Saison Notes

Northern Brewer All-Grain Kit:

Got 5 gal water to 165.  mashed in

4:30pm

Water went to 155 a few mins after — maybe a little lower

mash in from 430 – 530 — by 5:30 the mash was @ 150

There wasn’t a whole lot of space left in the mashtun

added ~3 gal of close to boiling water.  got the mash close to 170

let it rest for ~10 mins

mashtun almost full

skipping sparge

recirculating initial run-off.

Sparge finished around 6:35

Yielded about 6.5 gallons

Boil started (starting temp 135)

Racked to primary around 9pm

Og about 1.060

Preparation

1. Cleaned basement

2. Got new propane

3. Set out burner, kettles, thermos’

4. Set up a sanitizing soak in 6 gal bucket

a.Therminator

b.Therminator tubing from therminator to thrumometer, thrumometer, and tubing into carboy

c.Ladle

d.Blow-off tube

5. Added copper manifold to mash/lautertun

6. Boiled water and poured into M/Ltun to pre-heat it.

7. Boiled more water and poured into sparge kettle to heat it.

Mash-in

This was a total mess.  I tried to use brewsmith 2 but didn’t really understand how to do that correctly.  Wound up choosing “correct for dead space” which messed up the ratios / calculations a bit — at least it confused me.  Didn’t have a clear picture of what the water / grain ratio should be and so when I finally mashed in it was a bit of a mess.  This is an area to do some advanced research next time!!!  Ultimately, with the pre-heated MLTun it looks like the brewsmith calculations were good, but I tried to adjust and so initially overcorrected the had to chill it a bit.  By that time I had a whole lot of mash — and had to add a whole lot more in order to get to the mashout temp.  Need to leave myself a little more wiggle room next time.

Sparging

The MLTun was totally full by the time I’d gotten it to the mashout temp, so I punted on sparging.  I did recirculate a bit to get the run-off to clear up.  Used 2 pitchers — a 1 gallon pitcher and a more conventional kitchen measuring cup.  Gonna get a second 1-gallon pitcher for the next time — the kitchen measuring cup (maybe 1 quart?) filled up way too fast.  Anyhow.  Mash was kinda thin, and I let the run-off go slowly, so for the first time ever didn’t have any stuck mashes.

Boil

This isn’t terribly interesting.  Boiled it for an hour — tried not to boil it too hard since I didn’t have much over 6 gallons and I didn’t want to wind up with too little.  Noticed I didn’t get any burn-marks on the base of the kettle.  This recipe was a bit interesting in that they had a “Hop stand” — done at ~170F, after the boil was over and the wort had a chance to chill a little.  I did this approximately.

Racking to primary

Racking to primary went pretty smoothly.  Using the screen on the inside of the kettle worked like a champ.  Almost no gunk going into the therminator.  Tried not to run thru the therminator too fast so as not to clog the screen.

Yeasties

I kinda forgot to wake up my yeasties.  rehydrated them about 30 mins before end of boil. Added a little corn sugar about 15 mins later.  About 15 mins after that the were showing enough signs of life — they foamed a bit but not crazy.

Pitched the yeast around 9:30pm, 10/22.

Got probably 4.5 gals of wort.

Checked for signs of fermentation at 6:00am, 10/23.  Nuthin.

Checked for signs of fermentation at 6pm, 10/23.  Oh, she’s a fermentin’!!!

 

10/25

6am — good fermentation — bubbling about once per 1.5 seconds on blow-off tube.