I brewed up a 12 gallon batch of Saison this weekend. It was a bit of a fustercluck of a day and a few things went wrong. Now I'm trying to figure out what exactly happened.
First off, my mill was acting up and I ended up getting a crush that was quite a bit finer than normal. with quite a bit of flour. The grain bill was 77% 2-row, 20% flaked corn and 3% wheat malt. This was 32 lbs of grain. I also included 1 lb of rice hulls due to all the flaked corn. I do a direct fired recirculating mash in a keggle. I followed the "traditional" saison mash schedule which calls for a 112 F rest, a 136 F rest, a 145 F rest and 153 F rest. I didn't really have much issue with the temperature rests, but did have some major problems with recirculation and runoff. A few times during the mash, my recirculation essentially stopped. I had to stir several times to get it going again as it was getting pretty compacted on my false bottom.
Once I got through the mash, getting it transferred to my boil pot was also a major hassle. I timed my flow at one point and found that I was only getting about 1 gallon every 15 minutes. At that rate, to collect 14 gallons for preboil was going to take forever. I ended up stirring in another pound of rice hulls and stirred quite a few times during the runoff and ended up with some pretty cloudy wort in the boil pot. No husks, just cloudy - lots of flour I assume.
Once it came to a boil, I had the most protein foam / scum I've ever had. I skimmed quite a bit of it off. I assume this was due to the protein rest? The 70 minute boil was uneventful. I added whirlflock at 15 minutes and chilled. The wort going into my fermenter was quite a bit darker than it was going into the boil. It's supposed to be a 4.5 SRM. I know that wort always looks darker than the final beer in a carboy but it seems pretty dark.
Which leads me to my finding once I drained the boil pot and started cleaning up. I found a layer of burnt crap at the bottom of the boil pot. This is the first double batch I've done and it certainly wasn't a vigorous boil so I'm not sure this is a scorched wort situation. I'm wondering if this was hot break material or proteins that settled to the bottom and ended up burning. I'm also wondering if this contributed to my darker than expected wort.
Any thoughts?
First off, my mill was acting up and I ended up getting a crush that was quite a bit finer than normal. with quite a bit of flour. The grain bill was 77% 2-row, 20% flaked corn and 3% wheat malt. This was 32 lbs of grain. I also included 1 lb of rice hulls due to all the flaked corn. I do a direct fired recirculating mash in a keggle. I followed the "traditional" saison mash schedule which calls for a 112 F rest, a 136 F rest, a 145 F rest and 153 F rest. I didn't really have much issue with the temperature rests, but did have some major problems with recirculation and runoff. A few times during the mash, my recirculation essentially stopped. I had to stir several times to get it going again as it was getting pretty compacted on my false bottom.
Once I got through the mash, getting it transferred to my boil pot was also a major hassle. I timed my flow at one point and found that I was only getting about 1 gallon every 15 minutes. At that rate, to collect 14 gallons for preboil was going to take forever. I ended up stirring in another pound of rice hulls and stirred quite a few times during the runoff and ended up with some pretty cloudy wort in the boil pot. No husks, just cloudy - lots of flour I assume.
Once it came to a boil, I had the most protein foam / scum I've ever had. I skimmed quite a bit of it off. I assume this was due to the protein rest? The 70 minute boil was uneventful. I added whirlflock at 15 minutes and chilled. The wort going into my fermenter was quite a bit darker than it was going into the boil. It's supposed to be a 4.5 SRM. I know that wort always looks darker than the final beer in a carboy but it seems pretty dark.
Which leads me to my finding once I drained the boil pot and started cleaning up. I found a layer of burnt crap at the bottom of the boil pot. This is the first double batch I've done and it certainly wasn't a vigorous boil so I'm not sure this is a scorched wort situation. I'm wondering if this was hot break material or proteins that settled to the bottom and ended up burning. I'm also wondering if this contributed to my darker than expected wort.
Any thoughts?
