3 recent brewing mistakes

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I made a few annoying errors with my brewing sessions as of late.

I think I recovered from those debacles and luckily they were repairable and salvageable screw ups. This article is going to specifically cover those mistakes I made.

Learn what to do by doing what you shouldn't do...learn from my brewing mistakes!

Mistake #1 - CHEMICAL HAPPY

Believe it or not, people use chemicals when they make beer.

There are a grip of scientific details than I can attempt to spew out, but I won't.  These chems adjust the minerals and shit in the water.

For example, if you are making an Irish Stout, you would consider adjusting the water with chemicals to mimic the same water as in Ireland.

Some grains also react to water chemistry differently with PH levels and stuff.

My mistake was I over adjusted and under adjusted my water during my recent American Stout mash. The idea is was keep the mash at 5.2-5.4 PH.

Instead of using software and being patient, I added baking soda to raise the PH. The PH got too high, then I added lactic acid to lower it. It got too low.

I kept going back and forth before I realized I added too much of both. It made me worry that the beer was going to taste like shit.

I tasted the stout towards completion and it actually turned out damn good. To top things off, I entered it into a competition (haha). Results pending.

I think what was mostly affected was the final gravity. I finished off around 1.025 and should have been around 1.010. Therefore, my ABV will be around 5% instead of the 7.5% I was shooting for.

There will also likely be residual sugars in the beer.

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I have since bought a water analysis kit from Lamotte and plan to calculate my findings into brew n water (free open source H2O brewing water template). Then I can set it and forget it.

I will report on the contest results and the taste after carbonation.

Mistake #1: Don't wing things that shouldn't be winged. Positive spin: Be precise when you need to be. Know when you need to be precise or not (adjust the water properly).

Mistake #2 - BREAKING SHIT

I broke my march pump head and threw a few things against the wall during my latest NE IPA brewing session.

Why?

First of all, I brewed after work. I did  a lot of prep (i.e. yeast starter, milled grains, got water ready) in advance.  I figured I could get off work early and knock out a killer beer recipe.

Suddenly, I found myself a little buzzed.I was planning to brew that NE IPA then bottle and keg my stout(from mistake #1).

I made myself drink 3 heavy IPA's just to get the bottles so I could use them for my stout contest.

I then realized, right into the start of my mash, my family didn't get the memo that it was dad's brew day.

So stuff was getting tinkered with left and right.

You see, brewing can be a complicated thing...especially when some of your brewing shit is getting carried away by a toddler, in addition to keeping her away from the burners.

As I also mentioned, I needed to keg and  bottle the stout in between the brew sesh.

Then I got caught up changing diapers among a slew of other little distractions like getting hungry and needing to poop.

Bottom line was I was way in over my head. I was scattered.