Jared311
Well-Known Member
This give me great hope...
I brewed a Bell's Two Hearted Ale clone recently and everything seemed spot on, or so I thought. I started off by adding a little hot water to my MLT to increase the temperature before adding the grains since it was really cold out, snowing in fact. Then I added in all my grains and poured in my hot water. I mixed for awhile and measured the temperature in several spots to get a good reading. Once I was satisifed I closed the lid and brought the MLT into my house. After maybe a half an hour I opened it up only to find that the temperature had dropped by over 5deg! I stirred the grains for a minute and took several more readings only to find the temperature was still falling. So I panicked and added in several large glasses of hot water. Yet the temperature continued to drop. Frustrated I flicked the thermometer only to find the needle jumped to a higher temperature and continued to do so with each flick.
Long story short, I have no idea what temperature I truly mashed at. I seemed to hit my OG of 1050 right on the dot. I let it ferment for almost two weeks, crashcooled in the primary, and then racked to the secondary and dry hopped for another two weeks. After racking over into the keg, the beer tasted delicious. I decided to take a sample 3 days into carbing to see how things were coming along. Which is when I noticed a huge off flavor that came right after the initial tease of the centennial hops dominating my taste buds. I am going to take your advice Revvy and just hide the keg in the back of my fridge for atleast another month.
I brewed a Bell's Two Hearted Ale clone recently and everything seemed spot on, or so I thought. I started off by adding a little hot water to my MLT to increase the temperature before adding the grains since it was really cold out, snowing in fact. Then I added in all my grains and poured in my hot water. I mixed for awhile and measured the temperature in several spots to get a good reading. Once I was satisifed I closed the lid and brought the MLT into my house. After maybe a half an hour I opened it up only to find that the temperature had dropped by over 5deg! I stirred the grains for a minute and took several more readings only to find the temperature was still falling. So I panicked and added in several large glasses of hot water. Yet the temperature continued to drop. Frustrated I flicked the thermometer only to find the needle jumped to a higher temperature and continued to do so with each flick.
Long story short, I have no idea what temperature I truly mashed at. I seemed to hit my OG of 1050 right on the dot. I let it ferment for almost two weeks, crashcooled in the primary, and then racked to the secondary and dry hopped for another two weeks. After racking over into the keg, the beer tasted delicious. I decided to take a sample 3 days into carbing to see how things were coming along. Which is when I noticed a huge off flavor that came right after the initial tease of the centennial hops dominating my taste buds. I am going to take your advice Revvy and just hide the keg in the back of my fridge for atleast another month.