BeerBorg

Every brew session usually has something, right? Maybe you miss your mash temp, forget this or that, an unfortunate boil over...etc. Last night I had the worst brew session ever...lol. I usually brew early on a Sunday morning (something I kind of got from Pudge). It works out well because it's ME time, wife and kids are in bed, the house is quiet, I have time and space to do my thing. But I'm brewing for a friends St Patty's party and I HAD to get this going. I already have a Kolsch almost ready to keg and the guy wanted to have a good Pale Ale to go along with that for his kegerator. I usually set myself up the night before with getting my water ready and this and that...this time that wasn't enough there's always those little things that suck up time and throw a wrench in the mix. It all started off like this:

Mashed in and came up a little low on mash temp. No biggy, 150-152* compared to the 154* I wanted.

I used the Pale Ale water profile in Bru'n Water for the first time. Not sure if I weighed out the salts wrong or miss calculated my acid addition but mash ph was high and I needed to adjust. Also no biggie, but these first two things I usually nail 90% of the time. And it set the tone for the brew night.

So that's done, mash is on. then came draining the mash and sparging. AND....stuck mash. I forgot rice hulls in the recipe. This new mashtun with it's false bottom, rice hulls are a MUST and I forgot them. So then there's the huge PITA dealing with that. It was bad, you know how it goes if you ever had one...dumping your mash into another container, yada yada. Luckily I had a 5 gal paint strainer that came in handy and I kind of did some BIAB stuff with it in that regard. So there came some grains into the boil and I didn't care at this point.

Onto the boil, that was about the only thing that went smooth. Checked boil ph to make sure I didn't hurt it with the way I had to sparge. 5.4 so it's good. I did miss some gravity points and ended up with a lower boil gravity so it will be a ~1.055 beer instead of a 1.060 or so beer. Also not a biggie, but those numbers are usually also easy to hit.

During the boil I did all my clean up and tried to smooth out the rest of the night. All while I'm in and out of the house to the attached garage with the wife cooking dinner, the kids doing their thing, not my favorite time to brew. I do not like brewing in the evening after work. Just added to the chaos I already had going on.

I dropped my whirlfloc in at 15 min instead of 5....don't even know why. Post boil I didn't use my pump to recirculate while chilling...I just stirred like before. Never took an OG reading, didn't even rehydrate my yeast. I just sprinkled it in on top, waited a few mins and shook the fermenter. Something I haven't done for years. Oh, didn't even bother using my oxygen system. I simply let the wort splash into the fermenter for aeration. Transfering over to the fermenter there was a ton of break and hop material with it. Usually I transfer pretty clear wort. Oh well, at this point I was done. Pitched the yeast around 70* and set the temp controller...called it good.

This is not common for me, but it's what happens when I'm rushed and can't focus solely on brewing. I actually didn't even feel like brewing, it came out of having to do so to get this ready. Only time will tell how the beer comes out, the good news is it's a Pale Ale and will be drank quickly at a party where nobody will probably really mind any imperfections it may have. Or maybe it comes out incredible...who knows. I guess you have to take some of the bad to appreciate the good. I just felt like I was running around like a chicken. It was one thing after another.

Yes, a lot of little glitches can make you feel as though the brew session was a disaster, especially if things usually run smoothly for you.

But you'll get beer out of it anyway. Maybe it won't be the exact beer you envisioned, but it'll be beer. And you can now put it all behind you.

Thats the best part is that it will still be beer. The stuck mash was the big set back...man what a PITA. Everything else was just numbers.

And those numbers were pretty close. I used to worry about 5 gravity points, or two degrees mash temp. But in the end, those differences are imperceptible. And I often dump the break, never use oxygen, always sprinkle the dry yeast. Your beer will be fine.
I too would be annoyed by a stuck mash.

There is a much easier way to fix a stuck sparge. Get a heat resistant silicone hose. Hook it to your ball valve and blow into it, while keeping the pressure on close the ball valve. Then take your vorlauff pitcher and turn on the ball valve to catch the grains you loosened up. Sometimes it takes several efforts before things start running smoothly but it is a whole lot easier than dumping grains into another container.

Also I never rehydrate my yeast. When I first started brewing I did a few experiments, including a split batch, rehydrating and not rehydrating, I never saw a difference so I don't waste my time.

I have had success with clearing other stuck mashes but not with this setup. This batch also had 3.5 lbs of Wheat which adds to it. I would clear it and just have it clogg up again. Rice Hulls are a must for me now. Never used them in the past but now there is no way around it. My LHBS may have changed their milling as well as I am also getting higher effeciency but seems like a finer crush. Rice Hulls aloow me to run my Herms...without them im stuck even if im not recirculating with my pump which I wasnt this batch.

I never ran any side by side with rehydrating vs not so it may very well be something I can skip. There is also much less need for oxygen with dry yeasts so its another factor I could not worry as much about. I was just very much out of my norm for the brew day thats all it came down to. The imprtant things were all in line...the rest are just numbers.

Had me a semi-stuck sparge last night.
Grain bill 85% MO.

1st runnings didn't completely run.
New Cereal Killer mill grist @ 0.035" was a little too fine.
Avangard Pils at the same setting ... no problem.

Donated two handfuls of hulls to the mash before adding 1st batch of sparge water.
Problem solved.

HerbMeowing wrote:Donated two handfuls of hulls to the mash. Problem solved.

Yup. I never used rice hulls for years of all grain brewing. I then changed LHBS and now NEED to use them, especially on occasion when I double crush depending on recipe and efficiency I am trying to hit. They do not cost anything and it's cheap insurance to avoid the headache.

Yeah, I brewed a beer today where a good third of the grain bill is rye malt. When I bought the ingredients, I asked my LHBS guy if I needed rice hulls, and he recommended using them whenever there's a question, regardless of the recipe. So anything with rye or wheat would probably require it. A half pound of hulls, and my sparge was smooth as silk today.