The day could not have started any better. Water tests showed that everything in my new system was working as expected. It all came together better than I could have hoped.
Then my mill rollers wouldn't turn. I finally have a fully functional brew system and I can't crush the grain. The alarm has already gone off. The water is ready to start the mash, but I don't have grain to add to the water. The new system is waiting on me! With the help of my friend Jamie we were able to quickly take the mill apart and clean the rollers. The rollers had been gummed up with a mixture of machining oil and grain dust that wouldn't allow them to turn. We got the mill put back together and we were back in business!
Moving the water from the hot liquor tank (HLT) to the mash tun was very easy thanks to the pumps. Jamie dumped the grain in while I stirred the mash to break up any dough balls. Once the mash was ready to go it was time to start recirculating the mash through the coil in the HLT. Running the mash through the HLT maintains the temperature of the mash. After the pumps worked well to move the water over to the man tun they decided to give me a harder time with the recirculation. They just wouldn't start moving the liquid. After pulling a lot of hoses to check for any clogs (and finding none) the pumps stopped messing with me and started working as expected.
This was the first time I have ever tried fly sparging. I was concerned about getting the two pumps to work in sync, but that proved to not be difficult. My estimated efficiency of 85% was dead on and I hit my pre-boil gravity exactly. The boil didn't go exactly as planned, but it is easily remedied for next time. I didn't get the high evaporation rate I was expecting so my starting gravity was a little low. Next time I will just start with a lower boil volume and it should be fine.
After the boil I ran the wort through my counter flow chiller for the first time. I need to work on this step to get the wort to the right temperature for fermentation. We'll see how it goes next time as I keep adjusting flow rates.
At the end of the day I had 5 gallons of vanilla stout in the fermenter and the day was a success. All of the problems were minor and easily corrected for the next brew.
