Brew day disaster

Wow, i think i may have screwed up every portion of this all grain batch. The idea was to make an all grain imperial black ipa... Have you ever had one that went bad from the very beginning..

I missed my mass temp... was aiming for 148, hit 146
so i added more mash water, never hit above 146
now i had a watery low temp mash
extended mash time to 140 minutes
very little sparge as most water was in mash
pulled off 8.6 as brewsmith said
boiled for an hour and only reduced to 7.5, but couldnt see as rolling boil in sight glass
plate chiller plugged
finally reversed it, and it worked
aimed for 1.085 with 6 g
hit 1.060 at 7.5 g
added more brown sugar and hit 1.070, maybe 1.075 once it disolves more
this beer is gonna go one way or the other....

bad brew day...

You still made beer.

It will make you feel even worse when it turns out to be the best beer that you have ever made and you cannot duplicate it.

cfonnes said:

It will make you feel even worse when it turns out to be the best beer that you have ever made and you cannot duplicate it.

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Well, at least he now has documentation of what he did so he can try to replicate it once it becomes the greatest beer ever.

Don't let a bad brew day get you down. We all have them. Now you must take a step back and try to learn form it.
Your mash temp was too low.
Did you preheat your mash tun? If not next time boil about a gal or so of extra water and let it sit a few min in your mash tun. Then dump it out when ready to fill with the mash water.
I never used a plate chiller before but now that you got one clogged and fixed hopefully you can avoid it next time.
It would seem that you have a 1gal/hour boil off. Remember that for next time and you will be alot closer to your target volume.
Good luck on your next brew!

That sounds like a great day of learning

Do you usually boil off 2.6 gallons? That seems like a pretty high volume to be driving off...

phenry said:

Do you usually boil off 2.6 gallons? That seems like a pretty high volume to be driving off...

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Agreed, with an hour boil I only get a gallon of boil off. Also, if I'm within a degree or two of target on the mash, I generally don't worry too much about it.

With a lower temperature and a longer mash, you'll probably get more attenuation. Plus the sugar addition will drive it down a little. I bet you'll be fine.

I had a very similar experience with my Baltic Porter. Big beers are hard to get decent efficiency on, especially batch sparging. Instead of a bunch of sugar, I added about 2lbs of DME boiled in .5gal water 24 hours after fermentation kicked off. I was worried it would taste awful, but it came out great.