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brewmeister13

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The story of how a perfectly planned brew day turned out to be anything but.

So yesterday was my first all grain brew (3rd batch total) and the plan was fairly simple. My mom was going to watch my one year old daughter and my friend was going to help me with most everything, he was visiting and had to head home for work on monday. We were going to mash at 5.4 ph at 152 F for an hour and then we would fly sparge and I would do the boil. That was the plan at least.

Things started to go awry when my mom decided to leave town. The yeast starter was already going and I had put this batch off for long enough. So we pressed on. I got most everything set up just fine before my daughter woke up. Then after grabbing her and feeding her some breakfast I commenced brewing with her strapped to me (don't worry, I let my friend do all the dangerous stuff like lighting burners and what not).

We got our strike water up to temp and pumped it over to mash tun. Now for some reason, I don't exactly remember why, we decided to transfer the water first and then dump the grains in. Somehow we hit our target temp. Then came the PH reading, 5.8. I scrambled. I knew this was within the workable range, but it was so close to the top. Instead of grabbing gypsum, which I think, now, is what I should have done, I grabbed the bottle of lactic acid. I added a very slight amount and we stirred like heck. We dropped the ph to 5.67, but at the same time dropped the temp down to 146. The mash tun is not directly heated so we pulled off some of the liquid and brought it to a boil in the house and transferred it back into the tun. We raised it a bit, but couldn't get back to 152 and I decided to just leave it. We also missed our mash out temp. Also during this time were two diaper changes and my daughter passed out in her pack, so I laid her down for a nap.

Then came the sparge. My pot is equipped with the blichmann auto sparge. It sounds so simple, automatic even. Well, it's not. We are trying to adjust the level of the float while 170F water is leaking out the end of it and causing havoc. We get about 4 gallons of wort into the BK when the pump decided it can't possibly pump any more liquid up into the BK. Fearing a stuck sparge we remove the auto syphon and do a sort of batch sparge to thin it out. Still no flow. The pump is giving us the middle finger and smiling at us. I grab the HLT to pump down into, instead of up. When I go to dump out the little bit of water in the dead space I see why the PH was off in the mash. At the bottom of the pot lays our brewing salts (we didn't use any chalk to avoid just this). With the pot in place the pump starts pulling liquid just fine from the MT. We get what we need to hit our pre-boil volume and stop. Now we have to dump the liquid into the BK, hot side aeration be damned.

At this point my friend needs to leave. It's just the boil, I can handle this part. I thank him for all his help (even though he has never brewed in his life before there was no way I would have gotten this far without him) and he takes off. The boil starts off great, it's boiling like crazy, I'm adding hops and waiting, watching. Then my daughter wakes up. I quickly hook up all the lines to be ready to chill when the time comes, run up to get her, change another diaper and bring her down for some lunch. I toss her in her high chair and position her so she can see me out the back door and I can watch her. I dump some hops in, and keep her tray full of food. It's going good until I notice that the boil off is extreme. I'm already down to 5 gallons and have over 15 minutes to go. I add the last 3/4 gallon of distilled water that I have and go with it. My daughter is done with lunch, so I wash her up. My boil timer is going off so I shut the flames off. With my daughter watching me from the window I run the wort through the CFC and into the carboy. Luckily something goes right and the recirculating ice water works. I could chill the stuff down to the 50's if I wanted to. I get just under 5 gallons transferred into the carboy. I dump the starter into the carboy and put it in my converted freezer. Done. Or so I thought. About 15 minutes later I remembered that I forgot to aerate the wort. I drag my daughter out to the garage, which she loves, and set everything up as she tears through my socket set. I aerate, cap and leave the wort alone. This brew is as good as it is going to get, there is nothing left for me to do but hope.

This brew day was a complete and total disaster. My mash efficiency was 55%; I may have forgotten to sanitize the thief before drawing off a sample and there is over a gallon of trub collected in the carboy already. It was awesome though. I realized that all the reading and research, planning and calculating in the world doesn't prepare you for the real thing. I'm over my head now, but given time I'll refine my techniques and figure out just exactly what it is that I'm doing. I also realize how amazing of a little girl I have.

The End
 
Racking up experience points, I see.

Brewing can be about as enjoyable or scientific as you make it.

Too much knowledge can be just as evil as too much ignorance.

Hope you ferment it and see what you get!
 
This is hardly a disaster, I expect your beer will be quite good. So what if your pH and mash temp were a bit off? Don't get hung up on being perfect, especially on your first few AG brews. I rarely have a brew day that comes off without a few hiccups.
 
I've been arm deep in my kettle full of wort. (Sanitized arm mind you) I'm still tuning my process and have had many calamities but at least when I understood the process better and had a good kit to work with I turned out good beer. Give it a few weeks and you will be nursing the memories of this over the beer you sip and remarking on how wonderful your daughter is.
 
Have more kids. I have 4. The youngest is now 5 and I routinely brew with all 4 with me while mom works.

Today was a disaster too. Got a new brew kettle and didn't calibrate the thermometer. That was a problem. I overshot strike temp. I added cool water. That did not do it. Added more. Then I was too low but my mash tun was full. Oh well. Mashed too high for 20 minutes then too low for 40. It all evens out right? Oh, then I added too much sparge water because I forgot to calculate deadspace in the new kettle. Now my OG is a few points low...
 
Racking up experience points, I see.

Brewing can be about as enjoyable or scientific as you make it.

Too much knowledge can be just as evil as too much ignorance.

Hope you ferment it and see what you get!

Unfortunately I'm still a level 1 brewer. Man I need a cheat code to level up. :D I'm definitely fermenting the bad boy. At the very least I'll learn what Nelson Sauvin and Motueka taste like blended.

This is hardly a disaster, I expect your beer will be quite good. So what if your pH and mash temp were a bit off? Don't get hung up on being perfect, especially on your first few AG brews. I rarely have a brew day that comes off without a few hiccups.

Thanks man, I hope you're right.

Have more kids. I have 4. The youngest is now 5 and I routinely brew with all 4 with me while mom works.

You have a small brew team to work for you.:tank: As for me, I think I'm good for a bit. I like your avatar though, sweet brewery name.
 
Don't worry, after numerous and epic fails on my part... I'm sure you'll still be able to drink and enjoy that beer! ;)
 
brewmeister13 said:
You have a small brew team to work for you.:tank: As for me, I think I'm good for a bit. I like your avatar though, sweet brewery name.

As long as their out of my way brew days go well. I brew alone and they just do their thing. My buddy is an artist and did the logo for me. I rather like it too!
 
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