You dont wanna know, horrible brew day

[coyotebrew]

Alright I've read (ALOT) and from my reading deduced that my pils/lagers have suffered because of several things, water profile, ph, and the need for a deconcoction type mash that keeps me in the beta amylese range for an extended time frame. Sounds pretty simple huh! Well the last batch I undershot the water so this time I used too much water, ended up with almost 10 gallons, I had no lactic acid i used citric acid, ended up at about 5.0 ph. (No more ro water to start over) I'm off grid an hour and a half from anywhere. My well water is too alkaline to use by itself. I had mixed a combination ro and very small amt well water for minerals.
So begin the mash hit the beta amylese zone at the high end 148-150 held it there for an hour and a half, added more water to bring it to 155 ish for another 30 min, then the sparge water, vorlauff, lost alot of temprature trying to get the grain bed set result 35% efficiency too much water, so i attempted to boil down 3 extra gallons of water to bring up OG still at 1.030 shooting for 1.054, so my idea was add dme late in boil looked like i was on target till i cooled the wort OG jumped to 1.080 dang refractometer calculator doesn't adjust at boiling tempratures. Ok soooo add water, boil, cool add. End up at 1.050, figured close enough, put into fermenter into 2 carboys, allow to cool to pitching temps ( 1am) pitch czech yeast into one and a harvested danish lager into the other. Still no activity in either as of noon today!

 

[Subdivisions]

So I just read that whole thing for a "My airlock isn't bubbling" post?? RDWHAHB......

When did you brew this?

EDIT: I see 1AM in there. It hasn't been even 24 hours yet. It's a lager. Did you make a big starter?? Lagers need a boatload of yeast

 

[midfielder5]

So I just read that whole thing for a "My airlock isn't bubbling" post?? RDWHAHB......

When did you brew this?

looks like 11 hours earlier given 1am time mention at the end

 

[coyotebrew]

I started it about noonish, made enough yeast for one 5 gallon batch, had couple mason jars of yeast from a previous batch of dutch lager. Well I hope the 2 and a half hour boil gets rid of any dms even with the late addition of dme!

 

[coyotebrew]

Also had a friend "Helping" me!!!

 

[Subdivisions]

Also had a friend "Helping" me!!!

I see, he was drinking your beer while you brewed

 

[coyotebrew]

More like distracting me, i give him my spent grains,for his chickens. Long winded storyteller.

 

[andy6026]

Yeah, my brew 'assistants' all tend to stand around and yabber. And no matter how many times they've helped me, they never know what to do until I tell them, and still manage to do things I've repeatedly told them not to do, such as, picking up the wort chiller inside the kettle and plunging it up and down shortly before I'm about to drain it into the fermenter, picking up the hydrometer and plunging it up and down inside the wort sample and stirring up all that gunk that I wanted to settle, and a bunch of other things that I can't think of right now...