It's been an interesting couple of weeks around the household, thus the reason I've not posted as often as I would like. It began with a spate of Interesting Occurrences at work, which have kept me quite busy running hither and yon; those seem largely to have abated for the moment, but threaten to arise again in a month or so. Additionally, my dear Children finished the year's schooling, and headed to points South, to spend the summer with my sainted parents; all of which required a surprising amount of preparation. Then there have been the goings-on to prepare for Pennsic, which I will be attending for at least a week. There is too much to go into there...
Lastly, there is the brewing. It has been quite the interesting several weeks on that front. I've brewed twice since my last post, for a total of three batches, my most recent being number 101 since I began keeping records within the Barony of Lochmere. While working the 99th batch, my equipment rebelled, with a stuck mash, a disconnected lautering manifold, and several other uncomfortable issues. In all, to do that batch took the majority of a day, and was quite frustrating.
The 100th batch (a Barleywine), by comparison, went quite smoothly, until the ferment. Like a fool, I neglected to add Ferm-Cap when I pitched the yeast, so it frothed itself with merry abandon. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind so much, except that it blocked the airlock, and built to sufficient pressure as to "blow its top," as it were, leading to a broken airlock (a simple fix--I've many spares) and about a half-gallon of unfermented beer covering the floor and walls. Quite a bit of clean-up was necessary; it wasn't how I had planned on spending the morning, but one plays the hand one is dealt.
The 101st batch has been blissfully calm; due to some vagaries of experience in the grist-milling and mashing phases, though, it will likely be unreproducible (and, by definition, quite probably sublime). All told, though, I can't (and shan't) complain about it, other than to hope that my next several batches go more smoothly. And there's the added thrill that I don't have to limit myself quite so much as I did--I'm not trying to hit a certain batch number by a certain date! Two (or maybe even three) batches per brew day, to the best of my ability, for the rest of the year--that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Woohoo!Labels: brew day, cleaning, equipment, mishaps, Pennsic