh you're more than welcome to come by but you ain't being the "watch the pot" guy!!1 I've seen your work in that area before. Let's just say its lacking!!
 
I dunno, havent read it in a long time :) but we had lots of problems.

I think our biggest issue was we used someone elses stuff, as none of us had 55G kettles.... and it didnt work right :)

Hopefully the unfamiliarity with the equipment will be the biggest problem. Luckily all six of the brewer that'll be there that day will have all of their own rigs set up and going.
 
Doing this with 6 people and 6 batches will certainly help things.

Trying to do this 2 ~30g batches was a big part of the problem.

Draining 2 mashtuns takes longer than draining 6 (if you do them simultaneously).

1 failing mash tun out of 6 is a much easier thing to deal with than 1 out of 2.

Operating on a 10g mash tun is a whole lot easier than trying to move 75# of grain out of the way to operate on a huge mash tun.

6 10g batches will get to boil a lot faster than 2 30g batches.

6 kettles will drain easier than 2.

A broken kettle drain on 1 kettle is better when it's not 50% of your total volume.

You can lift 10g batches around. You CANNOT move 55g boil kettles when full.

Dumping 6 10g mash tuns is a whole lot easier than dumping 200# of wet grains.

Being sober for 4-6 hours to finish 6 small batches is a lot easier than spending 4-6 hours just waiting for the post-mash boil to start.

That said. If things are staggered, it can be difficult to find enough burners as you struggle to heat mash water, sparge water, the turbid mix, and beginning to boil. Luckily with 2 kettles on burners, we had extra burner room to play with water as needed. This does not outweigh any of the other problems we had.

Make sure you make an extra 5g for "angel's share". And actually remember to put it in, not sit by the barrel and get infected on it's own (and not in a GOOD infection way - Claphamsa and I tried it last week and it was horrible).
 
Sweet... thanks... that's helpful and making me feel a bit better.

We will all have our own rigs with all our own burners and set ups so hopefully that won't be a big problem for us. In terms of capacity, I think the other five guys have 10-15 gallon set ups and then I have a 45 gal, so I think we'll have plenty of horsepower to get through it and enough BTUs flying to heat things up fairly quickly

(I know... famous last words).

Should be interesting though... and we're ordering a TONNNNNN of rice hulls.
 
boo rice hulls are for whimps!

LOL... guilty as charged then! I ain't lookin' for a big azz stuck mash with all of that raw wheat turning to oatmeal in the tun.

should be a fun day. I'm looking forward to it. AT the very least it'll be good beer and and good food to go along with a learning experience.
 
Hmmm.. lookin at their catalog now for homebrewers and they don't show nay yeast but I'm sure you're right. They probably have in on the "commercial side". I'll check and see when I call them for the club bulk buy.
 
I e-mailed Wyeast as well.

Told them what we're doing, might as well ask the source what they think.

The barrel has Russian River bugs in it but we need a big dose of 3278 as well.
 
You mean there was a Consecration clone-ish beer made and RR chips (though available) werent used?


No, we (D-bag and I) decided that it would be prudent to use fresh bugs and yeast instead of some bag of sawdust that some dude kept in his basement for the past few years. I think the results are speaking for themselves.

PTN
 
No, we (D-bag and I) decided that it would be prudent to use fresh bugs and yeast instead of some bag of sawdust that some dude kept in his basement for the past few years. I think the results are speaking for themselves.

PTN

This is true

I'd still try to make a starter with those bugs though...............remember we talked about that a while back.
Just throw the chips in some 1.020 wort in a nice warm place and see what happens.

Have you heard of my river of beer?
 
No, we (D-bag and I) decided

PTN

yeah... "decided"

Here's how the decision was made:

Me: "It's a freakin' RR beer...we can use RR bugs!"
PTN: "CRY!! CRY CRY CRY!! CRY!!! WHAAA!!! CRY!!!"
Me: "That doesn't mean we ca"
PTN: "CRY! CRY! CRY!!!! CRYCRY!!! WHAAAAA!"
Me: "but..."
PTN: "CRY!!!!!!"
Me: "but..."
PTN: "CRY!!!!!!"
Me: "but..."
PTN: "CRY!!!!!!"
Me: "would you jus"
PTN: "CRY!!!!!!"
Me: "whaaaaat the ffffffffu... FINE... we won't use em"
 
No. I heard you've been having some prostate troubles and you're dribbling a river of second generation beer but no, nothing about a river of beer.

What's the deal? Do you need flood insurance?

PTN

I have the SSBC club brew barrel in my basement.
I think we put more beer in the barrel than we should have

Img_1979small.jpg
 
barrel still dead on 1028. I'm shocked it is still stalled out. I've had a heating pad on that barrel for a solid three or four weeks and it hasn't budged at all.

I don't think we have a choice but to bottle it up.
 
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