What A Messed Up Brew Day

Thanks to Todd for helping me get through the day.

In order of occurrence:

My inventory schedule had not been updated and I didn’t have enough pilsner malt that the recipe called for.

Substituted in Maris Otter and forgot to set aside additional grain, Munich malt, accounting for 25% of the total grain bill.

Overshot, temperature wise, the water in the mash tun. On the plus side, I had a chance to review my recipe and noticed I forgot the Munich malt.

I had a thick mash, not sure exactly why (other than the obvious use of too little water), and this caused problems circulating the wort.

The digitial controller I use to monitor mash tun temperature was not matching up with the temperature probe in the mash tun. Temperatures were also not increasing when adding water prior to draining into the kettle. Or rather, temperatures were not registering as increasing. Never did achieve a mash out at 168 (as read by both the controller and probe).

Drained mash tun until boil volume reached. Took 40-45 minutes. Preboil gravity missed by 20 points. Just left it alone. (I didn’t add DME but in retrospect probably should have). I did nothing different, compared to what I normally do, and am stumped as to why this happened…

I attempted, for the first time, the use of a whirlpool in conjunction with an immersion chiller. Disconnects running out of the boil kettle and the pump immediately clogged with hop debris when trying to circulate boiling wort. Not sure how I’m going to attempt a fix here. Hop bag?

After boil was complete, went to plug in the submersible pump (used to circulate ice water through the immersion chiller) and water being picked up by the pump immediately blasted out of the side of the pump rather than push it through the chiller. A small plastic piece near a screw was somehow broken off where the pump’s top and bottom halves seal together resulting in a total loss of pressure. After 15 minutes of applying duct tape, managed to get some water circulating and barely achieved a decent yeast pitching temperature.

Because the kettle and pump disconnects were clogged, rather than transferring the wort to the conical fermenter using the pump, I simply dumped everything in. It will all settle out but what a pain in the ass.

Ugh.

Is there any way this will turn out to be a decent brew? We'll wait and see...