Well I screwed that brew up, lets see how it turns out

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GreenEnvy22

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I brewed an imperial red yesterday (based on Northern Brewer Megalodon imperial red). The grains/yeast/hops were all coming via Fedex, and once I got the notification they were on the truck for delivery I decided to get prepared and got my mash water and sparge water heated up.
It took like 5 hours until they showed up though, and I forgot to top the water back up, so I'm sure I was short a couple liters from those two pots running all afternoon.
Anyway, I was way low on my temp at the beginning of mashing, only like 142F. It got upto the target 152 about halfway through the mash (I recirculate it through a coil that is immersed in the sparge water, which is kept at target temp with a sous vide machine). So I extended the 60 min mash to 80 minutes.
Sparge went ok.
Started the boil, did my first hops additions. After 40 minutes, I added the 2nd hops and then turned on my recirc pump again, which was now hooked up to run through my counterflow chiller. I do this for the last 20 minutes to sterilize chiller. However, I forgot that I had turned on the counterflows pump earlier when checking for leaks. The pump is outside in a 55 gallon drum so it's totally silent in the garage when it's running.
I didn't realize my mistake for about 15 minutes, and by then the wort was down to 140F, even with the heating element still running at over 3KW.

So I raised the hop spider basket, and shutoff both pumps until boil resumed about 25 minutes later, and then got the recirc going again to sterilize.
Added my last hops, and then added the corn sugar shortly before I ended the boil.

I didn't add as much corn sugar as the recipe called for, as I didn't need a 10% beer, so I ended up at 1.080. I think this is the highest gravity beer I've made. I added two packets of US-05. It's tucked away in my fermentation box now, with the inkbird set to maintain 18C +/- 3 degrees.

One other oddity, consistently all night when taking gravity readings, the hydrometer was reading almost 0.005 lower than refractometer. So like the refractometer was reading 1.080, and hydrometer was more like 1.075, even with temp correction. I tested both in some room temperature water later and the hydrometer does look to be reading about 0.004 low. Not sure why, I've never noticed that before, but I don't generally use both tools, just one or the other, so maybe this one has been off for a long time.

Anyway, hopefully I didn't screw this up too bad. Who knows, maybe it will turn out awesome.
 

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Sound's like a normal day brewing.

Your shot of the hydrometer has me wondering though. And I'm going to have to see with mine next time I use it.

Since your pic is from below the liquid level, is that also how you read your hydrometer? I've never thought to look at it from below and never seen any instructions or advice to do so. So maybe that's part of the inaccuracy you find when trying to compare to plain water or even the refractometer.

Normally instructions for reading hydrometers are for reading from a sight line above the liquid and the bottom of the meniscus.
 
Sound's like a normal day brewing.

Your shot of the hydrometer has me wondering though. And I'm going to have to see with mine next time I use it.

Since your pic is from below the liquid level, is that also how you read your hydrometer? I've never thought to look at it from below and never seen any instructions or advice to do so. So maybe that's part of the inaccuracy you find when trying to compare to plain water or even the refractometer.

Normally instructions for reading hydrometers are for reading from a sight line above the liquid and the bottom of the meniscus.
No that was just the photo I took, I've been winemaking and brewing for years and never had an issue like that before.
I found my spare hydrometer today and it matches the refractometer. So I'll just put a note with the other one saying it reads 0.005 low.
 
It‘ll be fine. Better to be too strong than too week in my opinion.

I once made a stout where I messed up the water calcs. It turned out to be 13%. It was great.
 
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