AVL_HopHead
New Member
First time without my brew mentor today. Didn't go so hot. I used Jamil's Robust Vanilla Porter recipe. Things went downhill after I found myself unprepared and quickly having to calculate my sparge and strike temps. Clearly should have done that before. Anyways, long story short, I added WAY too much sparge water and collected damn near 10 gallons of wort.
Again quickly looking on forums and what not decided to add some extra light DME. 12ounces as it was all I had. Then decided to boil the hell out of it for 2 hours or so. I boiled off 4 gallons. Yeah... epic.
In hindsight I realized I should haveboiled off and then done hop additions but no. I had a 120 min boil with the hops. Wicked fail. My gravity read 1.076 which was way off the projected 1.068.
Next time I need to write down everything. Not sure what the hell I was thinking. I just was anxious and wanted to jump in
On top of all the Brewing drama my wife gets annoyed [read. Pissed] because what I said would take 5 hours turned into 7.
I learned a lesson in preparedness if nothing else. I need to Google and try to find some sort of checklist and brew day template so I am more prepared next time. I hope my yeast. Is up to the task. At least I made a starter, though there were no "fireworks ". Nice yeast cake though.
Sorry about grammar / spelling - using a tablet to type and its annoying.
Again quickly looking on forums and what not decided to add some extra light DME. 12ounces as it was all I had. Then decided to boil the hell out of it for 2 hours or so. I boiled off 4 gallons. Yeah... epic.
In hindsight I realized I should haveboiled off and then done hop additions but no. I had a 120 min boil with the hops. Wicked fail. My gravity read 1.076 which was way off the projected 1.068.
Next time I need to write down everything. Not sure what the hell I was thinking. I just was anxious and wanted to jump in
On top of all the Brewing drama my wife gets annoyed [read. Pissed] because what I said would take 5 hours turned into 7.
I learned a lesson in preparedness if nothing else. I need to Google and try to find some sort of checklist and brew day template so I am more prepared next time. I hope my yeast. Is up to the task. At least I made a starter, though there were no "fireworks ". Nice yeast cake though.
Sorry about grammar / spelling - using a tablet to type and its annoying.