You might be rather surprised with the outcome. Making beer is quite forgiving IMO. :cheers:
+1 bazooka here too. No way I would go back to to false bottom. I would be tempted to keep the round cooler but switch to bazooka setup. Upgrade to new cooler later.
bazooka or biab for me also. Only had one sticky sparge with a wheat beer with bazooka tube. Just a little stir cleared it. A false bottom would only make sense to me in a kettle tun not in a cooler tun.
Using a cooler with a hose braid, I’ve done 490 batches without a stuck runoff. Often simpler is better.
Just for full disclosure, the stainless braid that I had collapse (as mentioned above) was NOT the specific part that Denny recommends. I just had the bazooka tube sitting unused in the basement, threw it on there after the one part died on me, and haven’t had a problem since.
A Bazooka works pretty well for filtering, although not as well as a braid. What I like about a braid is that I can get it to lay flat on the bottom of the cooler so there is no wort left behind. At least in the 3 coolers I have, a Bazooka sits above the floor of the cooler.
I think the reason your sparge was stuck, was God’s way of punishing you for using 3.5 lbs. of crystal malt in a 5 gallon batch. 
I saw that also and thought it was high but didn’t think that would matter
I’ve been OK with 20% crystal with Chico. That said, this one is over 30%. I didn’t catch that on the original read, was looking for wheat or flaked stuff.
At least you were smart enough to put gloves on before you stuck you arms in the mash. One time I was brewing a barley wine and I mashed in with out putting in my manifold. I didn’t have any gloves and am either too lazy or too dumb to go get some. I ended up sticking my arms in and hooking up my manifold with out anything to protect myself, that $h#t didn’t feel good. But as the saying goes if your gonna be dumb you got to be tough. At least my mash temp was only 150 :oops:
We have all had one. A bad day brewing is better than any day at work !!
I am definitely looking to retool my mash tun. I will go to Denny’s site and look into the braided hose.
Yes, that is a butt ton of crystal. I wanted sweet to balance out the citra, but all in all this recipe may be a mess 
Anyhow, I re-tweaked it an will re-brew next week with a modified mash tun.
This time around I am going with:
8# Maris Otter
1.5# Crystal 60
2# Munich Light
0.75# Chocolate
0.5 oz Citra 40 mins
0.5 oz Citra 20 mins
I am torn between Wyeast California Lager and Wyeast London Ale
I am trying to make a clone of Anchor’s Brekle’s Brown and I went big on the crystal to try and balance the citra that I added, but I think I was a little over zealous.
Thanks all for the feedback
You wanted sweet to balance citra??? Man, one of the reasons I don’t use Citra is that it makes the beer too sweet for me!
If you’re getting a braid, this is the one I recommend…Lasco brand (part number 10-0121 or 10-0321). I get them at a local hardware store, but they’re also available through Amazon.
Thanks Denny for the link.
This is my first time using Citra (well soon to be second time)…
Fingers crossed. I think I’ll mash low around 149* this time too.
:cheers:
Hi Andy, I’m glad Denny chimed in, I’m reading His and Drew’s new book Experimental Brewing. In chapt. 2 they talk about some very important things to do about recipe formulation[ like adding too many things into your recipe]. You might consider buying this book, it has very valuable info in it about brewing plus some great recipes, plus pics of Denny’s mash cooler set up with braid. I’ve been sold on this mash tun set up for many years and it has worked great for me.
I ordered the braid from Amazon today. Now there will be a false bottom for sale on craigslist.
Thanks Denny!
Hi old guy, I actually own the book and love it. There is some much great information in there. I brewed a few out of the book and improvised off a few recipes too.
I normally would never add this much crystal, but I fell for the old “google” trap on recipe design, specifically regarding the utilization of citra hops, and fell hook, line, and sinker for a recipe that went against all logic. I know Rouge uses like 20% crystal, but this went overboard. I’ll probably cross my fingers and hope for the best, but in the end learn a valuable lesson. Which happens to be, beersmith and brewersfriend are there to help design clones.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I had such a hard brew day because it got me to re-tool my set up and also to carefully evaluate my recipe design.
:cheers:
Thanks for the kind words, you guys!
Took a gravity reading yesterday.
It finished at 1.012 and started at 1.050, so I am happy there. I didn’t notice any off flavors other than it is obviously sweet but not cloyingly sweet. Citra is definitely an interesting hop variety for this brew, and I would probably not enter this as an American Brown Ale as it is way too sweet for that and the citra is way too overpowering.
I am going to re-brew this next week and this time I will scale back the crystal to 15% and increase the base by 15% and drop the citra by an ounce and use an American variety yeast like American Ale II.
1.012 with over 30% crystal? Interesting. I’ve done 20% with 158F mash temp and finished about the same and hardly sweet at all. This is another data point to me that suggests that crystal malts might not have an effect on FG as much as we think. I personally think pH plays a larger role.
It depends on the hopping. 30% crystal won’;t seem sweet if you hop to compensate.
