Ok, brewed this next one and it was a long day. The yeast I am glad to say are going fine today though despite my depressurizing their little home.
Ok, for some unknown reason to me all my temperatures were way off. I think my Ranco is about 3 degrees hotter than my floating thermometer, but even so I couldn't get any of my wanted temperatures right out of the HLT. I know my specific heat isn't right on my mash tun, but I do not know how to put those numbers in beersmith. I have always been a single infusion guy before, but started step infusing and wasn't too bad off until this fiasco.
Brew day started as normal, only I decided to go with a one smaller grind setting from the factory recommended Crankandstein mill setting. This was the reason my last batch wasn't very efficient, and for some reason I had moved the mill one setting coarser before that batch (chalk it up to brewing Gremlins I guess). So, now two settings lower my grist was a little more floury than I would have liked it, but it wasn't just screaming "Hey I'm gonna stick this Mother-F'er," like it should have been.
Lesson learned, grist mill set to recommended level now.
Ok, so now comes the dough-in. I forget to fill the bottom part of my tun with strike water before dumping in my grain. I get it all in and then realize I am going to have to stir like crazy to break up the balls that are coming....... and I did. Lots of fun so far, but the best is coming. I want my first rest at 133*F for 30 minutes. After I have pulled my first decoction fraction of the Beersmith's recommended 1.25 gallons and slowly raised the temperature to 160 over 20 minutes, I slapped on my pressure canner lid and cranked it up to 15 psi for 10 minutes. I have a copper bowl that fits into my pressure canner and acts like a double boiler. The smell....... breath-taking, the color...much darker than before with clear wort on the top coming through the grains. I figure I will add the whole lot since my 133*F rest turned into a 122*F rest
.
I add the decoction back and the raise was only to 138*F for my next rest. Now since I was trying to do a beta-amylase rest at 147*F
and I also wanted to up my liquor to grain ratio, I had water ready at 147*F to make me at 2 qt/#. I added the water and got to 142*F. I was "close enough" after not hitting my first temperature, so I went with it and pulled my second decoction.
I slowly raised the decoction same as before for about 20 minutes then boiled at 15 psi again. Returning the decoction after the rest, I was expecting to miss my temperature again... and I did
. I really wanted to get to 158*F for my alpha-amylase rest and hit 154*F, so I again went with it extending it to a full hour.
Now the bowls I have for my pressure canner only go up to 1.25 gallons, so for my last mash-out decoction I chose to do what I have done before and take a "liquid only" fraction. I heated the whole mash runnings to 185*F in my boil kettle and returned most of it for a 168*F rest for 10 minutes. Rested and drained the whole thing back into my kettle for FWH and to start heating while the batch sparge went on.
Here's where the sparge put on the breaks. I add all my sparge water and stir. I slowly open my valve to start vorlauf and nothing. It was temper-mental during the mash-out decoction recirculation, but it got going after a few squeezes on the tubing when it did start to get clogged. Not so on this sparge. I had to blow through the drain tubing to get the crap out of the quick disconnect on my ball valve. Finally I get it going and into the kettle, after 30 minutes of trying and turning the kettle off so I didn't start boiling off all my first wort.
Boil went great. Hop additions were changed at the last minute due to dinner plans changing, so I added my 10 minute steep hops to 10 minute boil hops. This is actually better for this APA as the last batch is already losing some of it's "Bitter" to the maturation process. I like the last batch, but I think I should have more than 33 IBU's for an APA even if it is still in style.
So, looking back I will probably not do this for anything ever again. I will get my system in order and will probably only do a single step decoction for anything that may be better like a Bock or something heavier. I would like to do an experiment and see if grain scorches inside a pressure canner without anything separating it from the canner bottom. While writing this I kept messing with Beersmith to skew my numbers on my specific heat on my mash tun, and I think I finally have it. Lets hope for this next batch, lol.