Everything started out great this morning. Pulled the yeast out of the fridge. Heated 2 gallons of water to 150 degrees to steep 2 lbs of specialty grains for 20 min. I heated an extra quart of water to 160 to rinse the grains with. Added another gallon of water and brought to a boil. I had the 3.3 lbs of LME sitting in hot water for a few minutes to make it easier to pour. Removed from heat stirred LME in slowly then added 3 lbs of DME quickly and stirred it up good. Put it back on the heat brought it back up to a boil. Added in my 1 oz of bittering hops and set the 45 minute boil timer. After 30 minutes I added a half oz of flavoring hop and the whirlfloc. At 2 minutes before flame out I added a half oz of aroma hops.
Filled the sink with some cold water set the brew pot in the water and added a bag of ice around it. While chilling it I made a stupid mistake. Since I left my big daddy thermometer in the wort I had the lid partially open. Since I couldn’t drain any water out the sink I lifted out and set it on the counter. Drained out some water to add more ice. Well since the ice was now at the bottom of the sink I carefully set the brew pot back in the sink and turned on the faucet. Then I grabbed the brew pot and was trying to shift it around so it would move the ice out from underneath it. And it shifted and for a split second I got some tap water into my wort. I was so mad.
Then after that I removed the lid and slowly stirred the wort to improve the heat transfer to the ice water bath. I lowered the temp down to about 100 degrees give or take. Poured the wort through a mesh strainer and post boil was about 2 gallons. So I topped it off with refrigerated bottled water to 5 gallon mark.
Since I decided to direct pitch instead of rehydrating like I normally do. Fermentis listed this option below the rehydration method. “as long as temp is above 68 degrees progressively sprinkle onto wort to avoid clumps then let sit for 30 mins and then mix wort using aeration or by adding wort.” So I added the dry yeast and let it sit and then shook the fermenter for about 2 mins pretty heavily. Then I brought it downstairs and put the airlock on. The chilled wort was at 68 degrees so hopefully it will be fine. My basement ambient temp is sitting at 68 degrees right now. So with active fermentation the temp should be within range of s-04.
