Well it was one of those days. I missed my strike temp, missed my mash temp and managed to pour hot water on my feet (fortunately with my boots on).
All that has happened before and didn't bother me. But the worst part was this was the first use of my new milling station and monster mill. I had my first stuck sparge EVER and man was that disappointing. I have been using a corona-style mill previously and I crush quite finely and manage to get upwards of 90% efficiency even on 70/30 wheat grain bills - with no stuck sparges.
I adjusted the monster mill crush to look as close as possible to my corona-style crush but obviously there is major difference in the consistency of the grain bed when lautering. It plugged up immediately and I spent the next hour doing a crazy sparge. I poured all my sparge water into the cooler and then took a pitcher full over and over and poured it through a strainer into a bucket. When the strainer was full I dumped the grain back into the tun and stirred it up really well, repeat as necessary. I ended up with a disturbing amount of grain matter in the kettle this way but figured what the heck and went for it.
The crazy thing is I hit my pre- and post-boil volumes and actually overshot my OG once chilled! The wort tasted as I expected so I'm hopeful the batch will turn out fine (this was a house beer I've made too many times to count). 89% efficiency the hard way I guess.
Obviously I'm going to have to dial back the gap on the mill, I currently have it set at 0.048" and running at 200RPM, I think I'll back it off to 0.051" for next time and perhaps suffer slightly lower efficiency.
This was more to blow off some steam than anything, I should have known better than to crush so fine with a new untested mill.
All that has happened before and didn't bother me. But the worst part was this was the first use of my new milling station and monster mill. I had my first stuck sparge EVER and man was that disappointing. I have been using a corona-style mill previously and I crush quite finely and manage to get upwards of 90% efficiency even on 70/30 wheat grain bills - with no stuck sparges.
I adjusted the monster mill crush to look as close as possible to my corona-style crush but obviously there is major difference in the consistency of the grain bed when lautering. It plugged up immediately and I spent the next hour doing a crazy sparge. I poured all my sparge water into the cooler and then took a pitcher full over and over and poured it through a strainer into a bucket. When the strainer was full I dumped the grain back into the tun and stirred it up really well, repeat as necessary. I ended up with a disturbing amount of grain matter in the kettle this way but figured what the heck and went for it.
The crazy thing is I hit my pre- and post-boil volumes and actually overshot my OG once chilled! The wort tasted as I expected so I'm hopeful the batch will turn out fine (this was a house beer I've made too many times to count). 89% efficiency the hard way I guess.
Obviously I'm going to have to dial back the gap on the mill, I currently have it set at 0.048" and running at 200RPM, I think I'll back it off to 0.051" for next time and perhaps suffer slightly lower efficiency.
This was more to blow off some steam than anything, I should have known better than to crush so fine with a new untested mill.