BeerBorg

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.

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.

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.

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

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.