Very odd brew day

[FedoraDave]

Somehow, I miscalculated my strike water for today's batch. As I was doughing in, it looked extremely thick, so I rechecked my numbers and saw my error. I frantically waited until I could heat up some more water to add, and I probably added too much (I couldn't measure it, since it was intended to be sparge water). So then I had to recalculate my sparge water. Fortunately, I ended up with a pre-boil volume that should work out pretty well.

But I'm betting that Ninkasi will be a fickle and capricious goddess, and this will turn out to be the best beer I've ever made, and I'll have no way to duplicate the process.

[Inkleg]

Are you sure you're not brewing with me yesterday? Cause that's how it went for me too. Not the water part, just the odd part.

[FedoraDave]

I know stuff happens, and I've been doing this long enough to kind of roll with the punches, but I'm mainly concerned with the temperature. I wanted the mash to be around 155, but I fear it was a good five or six degrees below that. Not a tragedy, but I don't want it to be thinned out; I like my California Common to have body.

Then again, until the additional water heated up, it was probably sitting in that thicker mash for a good ten or fifteen minutes, and I have to assume the temperature was in the mid-150s, since that's what I planned for. This may turn out to be a kind of step-mash procedure, however unintentional it was.

I've decided to RDWHAHB. It is what it is, and I'm sure it'll be beer, and I'm the only one drinking it, so if I can get it down my gullet and not worry that it tastes like oven cleaner, I'll be fine.

[BlackDuck]

Your right Dave...since you won't be able to replicate it, it will probably be an awesome beer.

[FedoraDave]

It took longer than I expected for the yeast to take off, too. I checked it this morning and nothing much was going on. But it was working okay when I got home from work this morning. Besides, the OG was only 0.004 lower than projected, and given the variables of temperature and whatnot, I figure I'm good to go.