Vaughntoberfest II

Something will always go wrong during mash. Before it was coming in six or so degrees under temperature but this time I hit the temperature exactly right. I hit it too well. It was 152, not 148, so I added more water. It hit 148 and I decided to add the rest of the water, which was not just the mash volume of 6.25 quarts but that volume plus the 3.8 I had reserved for mash out. So I mashed in about 9.75 quarts to 5 lbs of grain and at about 147 after I'd made the mistake of using up all my water.

It worked fine. I vorlaufed twice and then batch sparged with 3 quarts in two batches.

When topped up to 3.6 gallons I had a gravity of 1.04 which meant 79% efficiency. Very good.

I boiled for 60 minutes
1.5 oz of tettnanger for 60 min,
0.75 oz of tettanager for 20 min
1 tsp irish moss w/ 10 min left in boil

Cooled in ice bath. It took 9 minutes for the temperature to go under 170 and stop extracting alpha acids.

Racked to 6.5 gal carboy, topped up to 5.25 gal.
Chilled to 51.6 degrees f

Took sample for gravity reading and to check color. Gravity was a perfect 1.060. Perfect.

Color was a rich mahogany with a whisper of red.

Muh-HAW-gun-ee

Pitched yeast slurry at midnight 7/10/2022.

Not much lag time. Most of the actual fermentation occurred between 49 and 51f for the first 4 days. I allowed the temperature to rise to about 53/54f and held it there for the next 3 days.

After 8 days fermentation had slowed significantly and I recorded a gravity reading of 1.016. I stopped replenishing the frozen 2 liters I use to cool the fermentation chamber and let the temp rise over the next 6 days to the room temp of 65. I figured this would allow the yeast to finish out the fermentation and also function as a slow-moving diacetyl rest.

I was pleased to find that the temp rose fairly slowly, about 2.5 degrees per day. The 2 liter bottles stayed cold to the touch even after they had thawed. That insulated barrel bag works great.

On 7/21 I recorded a gravity reading of 1.012, my exact target gravity. I'm hoping it stays put there.

9/26 - Fined with gelatin, recorded a gravity reading of 1.011, just a hair over my target FG. Color is darker than expected. Not by much but enough that from now on I think we need to do late additions on all the extracts.