With some lactose on hand, let’s get shaky!
Recipe Type: All Grain
Yeast: WLP0066
Yeast Starter: 1.5L, stepped up from two old liquid cultures
Batch Size (Gallons): 5.5
Starting Gravity: 1.036
Original Gravity: 1.053
Final Gravity: 1.0
IBU: 25 (ala BeerSmith3)
Boiling Time (Minutes): 75
Color: 6 SRM (ala BeerSmith3)
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp):
10.5# Maris Otter
0.5# Honey Malt
12oz Flaked Oats
5 hefty scoops of rice hulls
1# Lactose (5 minutes)
2oz Citra – Flameout
2.0oz Motueka – Flameout
Strike water 175°, mashed in at 150° which kept the entire mash of 75 minutes. Lauter for 15min.
The starting gravity seems to be hanging around 1.036. I am wondering whether this is some factor of inefficient sparging (e.g. too fast), channeling (sparge water forcefully being fed to one corner of the mash), low sparge temps (water was just north of 140° before the controller died), crush (hasn’t changed, but could have slowly drifted to be too coarse?)
As I was heating the strike water, I smelled burning rubber. I turned everything off and located the problem: the black lead from the high-voltage contact feeding the heating element had overheated (only the black lead, not the red). I am wondering if this is a symptom of the heating element dying or otherwise shorting. I need to figure this out, but in the meantime I moved outside to the banjo burner. All’s well that ends well?
We can now recite the litany of unexpected situations. The splitter on the outside faucet was both broken in half and corroded in place, so I couldn’t remove it. Instead, we hooked up the stainless immersion chiller, Sarah stirred, and I did my best to hold the splitter together so that it would feed the chiller. We worked in spurts and cycles, and finally got the wort down below 120°, at which point I just let it sit until 100°, then transferred to the carboy, put the carboy in the water bath, and waited until it was sub-80° before pitching. Fingers crossed for a good outcome!