Last night I had a bit of a frustrating time due to tiredness / stupidity / complacency, with a lot seeming to not go as planned. First mistake was not starting until 7pm on a day when i already felt knackered. Forgot to preheat mashtun so ended up at 60 degrees once i'd chucked in the grain. For some reason I didn't reach straight for the kettle and tried to rescue the situation by adding water from HLT. Must have ended up chucking in an extra 7-8 litres of water on top of the initial 12.5 to try and get close to mash temp, eventually settling on about 65.5 degrees.
Next error was when adding more water ready to batch sparge I fell short on temperature again, only getting it up to around 72 degrees before the mash tun ran out of room. Second sparge I did reach 80 degrees. Boil seemed to go ok, although after a few minutes cooling I checked the temperature of the wort which was already down to 65 degrees, a bit of a bummer given that I wanted to chuck post boil hops in at 80 degrees. My IC also seemed to be leaking into the wort a bit as it cooled, probably adding a litre or 2 or water into the wort.
Frustration was kicking in by now and after another half an hour of cooling i transferred to my fermentation bin, ending up with just short of 5 gallons of wort. Temperature was 30 degrees and I just wanted to pack up and go to bed. I should have probably waited to pitch the yeast until morning rolled round, but my frustration led me to add it there and then (S04). Having been unable to find the hydromater last night i'd filled my trail jar before pitching the yeast and took a reading this morning.....1038 instead of 1049
Feeling pretty frustrated by it all, not least because i know it's all my own fault. I was definitely very lax with my planning, most likely because AG1 had gone so smoothly.So what to people think, will I end up with something half decent if a little on the weak side?
