Working from home can be tough, though I am grateful for the opportunity to do it. It takes more discipline and more time management. Plus the kids are home too, so I need to be Dad and, when the wife has to go into work, Teacher, in addition to regular work stuff.
Again, I know I’m lucky, but I miss the office, the people, and the separation of work and home.
Anyway, that said, I decided to see if I could add another element to my multitasking and brew as well. Brew-day is mostly waiting and washing dishes, right? And since I used the Foundry again, once it was clean and the water was heating up for the mash, there was nothing to do but wait for the beep. So I was able to check work email, make work calls, check in on my team, and put out the fires as they popped up like any other normal day of business.
I brewed the Clone Ranger again, but adjusted for 5 gallons this session. It took about 90 minutes to get the just over 7 gallons of water up to temp (I wish I had another 240v outlet; the only one in the house is buried behind the dryer). I was able to sneak away from my work laptop for a few minutes to mill my grains, so they were ready to go when the Foundry beeped.
It was a pretty uneventful brew-day. I put the Foundry on top of a milk crate so it was just above the pump, but I could still easily get the grain basket out. No issues with priming the pump, though sometime between the :15 and :30 minute marks in the mash, the wort quit flowing back into the Foundry. I’m guessing I had the pump valve too restricted, so the wort was getting almost to the rim of the kettle, but needed a bit more oomph to crest the ridge. It was only like this for a few minutes at most, and the pump wasn’t whining, so I don’t think it did any damage.
Sometime between the :45 and :60 minute marks, the mash got stuck and was overflowing the sides on the grain basket. I had to use the paddle to break it up. This may be a contributing factor to missing my starting gravity by a couple of points. Once it was unstuck, I let it recirculate for another five minutes before lifting out the grain basket and letting it drain.
I forgot to check the time, but I’d guess it was another 60 minutes or so before I was boiling.
When I’m brewing with propane and a regular kettle, I usually start recirculating the wort halfway through the boil. I like to continuously whirlpool and it sanitizes the chiller system. With the Foundry only running on 120 volts though, this causes too much of a temperature drop; something I didn’t notice until late into the boil. When I did notice, it was between the :45 and :60 minute marks, and the temp was down to 195ºF. I stopped recirculating and let the boil go an extra 10 minutes. I guess my biggest fear is DMS (dimethyl sulfides); cooked asparagus is not a good flavor for beer. We’ll see; cross your fingers.
The last hiccup of the day (I’m not ready to declare anything a brew day disaster yet) occurred when I was cooling down the wort. I needed at least one more 8# bag of ice. I only got the wort down to 95ºF going into the fermenter, so it had to sit in the garage in front of a fan for over an hour to get down to pitching temp.
Because I like gadgets, I wanted to use my Catalyst Fermentation System by Craft A Brew, but it wasn’t assembled. And It’s been way too long since I last used it to trust my memory on how to put it back together. That’s a project for the weekend when I’m not multitasking.
I really wanted to use my Tilt Hydrometer (MelloMoose orange, of course), but it doesn’t fit into a regular carboy. Fortunately, my trusty Ss brewtech Brew Bucket was available, so I got to finally test the Tilt out. It’s pretty cool getting a real time gravity and temp read on my phone. A day later, it read 1.053 at 70ºF.
These are my notes/checklist for next session:
- Shorten the tubing to what’s just needed.
- Calibrate Tilt Hydrometer (it was about 4 points different than the regular hydrometer, but there’s a margin of error here too, because the IR temp gun can be a few degrees off; not sure I adjusted for the true temp of the wort).
- Losing too much heat when recirculating during the boil (done to sanitize the tubing, pump, and chiller), and it’s not a roiling boil to begin with; temp dropped to 195ºF. Thinking I’ll start re-circulation at :60 and run for another :10 before flame-out. Might need to adjust late hop additions.
- While mashing, closed the pump valve too much and wort wasn’t flowing for an unknown amount of time between :15 and :30. I don’t think the pump was running dry though; there was wort in the line up to just below the rim of the kettle.
- Overall brewing time was about 7 1/2 hours from set-up to clean-up. Not sure how long it took to get to boil; forgot to check time (probably an hour though)
- Needed one more bag of ice (3) for chiller; wort went into fermenter at about 95ºF. Had to cool in the garage with the shop fan.
- Used yeast from starter started 4/26
- Session checklist
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