For Mash: don't forget to pre-heat tun!
then: add grains to 4.69 gal strike water @ 115 to reach 108 for ferulic acid rest
then: raise HLT to boiling, do ferulic rest for 10 min
then: add 1.25 gal of boiling water to mash tun to raise to 127 for protein rest
then: hold protein rest for 15 min
then: put mash tun on burner and raise to 154 for sacc rest, adding 1gal additional boiling water from HLT along the way to reach thickness goal
then: hold sacc rest for 90 min


Ferment at 64 degrees for 7 days, raise to 70 deg and ferment for 7 more.

1/9/10:

First brew. 1.5L starter made 2 weeks prior because I expected to be able to brew before then. Step mash using current system was a giant pain in the ass -- overshot the ferulic acid rest, so had to add cold water + stir to get it right. Then slightly struggled to hit the protein rest, put the tun on the burner (thought this was fine since it had clearly been fired before I had it!) and it caught fire and made horrible smoke. So had to take it off the heat and thin the mash out more than intended with boiling water. No way to get to sacc rest without decocting, so that's what I did -- first decoction of around 2 gal got to 149, so I'm calling that an unscheduled beta rest, second decoction got to 154. Lesson learned -- no ferulic rests on this setup, honestly probably no step mashes period. It's just too fidgety without precise temp control and without the abillity to put the mash on the fire.

Hose for chiller had frozen solid so couldn't run the chiller. Had to no-chill in the garage overnight. Expecting reduced hop aromas/flavor and increased bitterness -- should be ok since IBUs were pretty low on this one. Pitched starter in the morning at 55 degrees, will heat to 64 over the course of the day. OG: 1.060ish (measured with Tilt -- forgot to pull sample).

Cold crashed after 2 weeks because the Tilt was saying it had overfermented to 1.010 and was worried that the diastaticus infection that had claimed my tripel was going to get this beer too. Finally got around to kegging on 2/4, and the hydrometer is measuring the FG at 1.014 -- definitely a bit of a discrepancy. Hydrometer is definitely accurate (tested in water), so I can only assume that the tilt was giving iffy numbers. Some pretty odd aromas/flavors in the finished beer but no diacetyl (did forced VDK) and it had already been in the freezer for 2 weeks so just going to run with it. Enormous amounts of banana (maybe too much). Hopefully the off aromas age out and the banana mellows out.