a brewer’s worst nightmare
Sunday, September 7th, 2008Ug.
I am totally exhausted. I woke up at 6am to get a head start on a big brewday. My plan was to make a clone of one of my favorite seasonal beers, the Haufbrauhaus Oktoberfestbier. I had everything ready to go and things started off pretty good and I hit my protein rest mash temp dead on.
This was the most ambitious beer I’ve set out to brew in a LONG time, maybe ever. I decided to do a double decoction, which means you take part of your grains out and actually COOK them during the mash (most German beers use this technique to get that bold maltly flavor).
Strike 1 was I RAN OUT OF PROPANE during the first decoction! That sucks. A quick run to Harris Teeter solved that, and other than setting me back on time, no damage done to the beer.
The mash finished no problem… then it was time to sparge.
Strike 2: I have heard horror stories of STUCK MASH, but I have to hold a new world record for the worst stuck mash in history! Absolutly terrible. Normally, you just run water through your grains and you get out all the converted sugars. A “stuck mash” is when the sugar water you are getting out of the grains WON’T FLOW.
I tried EVERYTHING, including dumping my ENTIRE mash 2 different times. Over half of my wort was collected by literally sparging BY HAND with a freakin’ colender and a tiny bit of grains at a time. IT TOOK FOREVER.
Total brew time: 6am-3pm for 12 gal of beer.
When all was said and done, I somehow miraculously ended up with the correct VOLUME of wort at the correct starting gravity, and it was even reasonably clear. Amazing. I paid my dues to the brew gods, and I hope they reward me with my best beer ever, because it was without a doubt the longest brewday I’ve ever had for one batch.
I did snap a photo of my brewery (a pint of my latest Creamy Kolsch made it into the photo), which I don’t think I’ve ever posted on Dranktank:
