Arazcamaro
Member
I decided to brew a clone of Southern Tier's Pumpking this weekend and have the say this has been my worst brewing experience out of 19 batches.
Let me first start by saying this might be the last time I try brewing on Friday the 13th. This was a painful brewing experience!
First it was late before I got started (9:00 PM) and I already knew it was going to be a late night. I hit my target mash temp spot on so I thought it was going to be smooth sailing. 
After 45 minutes, I open the valve on my mash tun to start my sparge and NOTHING comes out! My first stuck mash! Luckily I could still stir the grains so it wasn't too thick. I ended up having to dump the mash into a 6 gallon bucket and found that my manifold was completely stopped up. After cleaning it out and dumping my mash back into the mash tun, I was able to start my spage.
The sparage went well although I did undershoot my sparge water volume and ended up having to run a gallon of hot tap water through the grains to get my 6 gallon pre-boil volume.
I light the burner and notice that I have blue flames with the valve all the way open but don't hear the normal 'jet engine' sound. I figure it's all good and I'll get a boil soon. Fourty-Five minutes later my temp won't get over 200 degrees and I'm wondering if I'll ever get a boil. Jason (my next door neighbor and brew mate) asks if I have another burner that I can use, sure enough I have my Mother-In-Law's Safe-T-Burner in the garage. We delicately manage to get the kettle moved over to the new burner and have a roaring flame and a full boil within minutes. I thought we were in good shape from hear but about 5 minutes later, the burner shuts off. Appearantly the Safe-T-Burner has a safety feature that shuts off the flame if it thinks it's getting too hot. I have to wait two minutes before it will let me re-light the flame. The burner proceeds to do this every 5 minutes for the remainder of the boil.
After the herendously long boil, flame shut off, wait 2 minutes, boil cycle I end up with a final volume of 6 gallons post boil after the pumpkin was added. I will likely loose 1/2 gallon from trub but expect to end up with 5.5 gallons at bottling time and less hop utilization than desired. This might actually be a good thing since I found out that my LHBS gave me Centennial hops instead of the requested Sterling for my finish hops.
Jason expects that this will turn out as the best beer ever and we'll have no way of ever replicating it if it is. In any case, at least it's fermenting away nicely after I mistakingly left the yeast packet in the hot garage for a week. We'll see how this one goes with all the fumbles along the way.
Let me first start by saying this might be the last time I try brewing on Friday the 13th. This was a painful brewing experience!
First it was late before I got started (9:00 PM) and I already knew it was going to be a late night. I hit my target mash temp spot on so I thought it was going to be smooth sailing. After 45 minutes, I open the valve on my mash tun to start my sparge and NOTHING comes out! My first stuck mash! Luckily I could still stir the grains so it wasn't too thick. I ended up having to dump the mash into a 6 gallon bucket and found that my manifold was completely stopped up. After cleaning it out and dumping my mash back into the mash tun, I was able to start my spage. The sparage went well although I did undershoot my sparge water volume and ended up having to run a gallon of hot tap water through the grains to get my 6 gallon pre-boil volume.
I light the burner and notice that I have blue flames with the valve all the way open but don't hear the normal 'jet engine' sound. I figure it's all good and I'll get a boil soon. Fourty-Five minutes later my temp won't get over 200 degrees and I'm wondering if I'll ever get a boil. Jason (my next door neighbor and brew mate) asks if I have another burner that I can use, sure enough I have my Mother-In-Law's Safe-T-Burner in the garage. We delicately manage to get the kettle moved over to the new burner and have a roaring flame and a full boil within minutes. I thought we were in good shape from hear but about 5 minutes later, the burner shuts off. Appearantly the Safe-T-Burner has a safety feature that shuts off the flame if it thinks it's getting too hot. I have to wait two minutes before it will let me re-light the flame. The burner proceeds to do this every 5 minutes for the remainder of the boil.
After the herendously long boil, flame shut off, wait 2 minutes, boil cycle I end up with a final volume of 6 gallons post boil after the pumpkin was added. I will likely loose 1/2 gallon from trub but expect to end up with 5.5 gallons at bottling time and less hop utilization than desired. This might actually be a good thing since I found out that my LHBS gave me Centennial hops instead of the requested Sterling for my finish hops.
Jason expects that this will turn out as the best beer ever and we'll have no way of ever replicating it if it is. In any case, at least it's fermenting away nicely after I mistakingly left the yeast packet in the hot garage for a week. We'll see how this one goes with all the fumbles along the way.
