3 lessons to learn from my tripel

Last night's brew session was...formative, let's say. Made a bunch of goofs, hoping to learn from the experience, and I'm not too worried that I've ruined my beer. Let's break it down:

1) Yeast starter exploded

I did a two-step starter for my WLP530, hoping to end up with 400B cells - 300B for the beer and 100B to save for next time. Unfortunately, my starter went crazy and I lost a bunch of yeast. I decided to estimate that I had half my final cell count and pitch the 200B into the beer. That's under-pitched, but I hear this is a thing you do for Belgians, so what the hell.

Lesson learned: buy some Fermcap-S
Corrective measures to take: none, unless fermentation stalls out, in which case I'll have to re-pitch

2) Mash temperature issues

This was my first time mashing for a 5G batch, so I had 8 gallons of water and 14 lbs of grain in my kettle, which I had placed on the burner. Mashed in at 149F, right on, good stuff. Half an hour later, it had fallen to 145, so I decided to add some heat and turned the burner on. Checked again 5 minutes later (stirred to even out the temperature first) and I was at 147 - decided to give it another 10 minutes with the heat on, aiming for 151. When I checked it again, it was over 170! My understanding of mashing is pretty basic, but heating it up past 170 basically stops the process, right? I took a sample and cooled it, and it seemed like I had basically gotten what I needed out of the grains with 70-75% efficiency, so I decided to start the boil. I'm worried that traipsing all over the temperature spectrum will have a bad effect on the fermentability of the wort, but given that it probably spent 40 minutes close to the right temp, I'm hopeful that most of the work had already been done before I cooked the stuff.

Lesson learned: pay close attention when heating during mashing
Corrective measures to take: hope that it turns out OK

3) FG was way too high

The recipe I used was JZ's Strict Observance: 14 lbs pilsner malt, 1/4 lb aromatic malt, 2.5 lbs sugar. Supposed to yield 6 gallons of 1.082 wort, 5.5 gallons of which go into the fermenter to account for trub losses. In practice, I had closer to 5 gallons at the end of the boil (looks like my boiloff rate is around 1.5 gallons per hour), and I had almost no trub losses. Oh, and my gravity was about 1.095. That makes sense, when you consider that I was missing a gallon, but it threw me for a loop last night. Anyway, I tossed in 2L of 1.040 starter, so by my calculations, that put me at around 1.090. Looks like I need to add 2L of water to get the gravity to where it's supposed to be, but when would the best time to do that be? Can I wait until bottling, or will that cause problems? Would I be better off just leaving it as-is? I was hoping to keep my tripel at around 9%; if I don't dilute then I'll be at least 1% above that, assuming normal attentuation.

Lessons learned: change the boiloff rate when calculating my water needs (and add more water)
Corrective measures to take: add 2L of water, but when?

Let me know if you have any thoughts on these mistakes. I imagine I won't make some of them again, but every brew day is an adventure.

 

If it's safe to wait, then I'd rather do it later. Don't have a ton of headspace in my carboy right now, and I'll have even less when I transfer it to a 5G carboy later on for bulk aging (and also to free up a fermenter for another batch). If it's legal to add it at bottling time, then that would be the best time for me.

 

Hmm. Maybe I'll split the difference, add 1L now and call it a day. It'll depend how crazy the fermentation is getting by tonight, though. I've got it locked down at 64F, but if my starter was any indication, these yeasties are ready to go places.

 

Yeah, sorry, I meant my post-boil gravity. Final gravity has yet to be determined!

 

Oh I know, but I'm assuming that it will function like 2L of 1.040 wort in terms of diluting the tripel. It might not be 100% accurate, but I figure it's got to be close.

 

Lesson 4) Invest in a blowoff tube. Had to clean up the fermentation chamber this morning, and I might have to do it again tonight...

The batch was all-grain, and you're right that this is definitely uncharted territory for me, as it's the biggest BIAB that I've done both in terms of volume and gravity. I'm not too worried, just a bit embarrassed to have made so many slip ups on a single brew day. Thanks for the suggestions re: final gravity, it's very hard for me to know how low it will go because of the crazy mash temp rollercoaster. I definitely won't be bottling it any time soon, and I was already planning on letting it secondary for a month or so, so it should have plenty of time to come down. But where it stops, nobody knows...

 

I'm considering just leaving it be, since adding it will just bring my 10% beer down to 9%, which isn't a huge change. If I do add the water, I was thinking I would use it for my sugar solution on bottling day - the solution would be boiled to sterilize it (and remove O2) and the temperature wouldn't make too much of a difference because it's such a small amount of water compared to the volume of (finished) beer. But there might be good reasons not to do this that I am not aware of!

 

Took a gravity reading last night after two weeks and woof, not doing as well as I had hoped. I'm at 1.036, down from 1.095 on brew day. I know a big beer like this can take time to finish, but given the (literally) explosive fermentation, I was expecting to be closer to my goal of 1.012. I'll give it a few more days and test it again, but is it possible that I will need to repitch? My mash temp went way too high, as noted in the first post, but could that cause attenuation problems at this scale?