Brewed a witbier Sunday. First all-grain. It was batch sparging. Ended up getting some plastic buckets from a guy. 1 bucket had a bunch of holes in bottom. NEsted inside another bucket with a spigot. Had to replace the spigot when I got it, but after I sanitized it all. Idea was to hit 155 F for 45 minutes to 1 hour. I went to some on-line calculaters to determing strike temp. Had notes and everything went according to plan until I added grain to the water. The volume of water added was correct. But I didn't account for the 1 gallon of deadspace between the buckets!
There went my carefully thought out plan. HA! Winged it. Trying to get 7 gallons into kettle. Plan was to get 3.5 gallons from the runnings. Ended up getting the 7 gallons.
Wort chiller I used for 1st time was awesome. The LHBS gave me some Fermentis S-33 or something. I had about a gallon left to fill the 5 gallons in glass carboy, added rehydrated yeast. 2 hours later at 62 F, already seeing fermentation activity. Woke up Monday morning, to watch it (can't help it!!) it looked like kreusened already?!?!?!? There was a ring above the brew in carboy indicating this. I was shocked. I was expecting maybe today or something it'd pick up. Very pleased. So on safe side, brought it upstairs this evening to get it warmer (72 F) to see if anything picks up.
There went my carefully thought out plan. HA! Winged it. Trying to get 7 gallons into kettle. Plan was to get 3.5 gallons from the runnings. Ended up getting the 7 gallons.
Wort chiller I used for 1st time was awesome. The LHBS gave me some Fermentis S-33 or something. I had about a gallon left to fill the 5 gallons in glass carboy, added rehydrated yeast. 2 hours later at 62 F, already seeing fermentation activity. Woke up Monday morning, to watch it (can't help it!!) it looked like kreusened already?!?!?!? There was a ring above the brew in carboy indicating this. I was shocked. I was expecting maybe today or something it'd pick up. Very pleased. So on safe side, brought it upstairs this evening to get it warmer (72 F) to see if anything picks up.