Today was a Murphy's Law kind of day. I won't go into my internet connection crapping the bed or the issues I've had with my swimming pool equipment since this is a home brewing site.
I've been unable to brew for a couple months and my last keg kicked over a week ago, so I was bound and determined to brew today. I don't usually use adjuncts, nor do I brew light lagers, but I only had two ounces of Fuggles and some 2-row and Carapils so I decided to go the light lager route. No flaked corn, but I just bought an air popper for popcorn, so why not use that?
I had my wife pop the popcorn for me while I got my water and equipment ready. I told her to mash it up a bit so it would fit in my mash tun. Unfortunately, she popped it into the bucket that had my grain (completely overlooking the empty bucket I had for her) and "helpfully" mashed it up, mixing it with the grain.
Note: A Barley Crusher WILL NOT crush popped popcorn (or unpopped popcorn for that matter). Yes I tried. Since nothing was happening, I decided to give the material in the hopper a helpful push with my mash paddle. I now have a curved, permanently imprinted plastic mash paddle due to it being caught by the Barley Crusher and being stuck in such a way that required me to disassemble the damn thing.
I finally got the grain crushed and hit all of my temps spot on. My immersion wort chiller is leaking like a sieve at the connections so I can only submerge about three coils of it. As of now, I'm still waiting on the wort temperature to drop to 100 so I can put it in my ferm chamber and let it do the rest of the work.
True to form, this will probably be one of the best beers I've ever made.
I've been unable to brew for a couple months and my last keg kicked over a week ago, so I was bound and determined to brew today. I don't usually use adjuncts, nor do I brew light lagers, but I only had two ounces of Fuggles and some 2-row and Carapils so I decided to go the light lager route. No flaked corn, but I just bought an air popper for popcorn, so why not use that?
I had my wife pop the popcorn for me while I got my water and equipment ready. I told her to mash it up a bit so it would fit in my mash tun. Unfortunately, she popped it into the bucket that had my grain (completely overlooking the empty bucket I had for her) and "helpfully" mashed it up, mixing it with the grain.
Note: A Barley Crusher WILL NOT crush popped popcorn (or unpopped popcorn for that matter). Yes I tried. Since nothing was happening, I decided to give the material in the hopper a helpful push with my mash paddle. I now have a curved, permanently imprinted plastic mash paddle due to it being caught by the Barley Crusher and being stuck in such a way that required me to disassemble the damn thing.
I finally got the grain crushed and hit all of my temps spot on. My immersion wort chiller is leaking like a sieve at the connections so I can only submerge about three coils of it. As of now, I'm still waiting on the wort temperature to drop to 100 so I can put it in my ferm chamber and let it do the rest of the work.
True to form, this will probably be one of the best beers I've ever made.
