bonecitybrewco
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2016
- Messages
- 345
- Reaction score
- 80
Well, pulled the trigger and did my first all grain batch. Cream of Three Crops with a tiny hop twist and Kolsch yeast. Seemed simple enough. Where do I start?
Was supposed to brew Saturday morning, ended up being delayed due to a late yeast delivery.
Was supposed to start yesterday morning, ended up being around 2 pm once everything was staged and ready to go.
Then it got worse...
First, missed my mash temp by 6 degrees (low). Great. Oh well, forgot to check off the box for adding mash tun deadspace to mash volume anyways, so added half gallon of 180 sparge water to bring the bed up to temp. Mixed in, still a few degrees short. Oh well, it'll do. My OCD doesn't like it, but I knew that with the 90 minute mash, I should be okay.
Then I got a stuck sparge. Which, given how everything else was going, didn't really phase me. Dumped it into a bucket, mixed it up real good, cleared off false bottom, and re-added. Vorlaufed probably a gallon just to really make sure sparge was flowing and grain was cleared out. This also greatly reduced my total sparge time.
All that being said, with some good self-talk and convincing, I relaxed, didn't worry, and had a home brew. Sure enough, I nailed my pre-boil gravity and volumes (to my own amazement). However, with a new burner, couldn't quite get to a rolling boil fast enough and ended up losing too much to boil off and overshot my OG by 6 points. I could have just added make up water, however, would rather just have a stronger beer I suppose. Everything else went smoothly, up until pitching. I made a minor mistake with the yeast starter. WY2565. I meant to make it 1.5L, ended up being 1.25. Pitched 750 ml 24 hours ago. Still no fermentation signs at all. Will pitch the rest of that starter by 10PM tonight if I still don't see anything. Though, I see a lot of people saying it's slow to start. Sitting in the fermenter at 15C(59F). Right in ferm targets. This might be the straw that breaks me.
But, the RDWHAHB worked last time, maybe just leave it?
Was supposed to brew Saturday morning, ended up being delayed due to a late yeast delivery.
Was supposed to start yesterday morning, ended up being around 2 pm once everything was staged and ready to go.
Then it got worse...
First, missed my mash temp by 6 degrees (low). Great. Oh well, forgot to check off the box for adding mash tun deadspace to mash volume anyways, so added half gallon of 180 sparge water to bring the bed up to temp. Mixed in, still a few degrees short. Oh well, it'll do. My OCD doesn't like it, but I knew that with the 90 minute mash, I should be okay.
Then I got a stuck sparge. Which, given how everything else was going, didn't really phase me. Dumped it into a bucket, mixed it up real good, cleared off false bottom, and re-added. Vorlaufed probably a gallon just to really make sure sparge was flowing and grain was cleared out. This also greatly reduced my total sparge time.
All that being said, with some good self-talk and convincing, I relaxed, didn't worry, and had a home brew. Sure enough, I nailed my pre-boil gravity and volumes (to my own amazement). However, with a new burner, couldn't quite get to a rolling boil fast enough and ended up losing too much to boil off and overshot my OG by 6 points. I could have just added make up water, however, would rather just have a stronger beer I suppose. Everything else went smoothly, up until pitching. I made a minor mistake with the yeast starter. WY2565. I meant to make it 1.5L, ended up being 1.25. Pitched 750 ml 24 hours ago. Still no fermentation signs at all. Will pitch the rest of that starter by 10PM tonight if I still don't see anything. Though, I see a lot of people saying it's slow to start. Sitting in the fermenter at 15C(59F). Right in ferm targets. This might be the straw that breaks me.
But, the RDWHAHB worked last time, maybe just leave it?