Day ten: over the last couple of days, the original white, fluffy krausen made a startling comeback. It isn't very deep, but it covers the whole surface and seems to have swallowed up all the skimpy brown gunk.
Still smells and tastes clean, and the hydrometer reading is now 1.010. So it's been progressing, even though I haven't seen airlock activity. On the other hand I've been studying up, and now have a laundry list of things I did wrong on this batch - including but not limited to pouring the water into the grain instead of vice-versa, and not stirring enough to ensure a consistent temperature throughout. My boil was closer to a simmer for much of the time because I was on a stove top, until I straddled the kettle between two burners... and I think I've already mentioned my problems with a stuck sparge.
My learning curve would probably be smoother if I had an experienced brewer hanging over my shoulder, or had at least watched one in action. It's similar to the problems I ran into when I started building wooden boats in the middle of the desert, started building my own Jeep, and started working on my own guns with no formal training or supervision. But I'm getting there in all those areas.... and I can't complain that they haven't provided interesting rides.
Next time I'll try batch sparging, and do a lot more stirring. Hopefully I'll remember to fetch my old outdoor burner (built using a restaurant wok burner) from the other house, so I'll have more heat control - and more heat. I'll go for a specific style and use an established recipe, instead of just winging it.
Meanwhile I decided that although it's doing better, this batch is still headed for a ridiculously low ABV. And since I built it, I get to break it if I want. So although I might have been better advised to just leave it alone, I decided to add some simple syrup and see what happens. I actually started out to make homemade candi syrup. But I dissolved the C & H cane sugar in too much water, and didn't have the patience to boil it down.
I'm predicting a rather one-dimensional, light and somewhat dry beer, where the hops stand out because there's less maltiness to balance them (although I've been wrong once or twice in my life). If that's what I get, I'll keep it to myself and drink it young, while waiting for my last batch to age and my next batch to be ready.
