worst brewday yet

This is a venting and confession exercise.

yesterday I started a brewday by purchasing grain for 2 batches. one full size version of the averagely perfect IPA, and a smaller beer with the same grain to test the hops that I helped myself to from my neighbours hop plant growing onto my porch. this should have given me a lot of good beer, and one interesting beer at least. until i decided to drink beer while brewing and also bingewatching game of thones.

i decided to start late and make the small batch late last night. Since I was weighing the water additions anyway, I thought I may as well make it for both batches. So i heated a large amount of water a little, but did not bother to measure temperature. I also decided to not dirty my mash tun with the small batch. instead i used a 1.5 gallon pot. things go badly for me from now on:

1. i realised that the water was a little cold and that I should heat it. my grain was in a nylon bag and i have an inductor top. the bag meltes i 5 seconds.
2. having rescued the grain i decide it is time to boil. i was shooting for 3.5 gallons of the small batch and nowhere to put the other water. this is of course precious tap water with a little salt in it, so i thought I'd better make sure not to waste it. I had just read the brulosophy article on overnight mashing and thought i may as well test it. So I mash in with room temperature water thinking longer time will make up for any reduced activity for the enzymatic reactions. I'll get back to this...
3. After boiling for appoimately 1 GOT episode (S7e2), i transfer the wort to a fermenter. not wanting to clean my immersion cooler I decided to cool it in my refrigerator over night. I placed the plastic bucket with newly boiled wort on the glass plate in the refrigerator, and watched another episode. thw glass had of course broken, but thankfully the bucket had not fallen and spilled.
4. next day i remember to take a gravity reading, and the combined bad practices netted me a whopping 1.018 gravity. yay
5. the overnight mashing went sour of course and smells like butter, bananas and strawberries. probably

a great learning experience

 

almost? I would like to think I took every step sir

 

i guess the lack of thinking was a bit of a hallmark for that night...