rpolzin25
Well-Known Member
So I have had a few all grain brews under my belt and everything had been going farily smooth up until my latest brew. Now before this brew I would only brew when I was staying up late to flip into my overnight working schedule as I wouldn't have any interruptions and I had been using a 5 gallon cooler w/ a metal braid as my mash tun. This time I decided to brew during the day as my 3 1/2 yo son was interested (which basically means playing outside w/ his toys) in helping out Daddy make beer. On top of this I just bought a 10 gallon cooler w/ a false bottom. So everything seemed to go smoothly until draining the mash tun. I vorloufed as normal, everything appeared clear and I then drained into my main kettle. I put the kettle on the burner and low and behold...there are a bunch of grains floating around. So I pour back into the mash tun, let it set a few minutes and then redrain....only it doesn't matter how much I vorlouf...grains keep coming through so basically just decide to use my strainer to filter out all the grains which was rather annoying.
Alright so then I get passed that part and bring the kettle to a boil, add my hops...let it settle down and go in and eat some dinner w/ the family. Come out a little later to add a second addition of hops and low and behold...a boilover in progress. So get it tamed down, add my hops and I literally had to watch it like a hawk the rest of the boil as if I didn't it would boil over.
Then I get the wort cooled and go to drain into my fermenter only my kettle doesn't want to drain properly...for some reason my kettlescreen inside my boil kettle keeps getting clogged. By this point my wife is getting a little angry since things are taking longer than expected and both my kids, a 3 1/2 and a 1 1/2 year old have decided to have meltdowns. So now since I need to hurry a little bit i am trying to pour my 5.5 gallons of beer by myself through a strainer into a speidel and end up spilling some beer in process just adding to the mess in the garage.
In the end, I somehow managed to hit both my target gravity and target volume (I did add a little extra water at the end of the boil).
The really funny thing is I was making a nut brown ale and was going to call it ClusterNut brown ale because I was using Cluster hops but now ClusterNut has multiple meanings for this brew.
So my big question would be what could have been the cause of grains getting through false bottom. I have grains milled for me and have never had this issue before. The big diffence in this brew for me was using a 10 gallon mash tun w/ a false bottom, using 1.5 qt/lb instead of 1.3 qt/lb since I had the extra space in the mash tun, and instead of typically just using spring water for my brews I used distilled w/ calculated additions to the water. Thanks
Alright so then I get passed that part and bring the kettle to a boil, add my hops...let it settle down and go in and eat some dinner w/ the family. Come out a little later to add a second addition of hops and low and behold...a boilover in progress. So get it tamed down, add my hops and I literally had to watch it like a hawk the rest of the boil as if I didn't it would boil over.
Then I get the wort cooled and go to drain into my fermenter only my kettle doesn't want to drain properly...for some reason my kettlescreen inside my boil kettle keeps getting clogged. By this point my wife is getting a little angry since things are taking longer than expected and both my kids, a 3 1/2 and a 1 1/2 year old have decided to have meltdowns. So now since I need to hurry a little bit i am trying to pour my 5.5 gallons of beer by myself through a strainer into a speidel and end up spilling some beer in process just adding to the mess in the garage.
In the end, I somehow managed to hit both my target gravity and target volume (I did add a little extra water at the end of the boil).
The really funny thing is I was making a nut brown ale and was going to call it ClusterNut brown ale because I was using Cluster hops but now ClusterNut has multiple meanings for this brew.
So my big question would be what could have been the cause of grains getting through false bottom. I have grains milled for me and have never had this issue before. The big diffence in this brew for me was using a 10 gallon mash tun w/ a false bottom, using 1.5 qt/lb instead of 1.3 qt/lb since I had the extra space in the mash tun, and instead of typically just using spring water for my brews I used distilled w/ calculated additions to the water. Thanks