Decoction.

07:00 AM - Flame on.

08:50 AM - I’m in the midst of the first decoction, and I heated up the mash a little too fast.  I was supposed to have a ten min. dwell starting at 8:10 at 156° F, but too fast. I missed the 156° mark so I’ll take the dwell now til the point where I was supposed to end it.  Then I’ll continue to the boil point.  …  

08:13 - Just a few min til I’m back on time.  I hope that I didn’t damage the beer imps….

08:40 – Was supposed to start the 20 min boil but I ceased at 08:35.  I see that there is a problem with getting the flame low enough for the task at hand.  Also I stirred loose a chunk of malt that had burned early on.  Hope that it doesn’t impart a burnt flavour to the whole batch… like I would drink it anyway, you know? But…

08:55 – Started 2nd rest at 122°; only had to put 4 quarts of the decoction into the cooler to bring it up to that temp… I guess that is OK…

09:30 – Waiting to start heating the second decoction.  Have been using the time to correct data and add it to Beer Smith

10:25 – Just put three quarts of heated mash into the mash tun and it heated the wort to a higher temp than I had anticipated.  I’ll do better next time I do this…

10:30 – Time to hear water for the next step after mashing…

10:55 – …and when I poured the first 3 gallons into the HLT, I discovered that when Trish cleaned it for me, she left the drain cap off of it…. No biggie… Time to take the last decoction off….

-Added 3 qts. to the mash tun without having heated the decoction again to bring it up to 168°F.   Calcs say I need 8 qts and change to raise it from there to 175°F so I did some ciphering and deduced that I need 2 qts and change taken back out.  So, I did.  Now there is a 15 min. dwell til I begin heating the final decoction.  Looks like it will indeed take 4 hours and change. I may finish up in time to take a shower before the meeting.  Looks like I have two copies of this post.  Of course, if I blow one out, they all will probably go.  The whole world wide web too…

11:30 – 15 min. of mashout to go and then I’ll do what I usually do at the end of mashing.  And so I’ll end this exciting edition of my blog.  More, another day.  Cheers!