Irish Red Ale

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2xbrewing said:
Hey I'm kind of new and I was looking at your recipe and when talking about the water what does "Decoct 5qt of water mean. Again I apologize if I'm an amateur and not getting it.

It looks like he has done a mashout in a cooler mash tun by draining 5.5 quarts of wort, boiling it, and returning it to the mash tun to stop conversion. In my opinion this is an overly complicated mashing schedule, I would just do a single infusion mash and a batch sparge.
 
Yeah it was absolutely unnecessary. Don't do it. I'm making this again tomorrow and doing a single infusion.
 
Disasterous. I got my grain from a different LHBS than usual and their mill is too fine for my SS braid, which resulted in a SUPER slow sparge. It took almost an hour to drain out enough to begin my boil. Spills, missed temps, faulty timer, forgetfulness, ran out of propane, no ice, RAIN. At least I got my beer made and didn't break anything. I need to upgrade my system.
 
Actually, it was. I think BeerSmith calculated it at around 86%. I'm gonna change my equipment to handle this finer crush. False bottom maybe.
 
This has been in secondary for almost two weeks. I am going to keg this up probably on Thursday. It's looking pretty clear and I haven't had any issues since the brew day. Gravity before and after primary was 1.061 and 1.014, respectively (OG was 9 points higher than it should have been but SG after primary was right on target... weird). Looks and smells great, though. :D
 
Forgot to update this. The beer was great despite all the screw-ups. I entered it in the Hangar 24 homebrew competition. Didn't do well but I really liked the beer anyway. Turned out a little dark but was perfect for my palate.
 
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