The Steamtug Blog

I’m about ready to give up all grain brewing after the disaster last week. I wanted to make a Russian Imperial Stout, a recipe that’s been on my mind for months now. It is very heavy with a huge grain bill, 500 gms molassis, 500 gms raw sugar, 250 grams chocolate. The mash went badly. I do it in the esky as I have given up on step mashing. It’s so much quicker and easier and gives the same result. But the rinsing sparge stuck and no matter what I did it wasn’t going to clear. So I tipped it out and found dry grain in the bottom (damn!) OK, fixed that problem. The final volume was supposed to be 21 litres and abv 8.8% but after sparging I ended up with 35 litres because the kilo of roasted barley would not let the wort run clear. (Maybe if I put through 50 litres? ha ha…) Then I could not get the temp high enough to boiler away such a volume and my aux heater, the old blow lamp played up burning my fingers etc. I put in raw hops flowers wet, so used some pellet and the remainder multiplied by 5 in weight. Then they would not come out of the brew kettle because they constantly blocked the outlet! Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! Then the brew in the fermenter from last time that was going to be bottle while doing this gave a couple of bubbles so I decided that even though it had been stable, it looked like it was not ready, so no fermenter! I had to use another water container that was a bit smaller. The whole think took more than 7 hours, and I was drinking my pale ale the whole time, so when I was finished at 11pm I was too pissed to remember if I had put the yeast in as I had no recollection. Hmnmmm! I found the empty yeast packet on the floor next day, so it must be in there. Then the temp the next day and over the weekend went to 38 degrees,  far too hot for stable fermentation, and the little fermenter overflowed and put Krusen all over the incubator floor. It will probably end up the best beer I have made by fluke. (Actually it tastes alright going into the bottles….)