brewlog_2012-02-12.txt

== Process ==

=== Brew day ===

I decided to brew the same recipe once more, but with a bunch of
modifications. Hopefully the mods would teach me something
useful. Unfortunately, it seems like I went a bit too far in my mods.

Modifications to recipe:

* 2.2 kg extra light dry malt extract
** 1.5 kg after steeping
** 0.7 kg at flame out
* 10 grams of chocolate malt
* 300 g rye malt
* 100 g pale ale malt
* more hops!
* liquid Wyeast California Ale yeast

I crushed the rye and chocolate malt with my brand new Corona
mini-mill. Realized I had no clue about how fine grain the crush
should be, and it ended up being pretty darn fine...

Steeped it in two bags. The one with rye was extremely sticky when I
took it out of the wort. Like, ridiculously sticky.

The hops were added at the same times as previously, but in the
following amounts:

* 0  minutes: 40g Chinook
* 30 minutes: 25g Chinook
* 40 minutes: 20g Chinook
* 45 minutes: 1/4 ml Protafloc
* 60 minutes: 35g Cascade (flame out)

Instead of 15 minutes rest after flame out, I gave it like 7 minutes
and the put in my beautiful new immersion wort chiller. Cooled the
whole shebang in 15 minutes or so. Possibly a bit too cold tbh, I
think I was just below 20 C.

Had one mega fail where the wort chiller hose came loose and started
pumping out water all over the kitchen floor.

The liquid yeast was brought out of the fridge a bit too late. It only
got 1.5 hour in room temperature, instead of the 3-6 recommended
hours.

I strained the wort into my fermentation bucket through a
"saftsil". Since I was a tiny bit short on liquid at the end I took
the liberty of squeezing the mesh a fair bit to get out the last bits
of beer. That may have been a bad idea?

OG: No idea

Fuckup of the week happened the evening before when I was super drunk
and decided to show my beer stuff to a couple of friends that were
over for dinner. I managed to smash the hydrometer, so no OG reading
for me. I did however take a 100ml sample and put it in the fridge to
check OG later on. Should work.

[Measured gravity of the sample at ~20C 10 days later. OG: 1.090]

Now, all the above may sound like a successful brew, but no. I noticed
while cooling that there was alot of weird looking stuff in the brew
pot. Looked a bit like when one has improperly used a dairy product in
cooking and the milk-stuff starts to separate from the water.

The iffyness was obvious when I took that 100ml sample. After 20
minutes there was a layer of about 20 ml at the bottom of the
sample. Not sure exactly what the stuff is, but it's not looking
good. Probably the effect of my stupid ass idea to steep rye malt. I
read up a bit and realized that rye malt is in fact _NOT_ steepable.

Stupid ass shit. There's a thick layer of that stuff on the bottom of
my fermenter as well. I've no idea what'll happen...

== Dry hopping ==

Racked to secondary after 7 days. 25g Cascade added in a hops bag. The
spigot worked great, much more convenient than siphoning.

== Insights ==

* WTF was I thinking? Rye malt in the steep!?!?!?!??! GAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!

* I should be careful with the chiller. Getting 2 liters of water on
  the kitchen floor is very annoying.

* Rye malt? For fucks sake... =(

* I must never ever again show off my beer equipment to friends when
  drunk.

* I should learn more about how to use the Corona crusher.


== Conclusion ==

Given all the issues, I ended up dumping the batch to make room for a
new one. A bit sad, but the sucker was still bubbling a after more
than 4 weeks and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the beer yeast's work.

SG was about 1.018 here as well.