so what happened indeed? well, I don't have the photographic evidence you might want or expect, as this time I had some real trouble. Stuck mash! Yeah, stuck mash. apparently my false bottom didn't get along with the 1720 Stout Butt porter (5 lbs of 6-row, 30 lbs of brown malt, and 2 lbs of rice hulls). Or my starting the pumps a bit too fast (this really didn't help). yeah, i was askin' for it, and I got it. it took about an hour of back flushing the dip tube with hot water (thrice?) to loosen the bed, stirring in more rice hulls (~1 lb extra), and patience to finally get things reasonable. but eventually it all ran-off into the kettle without me loosing my cool. a big thanks to the other brewers who were present and helped me sort out my tough spot. another brewer also had trouble with a therminator clog (which I avoided this time thankfully), but in all we got our sweet wort (though i have to say that mine was really not sweet at all).
Observation: the other two brewers were doing the 1776 porter, which has less brown malt. if you've mashed enough, you can usually smell the difference between dough-in, conversion, and mash-out. the 1776 recipes had that trademark sugar-sweet aroma one would expect, but the 1720 batch really didn't. it smelled like coffee. good coffee, but really not much sugar or anything else in the nose. but I must have gotten some conversion:
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| ECY10 Old Newark Ale, OG=1.062 |
I am curious to how much attenuation this beer will have as other members have seen 1.030 as the FG. as the with the previous porter, half will get a brettanomyces treatment, although all might if the beer is just too thick. besides, with my bugfarmed big brew saison looking so crazy, who wouldn't?
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| white fuzz and slimy bubbles... funky sour smell too! |
