#42 Dark Mild #2 - Brewday

Recipe     -     Brewday     -     Tasting

This was supposed to be a fun brewday; a bunch of friends came up to hang out, brew (and drink) some beer.  Things didn't exactly go as planned.

To start with, the mash started a little warm (160F vs. 156F), so I stirred it until the temperature dropped close to the target.  Then the mash tun decided it had had enough of my shenanigans and refused to cooperate for the rest of the brew.  I got a stuck mash on the first runnings, which with my system means a piece of the PVC manifold came off and the tubing clogged.  I learned on the barleywine from hell that I can just dump the mash into a BIAB bag in the brew kettle and just forget about getting clear wort.

Well that was all well and good the first time, but then it happened again on the batch sparge.  I couldn't just dump it in the brew kettle since there was stronger wort in there, so we had to go first into the aluminum pot I use to heat water, then dump that into the brew kettle.  It was a mess.

I'm sure I could come up with something to fix all these mash issues I'm having, but I'm working on getting a whole new brewing system, so I'm not investing much time or energy into this one.


Fermentation:

Wort cooled to 68F, 45 sec oxygen.  Yeast pitched from smack-pack and placed in fridge at 65F.

1 Day:  No sign of fermentation yet.  It's a bit disconcerting with the XPA bubbling along next to it, but not a serious concern yet.  Different strains behave differently, plus this package was a bit older.

3 Days:  Ok, things did eventually take off, so no worries,  Temp bumped to 70F.

5 Days:  Looks like there was a problem with the temperature controller (I'm getting real sick of this...) and the heater wasn't coming on.  Thankfully the yeast heated themselves up to 70F anyway (67F ambient).

15 Days:  Racked to keg.