Brew Day 02/01/2007 - Another TTL

[danielski]

Hmm forget TTL, I might as well call this one 'Disaster Brew'...

The mash temp has been going all over the place! I did my usual routine of 73°c from the boiler, ends up as 72°c in the coolbox mash tun, add 5kg of grist and that usually gives me in the vicinity of 66°c. Well for some reason it only dropped to 70° with the grist, 2 pints of cold water later and its down to 62, even 60 in some places Much titting around with kettles and pints of cold and finally it settled at 66.5.

Half an hour later its down to 61/62° (normally it only loses 1-2° over a 90 min period) so I apply a bit of 'magic sleeping bag' and 40 mins later its up to 66.5 again

Oh yeah, and then there's the bit where the thermometer body slipped off the side, unconnecting from the probe which then went for a dive to the bottom of the mash tun...

What's going on this morning? I must have about 16 litres of mash liqour in there now - not got the highest hopes for this brew now but we'll see...

[Orfy]

I'm sure it'll be fine. The problem is, when it turns out great you'll not be able to replicate it.

[Seveneer]

Don't worry about it. I expect it'll turn out fine.

I had a bach go horribly wrong in the summer. Took me somewhere around 10 hours because I couldn't get the boiler to boil. Lost a gallon of wort and anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Turned out to be a fabulous beer in the end.

Keep going, it'll be fine.

/Phil.

[danielski]

I'm sure it'll be fine. The problem is, when it turns out great you'll not be able to replicate it.

Its only my 3rd brew so I'm in that 'its not going exactly to plan, right, ok, PANIC!' stage...

[Jim]

I've found that you can get wild variation in measured mash temperature - especially in thick mashes. There've been times when I've been sure the temp was wrong, only to find that if I gave the mash a good stir, or even moved the thermometer around, it was completely different.

Thick mashes are the worst for this, but you should always give it a good stir and wait before making hasty adjustments with hot or cold water.

[danielski]

Well I got 26l of wort out of it and the runnings were still over 1015 at that point so fingers crossed.

[Vossy1]

Hope your enjoying your brew day danielski

[Seveneer]

Sounds like you've done well in recovering the mash.

/Phil.

[Andy]

Wise words from Jim there.... I've made hasty water additions to a mash which seemed to be too hot only to see the mash temp plummet. I now stir gently but thoroughly and DON'T PANIC

[Vossy1]

Brewday wouldn't be brewday without a little panicking

[danielski]

Now my boiler's playing up...

Is this beer really meant to happen I wonder

[danielski]

Well its been in the fermenter 3 days now and so far so good. Before pitching I botched a new hole in the fermenter lid to take an airlock bung with my immersion heater power cable going through it. The hole wasn't exactly round so there was a tiny gap left open but you could feel the constant (and surprisingly strong) draught of co2 getting forced out, so I guess that's a good sign!

Means the ailock on the other side of the lid is a bit redundant now though

[tubby_shaw]

You could always bung some blutack around the cable to seal the hole
Then you can still have the satisfaction of watching and listening to the airlock

[SteveD]

I'm sure it will be fine. The mash is amazingly resilient and almost all cockups (except perhaps outright boiling all of it) can be recified, as you did. They managed ok in the days before thermometers, hydrometers, etc, and if the mash really was a tempremental creature it would have failed far too often for beer to have been invented in the first place!!

As to mash stiffness, personally I don't think it makes much of a difference to the beer wether the mash is thick or thin and so I tend to err on the thin side as I can use a lower strike heat, it's much easier to mash in without lumps and therfore minimises the time that takes, easier to equalise the temperature, and more temperature stable owing to greater thermal inertia due to greater volume. For a 5gal (23L) brew I almost always use about 15L mash liquor irrespective of grain weight. Works for me.

What fermentation temperature have you got? Generally speaking you don't want British ales to go much over 20c if you can help it. 16c-20c is ideal. I only ask becasue you're heating it. In a 'normal' indoor room, that shouldn't be necessary. If you've stuck it in the shed, garage, or cold conservatory, then that's another matter.

There is a misconception which came through a lot of older books on winemaking and brewing that the ferment must be kept WARM...and encouraged people to put the fermenter in the warmest place in the house, like an airing cupboard! This will ruin beer and wine and may be contributory to the bad rep that home made wine and beer had. Ferment too hot and the racing ferment will carry off volatile desirable aroma and flavour components, and the yeast produces some strange tasting compounds instead. The sort, like the chlorine and sugar tangs in beer, that make people go.....ah yes, thats 'homebrew'.

[danielski]

You could always bung some blutack around the cable to seal the hole
Then you can still have the satisfaction of watching and listening to the airlock

Damn, now why didn't I think of that!