SatanPrinceOfDarkness
Well-Known Member
Given my username, you might think I'm happy about all this. It all sucked a little bit, some of it could have been avoided, and all of it is a learning lesson.
I was brewing an all-grain kit that purports to be a Bell's Two-Hearted clone. Unfortunately I won't be able to do a real comparison, since this session went all wahoonie shaped. The recipe is on the Great Fermentations web site.
This was our first all-grain full-size brew. We have done a few mini/partial mashes and a micro all-grain batch. All of those went well, and our process was getting 60-70% efficiency for sugar extraction (cue ominous foreshadowing), using essentially a BIAB style infusion mash with no sparging.
I wanted to move to all-grain with minimal investment in equipment. We've been doing a ridiculous partial boil process utilizing two pots (combined 5 gallons volume) for maybe a 3.5 gallon boil. That actually works quite well for the boil.
I figured out I have a 6.5 gallon cooler sitting in the basement. It's about the size of my grain bag. Cool. I use the green bay mashers Can I Rack It calculator and determine I should be able to get 3.9 gallons of wort and 13lbs of grain in my cooler at the 5 gallon mark. If you're keeping track, that's a ratio of 1.2 qts per pound.
Used a calculator to determine my strike water temp. Grain at room temp - 75, desired temp 150, 13 lbs grain, strike water should be 168. (Later I used another calculator that told me 164.8). Poured my water over the grain bag, stirred constantly, and read the thermometer - 160. Wicked Tyrannical Fart-harpies!
Let it cool for 15 minutes to 150, shut the cooler lid, stuck it in the oven, and got everything ready for the next 45 minutes.
We didn't want to do a full sparge. We couldn't really given our equipment. Here is where I start trying to change the actual course of events last night. I don't want to tell you about how I dunked a grain bag into a half gallon of water and said water bounced off the ceiling. I don't want to tell you that this wasn't the only major spill to occur in the next 10 minutes, and I don't want to tell you that our efficiency was only about 41%.
We ended up putting the bag back in the cooler (after moving the wort to our kettles), heating the water to about 190, and then backfilling over the grain to mash-out. Pulled the bag out into a colander, left to drain, moved mash back to kettles, and set out to boil.
Boil went okay, hops on schedule, no boil-overs, new dog didn't eat any hops, and I didn't forget to add the flame-out hops (like I did last time).
Decided to try something new and added Irish Moss 10 minutes before flameout. 1 tsp for 5 gallons. We used 1 tsp for our ~3 gallons since we would be increasing to 5 gallons in fermenter.
Cool down went okay, took about 20 minutes in an ice bath.
Decided to whirlpool for the first time. Whirlpooled for about 5 minutes, left to sit for another 20.
Proceeded to siphon. Wort was straight up chunky. I'm not sure what the Irish Moss was supposed to do, but we ended up having thick soup wort from top to bottom after sitting for all that time. Maybe it will help later when moving to secondary. For now, it just clogged our siphon from the start.
So, here comes our most grievous mistake. We've been straining our wort into the fermenter lately. Usually I put my large funnel into fermenter, lay my grain bag in the funnel, and strain through that. It works pretty well. My brewing partner wanted to repeat that, but we hadn't sanitized the funnel, and we were ready to siphon. He manned the bottom end, and I handled the wand. So, we put the bag in the neck of the fermenter and started siphoning. It very quickly became apparent that we were getting MUCH MORE SOLIDS than we were used to. Presumably this was due to the Irish Moss. What also quickly became apparent was that we had created a butt plug shaped mass of wort solids INSIDE THE FERMENTER. I wish I had a picture. It ultimately was the size of a children's soccer ball. We're talking a 7" wide bag of **** inside a 1" opening. The stuff of nightmares, seriously.
We pulled, we yanked, we squeezed, we prayed. That bag was not coming out. I was reminded of the episode of South Park with the world's largest poops.
We brought the carboy outside because things were getting messy. Somehow that plug kept squeezing out liquid, mostly down, but sometimes up and out when we really tugged. A teaspoon was too wide to fit into the carboy neck. Eventually, we had to use a spoon HANDLE to scoop the **** (and it really looked like nothing so much as goose poop). 20 minutes later we had about 2 gallons of low gravity wort, a bit of a mess, and it was already 12:30AM. BTW, the final plug we pull out absolutely had the shape and texture of a human turd. We used this knowledge to amuse ourselves. It was the symbol of our suffering and of our salvation.
Ultimately we ended up adding the little DME I had sitting around. Wheat DME. Not to recipe. We topped up the fermenter and had all of 1.041 OG. It was supposed be be a minimum of 1.06, possibly up to 1.07.
Oh, and one more thing. 12 hours in and no fermentation activity (smack pack).
:smack:
Anyone care for a, uhh, very sessionable wheat IPA?
I was brewing an all-grain kit that purports to be a Bell's Two-Hearted clone. Unfortunately I won't be able to do a real comparison, since this session went all wahoonie shaped. The recipe is on the Great Fermentations web site.
This was our first all-grain full-size brew. We have done a few mini/partial mashes and a micro all-grain batch. All of those went well, and our process was getting 60-70% efficiency for sugar extraction (cue ominous foreshadowing), using essentially a BIAB style infusion mash with no sparging.
I wanted to move to all-grain with minimal investment in equipment. We've been doing a ridiculous partial boil process utilizing two pots (combined 5 gallons volume) for maybe a 3.5 gallon boil. That actually works quite well for the boil.
I figured out I have a 6.5 gallon cooler sitting in the basement. It's about the size of my grain bag. Cool. I use the green bay mashers Can I Rack It calculator and determine I should be able to get 3.9 gallons of wort and 13lbs of grain in my cooler at the 5 gallon mark. If you're keeping track, that's a ratio of 1.2 qts per pound.
Used a calculator to determine my strike water temp. Grain at room temp - 75, desired temp 150, 13 lbs grain, strike water should be 168. (Later I used another calculator that told me 164.8). Poured my water over the grain bag, stirred constantly, and read the thermometer - 160. Wicked Tyrannical Fart-harpies!
Let it cool for 15 minutes to 150, shut the cooler lid, stuck it in the oven, and got everything ready for the next 45 minutes.
We didn't want to do a full sparge. We couldn't really given our equipment. Here is where I start trying to change the actual course of events last night. I don't want to tell you about how I dunked a grain bag into a half gallon of water and said water bounced off the ceiling. I don't want to tell you that this wasn't the only major spill to occur in the next 10 minutes, and I don't want to tell you that our efficiency was only about 41%.
We ended up putting the bag back in the cooler (after moving the wort to our kettles), heating the water to about 190, and then backfilling over the grain to mash-out. Pulled the bag out into a colander, left to drain, moved mash back to kettles, and set out to boil.
Boil went okay, hops on schedule, no boil-overs, new dog didn't eat any hops, and I didn't forget to add the flame-out hops (like I did last time).
Decided to try something new and added Irish Moss 10 minutes before flameout. 1 tsp for 5 gallons. We used 1 tsp for our ~3 gallons since we would be increasing to 5 gallons in fermenter.Cool down went okay, took about 20 minutes in an ice bath.
Decided to whirlpool for the first time. Whirlpooled for about 5 minutes, left to sit for another 20.
Proceeded to siphon. Wort was straight up chunky. I'm not sure what the Irish Moss was supposed to do, but we ended up having thick soup wort from top to bottom after sitting for all that time. Maybe it will help later when moving to secondary. For now, it just clogged our siphon from the start.
So, here comes our most grievous mistake. We've been straining our wort into the fermenter lately. Usually I put my large funnel into fermenter, lay my grain bag in the funnel, and strain through that. It works pretty well. My brewing partner wanted to repeat that, but we hadn't sanitized the funnel, and we were ready to siphon. He manned the bottom end, and I handled the wand. So, we put the bag in the neck of the fermenter and started siphoning. It very quickly became apparent that we were getting MUCH MORE SOLIDS than we were used to. Presumably this was due to the Irish Moss. What also quickly became apparent was that we had created a butt plug shaped mass of wort solids INSIDE THE FERMENTER. I wish I had a picture. It ultimately was the size of a children's soccer ball. We're talking a 7" wide bag of **** inside a 1" opening. The stuff of nightmares, seriously.
We pulled, we yanked, we squeezed, we prayed. That bag was not coming out. I was reminded of the episode of South Park with the world's largest poops.
We brought the carboy outside because things were getting messy. Somehow that plug kept squeezing out liquid, mostly down, but sometimes up and out when we really tugged. A teaspoon was too wide to fit into the carboy neck. Eventually, we had to use a spoon HANDLE to scoop the **** (and it really looked like nothing so much as goose poop). 20 minutes later we had about 2 gallons of low gravity wort, a bit of a mess, and it was already 12:30AM. BTW, the final plug we pull out absolutely had the shape and texture of a human turd. We used this knowledge to amuse ourselves. It was the symbol of our suffering and of our salvation.
Ultimately we ended up adding the little DME I had sitting around. Wheat DME. Not to recipe. We topped up the fermenter and had all of 1.041 OG. It was supposed be be a minimum of 1.06, possibly up to 1.07.
Oh, and one more thing. 12 hours in and no fermentation activity (smack pack).
:smack:
Anyone care for a, uhh, very sessionable wheat IPA?
