What a Day! SHEESH!!!

[prrriiide]

Did 10g of IPA today. Just wrapped up. I started milling my grains at noon (27.5# MO, 4# Crystal 20). For those of you keeping score, that's a 12 hour brew day.

Target PBG was 1.079.

Doughed in, temp settled at 154 - my target. All is looking good. Dropped a degree over an hour. No prob. Came time to mash out. Added the 2 gallons @ boil to hit 168 that BeerSmith called for. Hit 162. Boiled 3 more gallons and added it. Hit mashout temp, at 170. Heated sparge water and started running. Ran 11.5 gallons, so didn't need a sparge to get volume. Problem is - runnings were only 1.065. Oh sh!+. Decided that the problem was lack of sparge.

Pulled off 4 gallons from the runnings (thinking partigyle) and heated 4 gallons of sparge water. Sparged. Grav is now 1.055. WTF?!?! So...

I boiled the 11.5 gallons down to 1.079 (took 2.5 hours), and then started my hop sched. On a separate burner, I boiled down the 4 gallons I pulled off. When the two pots (one was in my big pot, one was in my small pot so it burned off faster) matched grav, I blended them so my hop utilization wouldn't be wonky.

What I wound up with was an 11 gallon boil (recipe called for 11.5), and a final grav of 1.085 from a 1.087 target. NOT BAD.

Got 9 gallons into the buckets, and I'm feeling pretty good about my ability to think on my feet. Not feeling so good about my process, though.

 

[BobbiLynn]

As long as you achieve your goal, I've learned not to worry to much about process. Make it up as you go along, it'll be beer!!!

 

[RM-MN]

If you batch sparge you can skip the mashout step without much consequence since you will be draining the tun, stirring in the sparge water, and draining again. The mashout step is more appropriate for a long fly sparge where you have water at mash temperature for a longer period of time. Drain your first runnings and begin heating them as you stir in the water for sparge, drain again and add that to the heated wort. You have your mashout as your wort heats in the boiling kettle.

 

[lespaul23]

12hr brew day!!! Yikes... Do you mill your grains by hand crank??