...and Today I Step Into a New World!

[Shooter]

Well, I've been doing this brewing thing for a little while now and have certainly posted enough at this point. In general I think, even if I have taken issue with one of you, we've always pretty much got along.

Today, I ask you to keep me in your thoughts. I've done everything from Mr. Beer to extract/steeping recipes and even done some partial mashes. I feel I have my basic process down fairly well and am happy with the beers I've been producing lately.

So, I cast the away the line and set course into the world of all grain. SWMBO is taking the kids to a birthday party today and I should have some uninterrupted hours. I'm attempting JZ's mild recipe from BCS. I open the grain bag and inhale. Ah, I think to myself, what a heavenly smell...

I'll get back to you later today when I fail to hit my temps and am dealing with a stuck sparge!!!

 

[Grizzlybrew]

Awesome! You'll never go back. I'm sure you'll brew a great beer.

 

[Shooter]

Hopefully it will be good. I'm using an old Phil's sparge arm and false bottom with a pair of just regular food grade buckets that I got free from a coworker. We'll see how it works. I wrapped a couple of blankets around it to help hold the temperature. The mash is going downstairs as I type this. For the future I need to remember to:

1. Heat up extra water in case I don't hit the temperature.
2. Get a better mash stirrer then my only semi-useful big slotted spoon.

I got a few small dough balls, but I think I was able to bust them all up. As I dumped all the strike water in to the mash tun I realized that, if I didn't hit my temp, I hadn't bothered heating up extra at that point. Luckily, I was a bit high and was able to just add a little cool water, but, in the future, I'll have both standing by. I was shooting for 154 on the temp, but was close to 160 initially. After adding the water I was between 152 and 153 and figured, good enough!

Okay, I'm off to sparge!

 

[Shooter]

Arrrgh, so I'd heard these plastic false bottoms have a tendency to float. I could feel the thing floating up on me and held it down with a spoon as I doughed in. However, after getting a trickle out of my sparge line and spending an hour trying to resuspend the grain bed and blow through the line to clear it I finally had to clear it into a different vessel and realized that about three cups worth of grain were imbeded under the false bottom. So, cleared it, covered the false bottom with foundation water and very carefully held the thing in place...success. We'll see how that affected the extract, but I was aiming for a pre boil gravity of 1.036 and got 1.037. So, so far, just wasted time, but I think I'm okay and I learned a valuable lesson for next time.

 

[Shooter]

Done, looks like I was looking at my end of boil gravity originally. In the end, I'm over 10 points high on the OG. I'm wondering if having to transfer the grain back and forth to clear that sparge had an effect on that. Now that I know how to deal with the false bottom, I'll have to keep an eye on my numbers next time and see if this is consistent or just an anomaly. Okay, time to have dinner and RDWHAHB!

 

[Grizzlybrew]

Glad it seemed to work out ok - and you'll get an extra kick out of the beer once it's done too!