Brew day April 6.
American Crystal is 33L Mecca Opal 44
Mecca Opal 44-12lbs
Simpson Medium 50-60L-6lbs
Simpson 70-80-3lbs
TF Pale Choc-9lbs
Midnight wheat-6lbs
Patagonia Black Pearl-6lbs
Flaked Oats-6lbs
Lactose-6lbs
Wanted 158 mash. Hit a bit low.
Mash in went well, heated water to 178, trying to hit 158. Hit more like 152, recirculated through herms to bring it up, got to about 155 after 20 minutes.
Mash pH 5.25. Took another mash pH and it was like 5.15. Not sure what's going on, I didn't add any acid knowing there was a lot of dark malt in there, probably should have raised the pH a bit knowing the HCO was low from the 70% RO water.
Boil Gravity high. Real high so we decided to only boil for 60 minutes.
OG: 29 brix, 1.124 This is crazy high. When I do the efficiency adjustment to get it this high it means we have 81% efficiency. How is this possible, our efficiencies have been much lower on this system, and this malt bill is only 58% base malts! Some other notes: there was almost 2.5 gallons extra run-off. I'm wondering about the water calculations, it seems the last couple batches we have had too much. I made sure not to add a gallon of water to any of the starting water volumes this times like I have in the past. One caveat: I forgot to look at the volume of the HLT before I went to put the 14 gallons of sparge in the mash tun. I THINK it was 38, because I think I kept both volumes of water the same (original strike water and the sparge water). Also, I forgot to look at the ending kettle volume just before we transferred to the fermenter, but I do remember yelling to Erik that it was 35 gallons with just a few minutes of boil left, wondering if we should transfer that much or leave a few gallons behind. I know we started with right at 40 gallons before boil, so a 5 gallon / hr. boil is a pretty vigorous one.
Pitched yeast around 5pm. This is the yeast we harvested from the Scottish Ale. The yeast we used in the Scottish Ale was Omega British 1, which is their version of 007. We had about 3 L between a few containers and then when it had all settled, a very thick slurry of about 1.6 L.
So...No action Sunday morning. No action in the afternoon. Erik came over and we stirred it with the long handled mash paddle. Very strange and concerning. Then, we did filled a hydrometer and did a reading. 1.090. WHAT??? Did a refractometer and 23.2 Brix, = 1.097. Both are WAAAYYY low. So weird. Were all of our refractometer readings way off yesterday? So weird....what to believe.
4-16-19. Once it took off, it went great. Once it got rolling I adjusted temp to around 63-64, that's where it was at during vigorous fermentation. Once it slowed down after a few days, I raised it a bit. It's been fermented at 68 last couple days, bubbles now about 15 seconds. Gravity tonight: 1.047. Appearance is real thick, chocolatey. Tastes super chocolatey! There's a lot of yeast in suspension yet, but still tastes like chocolate!
5-9-19. I have been chilling it down, it's been at 35 for the last couple days, gonna keg it this weekend. FG is 1.040 Tasting a lot of dark chocolate. Not the "sweetest" beer.
