Now I've been brewing a while now, every brewday has gone pretty smoothly, the odd hiccup, open taps, couple of degrees out on strike temps etc, but nothing major. I've been reading everything I can, listening to podcasts, trawling forums, even helping out others if I can. Well last night I had a nightmare!
Firstly I didn't really feel like brewing, I was a bit tired, but my wife was out and I had permission to brew indoors (I prefer doing it outside but not in the cold and dark), my mash tun isn't big enough to handle 23 litres of 8.5% beer so I scaled it back to 15 litres, this also matched the hops I had.
So, heated up the liqour, checked the temp, bang on 74c, dumped it into my mash tun and added my grains (decided not try underletting it this time), checked temp, wtf? 55c! Hmmm, mash tun is almost full, guessing a bit I figure I'll need more than 2lt to raise the temp by 10deg, so I'm now into an emergency dicoction situation, I decide to drain some of the white liquid off which sticks (and is the beginning of an evening of stuck mashes, never had one before!), eventually I get 2 litres which goes in a pan on the stove, meanwhile I boil 1.5l in the kettle.
Adding the kettle water gets me up to 60, ten minutes later the other two litres gets me to 65c, phew! This means though that the mash tun is full to the brim, and I've already spent and hour messing about. Still I manage to get it wrapped up and only spill a bit on the sleeping bag in the process.
I give it 60 mins, then attempt to drain the mash tun, wort dribbles out, I attach a hose to the tap and give it a blow, this helps a bit but I guess it only clears the first couple of slots on the manifold to lautering is still painfully slow. Takes 30 mins to drain.
Meanwhile I'm heating up the water for my two batch sparges, now this the really weird bit...
I check the water temp with my thermometer, it shoots up to 65 ish and then, almost equally quickly it drops back, eh? I take it out and then put it back in, the same happens, shoots up and then down. I examine the thermometer, is it cracked or something? Can't tell. Doesn't matter I've got a spare one still in it's packaging. I feel smug that I'm this well prepared....
I should point out that I'm 2.5 hours in at this point, I've been drinking a 6.5% APA and am starting to get a bit drunk.
The new thermometer does exactly the same thing, I check that I've got it submerged in the water properly, it is, but it's still going up and down!
I must have been doing something wrong but I can't fathom what, I leave it alone and get another beer, I check the water again and this time it appears to be at 78 so I just dump half of it into my tun. I have another repeat of the stuck mash again (and again) and eventually, after 4.5 hours I have about 19 litres of wort.
The rest of the brew appears to go ok, by 2am it's in the fermentor in TC10'd fridge, I'm pretty slaughtered at this point and forget to put the airlock on, I leave a tap open on the hlt (which I'd used to heat up water to rinse the counterflow through) and the utility room is flooded by the morning. Wife still brings me a cup of tea in bed
and allows me to stay in bed till 10.I have 16 liters of 1.067 instead of 15 @ 1.075, should have boiled it for 90 instead of 60, but was too tired/drunk to stay awake much longer, predicted IBUs are 113... wonder what it's going to taste like!
Anyway, better go, while the water is all gone it's all still a bit sticky so need to finish off the clean-up...
just for the story.