Worst Brew Day Ever

Mashing
1

Wanted to do a Anchor Brekle’s Brown Clone; which is basically an American Brown with Citra Hops.

Grain Bill for a 5 gallon batch:
6# Maris Otter
1.5# Crystal 80
1# Crystal 40
1# Crystal 120
1# Munich
0.5# Brown Malt

Wanted to mash at 152, but wound up closer to 155 for 60 minutes.

vorlauf 1 gallon and go to collect my first runnings and get a completely stuck sparge. I try blowing back in, Nothing. I re-stir and let the bed settle. Nothing. I add 180 degree sparge water to thin the mash out. Nothing. Now I am panicking, so I wrap my left arm completely in an ace bandage and put on one of those large, thick, rubber electrician gloves and go into the mash tun to try and get it un clogged. NOTHING!!!

So I get a pot and start bailing out the liquid into my boil kettle till I can get to the grains. I used a strainer to collect some grains and started to run the liquid through the grains, then dump the grains back, stir, let it settle and do the some thing again. This took about 1.5 hours to collect 7.5 gallons of wort. My pre-boil gravity was 1.040; which is roughly where I thought it would be. However, to be safe I did an iodine test, and hallelujah, I created wort.

I did an hour boil and added my hops as scheduled, yeast energizer and fining agents at 15 minutes. I whilpooled, chilled and aerated as usual and got the yeast in there promptly. I am not too sure what to expect from this disaster. I made sure to keep almost all of the husks out of the kettle, and am sure from stirring and settling about 10 times that I got a lot of the sugars off the grains, this just seems like the most unorthodox method of all grain brewing out there. I did hit my target gravity of 1.050 ( a little lower than I wanted, but not too much, I think I can almost attest this to mashing too warm).

Anyhow, I think the culprit was the LHBS over crushed the grains as a good portion were sitting under my manifold. My tun is a standard 10 gal round Igloo with a SS false bottom that fits snugly. However, a good portion of the grains got under the false bottom and clogged the sparge arm. I had to completely disassemble the mash tun and thoroughly clean it and unclog it. I am nervous to use it now as this was the worst brew experience I have encountered that I could not simply control. This may sound like a dumb question, but is there a height that the manifold should sit? I have the two nuts that can be adjusted to raise and lower it. I guess if I raise it I would just have more dead space, or less if I lower it.

This is the first time (not using an almost all wheat based beer) that I had this issue. By the sounds of things could it have been the crush? I would imagine that if that were the case, then I am not the only one that encountered that. I really like the shop and do not want to offend them. Could it have been my grain bill? I mean doubtful, but I just want to figure out all issues before I wind up assuming the wrong thing.

Going forward, I am getting a grain crusher…

thank for reading my rant

2

Stay positive. We’ve all had these days… I doubt it was LHBS crush. I did not see that you added sparge liquor prior to adding grain and lautering. I recall this is necessary to prevent issues with false bottoms. There is name for this but it eludes me (underletting?). There is also a possibility that you ran off too fast for a fly sparge/false bottom. You gotta go slow with a a false bottom. Also check for air leaks in the setup.

I’ve probably had a dozen stuck mashes in my brewing but for some reason they never phased me. I always emptied tun into another vessel and tried again. No need to risk burning yourself trying to fix in situ.

3

I feel for you Andy, I experienced about the same thing once with my old 10 gal. round. I never quite figured it out tho so I can’t be of help. I switched to a rectangle cooler long time ago. The very finely crushed grains sound like the culprit here, and I’m glad to here you are buying a mill. One more thing in the process YOU have control over. Maybe you could try a BIAB bag, that’s what I do when I do half batches in the kitchen. I really like the simplicity of BIAB, but haven’t tried it with a 5 gal. batch. Zwill is right about messing with that HOT wort. Last year I dumped one, then fell in it and got 2-3 deg. burns on my forearms. Not fun so be careful. Let us know how the batch turns out. Interested in how the flavor is for you about the citra hops.

4

I feel for you Andy, I experienced about the same thing once with my old 10 gal. round. I never quite figured it out tho so I can’t be of help. I switched to a rectangle cooler long time ago. The very finely crushed grains sound like the culprit here, and I’m glad to here you are buying a mill. One more thing in the process YOU have control over. Maybe you could try a BIAB bag, that’s what I do when I do half batches in the kitchen. I really like the simplicity of BIAB, but haven’t tried it with a 5 gal. batch. Zwill is right about messing with that HOT wort. Last year I dumped one, then fell in it and got 2-3 deg. burns on my forearms. Not fun so be careful. Let us know how the batch turns out. Interested in how the flavor is for you about the citra hops.

5

Thanks Zwiller. My normal process would be add the sparge water then the grains, give it a good stir and let it settle out for an hour. I may have done that backwards; which I am certain now that you mention it, I did do it in reverse.

I actually feel better b/c I love the people at my LHBS.

I am wondering now that if I hit my gravity and if it ferments out without a problem, wonder if there will be any terrible off flavors. I think it may be cloudy do to the lack of the re-circulation, but nothing a little cold crash and gelatin can’t handle… I hope.

Thanks for the feedback!!

6

Old Guy, I am seriously looking into a rectangular cooler. I think I can take some parts from my Igloo 10 gal (ball valve and sparge arm) and will fabricate the rest. I wanted to do this to do larger 10-15 gallon batches, but was going to wait till the Spring. However with yesterday in mind. I think I have been pointed in that direction much sooner than anticipated.

I will definitely post back here how it came out. I never brewed with Citra before and I can say the one positive from yesterday was my garage smelled great from them.

7

Andy, If you stick with round, you might look into BIAB. My half batches are done that way with a 5 gal. round. Look at Denny’s site for rectangle cooler set up, that’s basically the way I do it with batch sparging, for my 5&10 gal batches.

8

My mash tun was an absolute disaster to drain when using a false bottom. I think the elbow fitting had too small of an ID, and it would plug with grain particles. Blowing in just resulted in blowing the hose off the hose barb, and then it’s a complete disaster.

It worked MUCH better with using a stainless braid, right up to the point where it collapsed completely flat under the weight of a very high gravity brew day. Ended up transferring the mash out of the tun twice before I got the wort out of the spent grains.

I switched to a bazooka tube due to its rigidity, and have not looked back. It’s a great feeling to crack open the valve and have free running wort every time. It takes a little longer to clear, and I’m considering adding a stainless braid inside the bazooka tube, but I would never go back to a false bottom.

9

I never thought of the Bazooka Tube, but for the price I think it is a good fix until I upgrade my system.

10

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.

11

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.

12

Using a cooler with a hose braid, I’ve done 490 batches without a stuck runoff. Often simpler is better.

13

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.

14

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.

15

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. :smiley:

16

I saw that also and thought it was high but didn’t think that would matter

17

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.

18

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:

19

We have all had one. A bad day brewing is better than any day at work !!

20

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 :cry:

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