Brewing recap: “Stuck like a truck, truck, truck” edition
Last night marked the last Monday we’ll be brewing for at least a month. Little baby Teddy should be popping out soon, so we’re taking a maternity leave of sorts. Nonetheless, last night was a great time. We had a lot of new people. We had a fire. We had snow. We used hot water for the cleanser and sanitizer (definitely recommended if you don’t like to torture yourself in freezing temperatures).
Which leads us to the title of our post. Jeff got the mash started early, which would have been great, except Jeff isn’t all that familiar with the subtle nuances of our mashing equipment. So we ended up with a stuck sparge. First time in months:
It was REALLY stuck. We had to throw the whole mess into some buckets and clean out the mashtun. You may be wondering, “Wait, if this was Jeff’s fault, why didn’t he help with the hard part?” Good question. We think he was inside working on his spray tan. If you’re about to be a father, you don’t want to be white and pasty, that’s for sure.
Fortunately, there were no further complications and the scotch ale should be ready to drink when we start brewing again. We’ve actually come to rely on the iPhone timer for hop additions. Last night we had two timers synced up in case one of us was busy.
See ya’ll soon!
Yeah, stuck sparges… I remember my first one…
It could be because the mash was 50% rye.
Or it could be that my neighbor, in his first attempt at setting up the mash tun, put the manifold in upside down.
Or it could be both. But I mainly blame him.
What size batches do you guys usually brew? I see that you ferment in the blichman stainless conical fermenters. Eventually I’d loved to get a conical, but they seem so overpriced. Where do you guys buy your equipment? Online? Locally?
I love a good scotch ale. I’m sure it will turn out great.
HolzBrew, 10 gallon batches. The Blichmanns are expensive, but I wouldn’t say overpriced. They’ve probably been the single best investment we’ve made in our equipment. Much easier to work with than carboys and also helped us to achieve greater consistency from batch to batch, which is one of our primary goals. We get our equipment from a number of places. There’s a great local homebrew shop here. We also shop at McMaster-Carr, NorthernBrewer.com and various other places.
…your brewing really sucks, sucks, sucks…
[...] gives the tours is because if he actually helps with the brewing process we’ll end up with a stuck sparge. Or [...]