Introduction
It is the day before Thanksgiving and Jeremy, Travis, Glen, and I decided to brew. We are doing our first 10 gallon batch and the recipe we’re making is our excellent Livonia IPA. The difference this time is that we are using bought hop pellets instead of the whole leaf homegrown hops from Jason’s. The idea is that we can compare between the grown hops and pellets to get a better understanding of how the differences play out in the final flavor of the beer. My personal prediction is that this batch will be significantly hoppier than the homegrown leaf hop batch. Specifically because I suspect that we over “cooked” the leaf hops after harvesting in the dehydrating stage, but again, this is just speculation on my part.
Observations/Notes
Mashing: When cleaning the mash tun we noticed some burnt wort. The strike temperature of the water from the HLT was 165°, but once we added the grains the final mash temperature was about 4° too low (148°) so we added some heat. The problem was that it must’ve been too much for too long, because we mashed a little hot and apparently burnt something.
Lessons for next time:
- Increase the strike temp of the water by 5° to 170°. This should get the final mash temperature to be right where we want it, and we won’t need to add any additional heat.
- Pump the water for mashing into the bottom of the kettle and start adding the grains as soon as we have enough water to float them.
- Start re-circulating the mash as soon as all the mash water has been added. This is intended to keep the temp consistent through-out the mash, and should help if we do need to add some heat.
Ending Thoughts
At the end of the day this looks like it will be a successful batch of homebrew. The original gravity after boil was 1.062, and our target was 1.063, so pretty good. Doing a 10 gallon batch is a little different, but not significantly so, you just have more volume. My only worry now is that we will become victims of our own success, currently all of our carboys and kegs are in use! Lucky for us, drinking is the best part 
(I enjoy your write-ups. I am learning stuff all the time when I brew, but now also when you brew.)
I typically pre-heat my mashtun. The false bottom can absorb a lot of heat. So I typically put enough water into the mashtun to cover the false bottom at about 155-160F. Then when my HLT water is about 175 or so, I re-introduce the pre-heat water back into the HLT. Then I make sure the water is still at about 170-175 (usually is). Then I, once again, start adding water to the mashtun and then my grains as appropriate. I usually end up at about 153 or so. If anything, maybe slightly warmer, to which I just add more stirring before closing off the pot and insulating.
Cheers.
It’s funny you mention that, because we have always pre-heated the mash tun in every batch before this (using near-boiling water), but for some reason, with the new mash tun, didn’t think of it. I am not entirely sure why. It is things like this, and adding the PH stabilizer, the irish moss, and several other small steps that we forget, why we will be coming up with a checklist of steps to follow for every batch we brew. I’ll be posting the list once we come up with it, because it is so easy for forget.
Thanks for reading.
It is indeed too easy to forget steps. During my last ale, which turned out great, I forgot to add the flavoring hops at the end. Luckily it was a pumpkin and spice ale which had plenty of flavor without the hops. Now I want to try it again to see what the hops add to the flavor.
Any advice for preventing burning on the bottom of the pot during extract brewing? I think I’ve read about mixing the extract into a pot of boiling water off burner and then pouring it into the brew pot after it is well mixed.
Thanks.
Stir *constantly* while adding the malt. The best is if you have a friend stir while you add the malt extracts. What has happened to me before when trying to go it solo is that if I stopped stirring before the extract was dissolved it could sink to the bottom of the pot and burn, and that could happen as quickly as it took me to switch between the containers of extract I was using. Another thing you could try is backing off the heat a little when adding the malt. I’d also suggest a good aluminum pot, with a nice thick bottom to evenly distribute the heat. If it does burn onto the bottom of the pot, don’t try to scrape it off into the beer. Just leave those burnt flavors down there and get them when you clean.
Luckily, when this has happened to me before, I got a strong burnt oder during the boil, but by the time the beer was done I didn’t taste any burnt flavors at all.
Cheers,
-bill