UnrulyGentleman
Active Member
I moved cross county over a year ago and this past Saturday I finally got myself in a position to start brewing again. All-Grain 6 gallon batch of Northern Brewer's The Plinian Legacy (because I guess doing something more simple after such a long break was a smart idea, and having just relocated from California where I could get Pliny on the regular was hitting me in the nostalgia zone real hard.
It was going great, hit my mash temp of 151* exactly and it held for exactly 1 hour...and then it finally happened, I earned my brewer wings and had a stuck mash. Nary a drop would come through in order to vorlauf. I stirred like a madman to rouse the grain bed in hopes that would do it. Nope. Then I added just shy of 2 gallons of 180* water and stirred. Still no luck. Ended up having to dump the entire mash into the HLT, disassemble the false bottom and tubing in the MT, clean it out, then transfer all of the worst back to the MT. Hot Side Aeration fears were and are very high as a result, but I carried on as though nothing had happened. Finished the mash and sparge with a pre-boil volume of about 7.7 gallons and an SG of 1.055 - right on target!
Then through the 90 minute boil I somehow managed to boil off way more wort than expected and only had 5 gallons to put into the fermenter at an OG of 1.077! Target was 1.070, but I suppose when I boiled off far more than I had anticipated those extra 7 gravity points make lots of sense.
Due to the loss of volume, I said screw it and dumped the entirety of my 2L starter, wort and all, into the fermenter too. Assuming that starter was at 1.040, I can't imagine it would have a tremendous impact on the final product, right?
Anyway, it was fun to get going again and learn how to brew in my new home with a whole new setup. Lots to figure out still and lots more I need to refine in terms of process as a result, but I've got that brewing bug again. Anyone see any major concerns with my MT to HLT to MT dumping as far as being concerned in the final product? Pretty sure the higher OG is negligible and would result in I suppose 0.5% higher ABV as a worst-case (read: best case!) scenario, right?
Cheers all, glad to be getting back to it.
It was going great, hit my mash temp of 151* exactly and it held for exactly 1 hour...and then it finally happened, I earned my brewer wings and had a stuck mash. Nary a drop would come through in order to vorlauf. I stirred like a madman to rouse the grain bed in hopes that would do it. Nope. Then I added just shy of 2 gallons of 180* water and stirred. Still no luck. Ended up having to dump the entire mash into the HLT, disassemble the false bottom and tubing in the MT, clean it out, then transfer all of the worst back to the MT. Hot Side Aeration fears were and are very high as a result, but I carried on as though nothing had happened. Finished the mash and sparge with a pre-boil volume of about 7.7 gallons and an SG of 1.055 - right on target!
Then through the 90 minute boil I somehow managed to boil off way more wort than expected and only had 5 gallons to put into the fermenter at an OG of 1.077! Target was 1.070, but I suppose when I boiled off far more than I had anticipated those extra 7 gravity points make lots of sense.
Due to the loss of volume, I said screw it and dumped the entirety of my 2L starter, wort and all, into the fermenter too. Assuming that starter was at 1.040, I can't imagine it would have a tremendous impact on the final product, right?
Anyway, it was fun to get going again and learn how to brew in my new home with a whole new setup. Lots to figure out still and lots more I need to refine in terms of process as a result, but I've got that brewing bug again. Anyone see any major concerns with my MT to HLT to MT dumping as far as being concerned in the final product? Pretty sure the higher OG is negligible and would result in I suppose 0.5% higher ABV as a worst-case (read: best case!) scenario, right?
Cheers all, glad to be getting back to it.