So, that brew day started off bad and just got progressively worse through the evening! First off, my cooler didn't have the capacity to deal with the mash. I was doing in DIPA so we're talking just over 14lbs of grain (my homebrew store advertised this as a 30+ liter capacity which it certainly isn't!). So I was left with around a kilo of grain which I decided to mash in a separate pot. As I mentioned in the first post, the thermometer burst at the end and ended up on the surface of the mash which I was able to get off. It was an alcohol thermometer so no mercury or other sinister chemical worries. The break in the thermometer was really really small so I'm confident that would have been filtered out. With the cooler being totally maxed out and full to the brim it was near impossible for me to stir the mash up well thus leading to a stuck sparge and ultimately TERRIBLE efficiency...with a bit of blowing through the tube (I know, not good practice) I got my runnings. The boil was about the only thing that went to plan and when transfering the cooled wort to the fermenter it became apparent that the hop strainer had come away from my tap during the boil so I ended up having to pour from the kettle manually through a strainer....anyway, that's all she wrote, my anticipated OG was 1.080 and it came out at 1.060...despite all the problems I was still pretty shocked to read that from the hydrometer, 20 point loss that must be a record or something! Anyways, I need a few days before I can think about brewing something again! cheers!
