TwoWheeler
Well-Known Member
Chose a recipe that was a bit ambitious for a first all grain - a Belgian Quad.
Bought the grains about a month ago and had them crushed, intending to brew that weekend - it didn't happen until this weekend, so they've been sitting around, crushed, for four or five weeks.
Thought my mash tun would work, but it was actually too small for 14+ lbs of grain and five gallons of water. Wrong....
Found out none of my THREE thermometers agreed with each other, so I'm not sure whether I hit my strike temp, or not.
Not sure if my sparge water was the right temp, because I couldn't find anything that said much beyond "don't go over 170".
Drew off six gallons into my brewpot and still had sparge water left, so I put it in the mash tun.
Drained off whatever would run from the tun, into a second brewpot.
Put the six gallons on to boil.
Had a minor boil-over. (SOP)
Found out my usual method of recirculating ice water through my immersion chiller from/to a cooler didn't work too well with a full wort boil. (New brewpot - first time I've had the capacity to do a full boil). Got down from 220 to 120 fairly quickly, but by then my ice was gone and the water was pretty warm. Tried adding cool tap water to the cooler, but that didn't help much.
Didn't whirlpool because it's a PITA to do with my immersion chiller in.
Got disgusted and filled the bathtub with cool water and set my brewpot in that. Slowly, very slowly the temp came down.
Saw that I was a little short of five gallons, so I added about a half gallon of cool tap water - reasoning that the makeup water would also help cool the wort.
Took a hydrometer reading, and realized I was WAY low - 'spoda be 1.090 and was at 1.060. Looked at the nice "extra" (un-boiled) wort in the second brewpot and said "WTH" and threw it in.
Just dumped the contents of the brewpot into the fermenter, because there were raisins in there that I wanted in the primary - got them, but got all the sludge, too.
After such a long day brewing, getting tired, and still faced with a cleanup, I said "t'hell with it" and pitched my starter at about 95 degrees.
...now, tell me how much it's gonna' SUCK....
Bought the grains about a month ago and had them crushed, intending to brew that weekend - it didn't happen until this weekend, so they've been sitting around, crushed, for four or five weeks.
Thought my mash tun would work, but it was actually too small for 14+ lbs of grain and five gallons of water. Wrong....
Found out none of my THREE thermometers agreed with each other, so I'm not sure whether I hit my strike temp, or not.
Not sure if my sparge water was the right temp, because I couldn't find anything that said much beyond "don't go over 170".
Drew off six gallons into my brewpot and still had sparge water left, so I put it in the mash tun.
Drained off whatever would run from the tun, into a second brewpot.
Put the six gallons on to boil.
Had a minor boil-over. (SOP)
Found out my usual method of recirculating ice water through my immersion chiller from/to a cooler didn't work too well with a full wort boil. (New brewpot - first time I've had the capacity to do a full boil). Got down from 220 to 120 fairly quickly, but by then my ice was gone and the water was pretty warm. Tried adding cool tap water to the cooler, but that didn't help much.
Didn't whirlpool because it's a PITA to do with my immersion chiller in.
Got disgusted and filled the bathtub with cool water and set my brewpot in that. Slowly, very slowly the temp came down.
Saw that I was a little short of five gallons, so I added about a half gallon of cool tap water - reasoning that the makeup water would also help cool the wort.
Took a hydrometer reading, and realized I was WAY low - 'spoda be 1.090 and was at 1.060. Looked at the nice "extra" (un-boiled) wort in the second brewpot and said "WTH" and threw it in.
Just dumped the contents of the brewpot into the fermenter, because there were raisins in there that I wanted in the primary - got them, but got all the sludge, too.
After such a long day brewing, getting tired, and still faced with a cleanup, I said "t'hell with it" and pitched my starter at about 95 degrees.
...now, tell me how much it's gonna' SUCK....
