Learning the System
Flub, stumble, trip, learn, and try again.
In Brewing Better Beer, Gorden Strong emphasizes the importance of knowing all of the intricacies your own system. He couches much of his advice in qualifying statements about the type of system that one is brewing on. He seems to think it is really really important.
So, of course, I ignored his advice. I guess I didn't think my system was sophisticated enough to hide very many secrets. I mash my grains in a bag, I boil, I add hops, I chill, I ferment. What's to learn?
Turns out there's a lot of things to which I should have been paying attention. The first two batches (a Belgian Strong ale and a Saison) in my new brew kettle didn't work out as I had hoped they would. What's really frustrating is that I didn't learn from the first batch and made essentially the same mistake on my second.
In both batches I missed my anticipated original gravity by a significant margin, mostly because my wort volume was way high. I used Brewer's Friend's default calculations for grain absorption and boil off rates. The problems with this are that 1) I squeeze all the water possible out of my grain bag and 2) with the bigger brew kettle, I can't get as vigorous of a boil. Both of these things lead to me ending up with much more wort than I expected, which in turn leads to weaker beers.
The Belgian Golden Strong Ale was supposed to end up around 1.072, but it was 1.053 instead. I dual fermented this with Wyeast's Belgian Golden Ale strain along with a Brett Brux strain that I got from Chad Yakobson at Crooked Stave. This beer filled my house with heavenly smells during the vigorous part of the fermentation process. I can only hope that it ends up tasting half as good as it smelled. Even with a 1.053 OG, the brett should consume pretty much all of the sugars in the wort, so I'll likely end up with a moderately strong belgian golden beer. Just not an actual Belgian Golden Strong Ale.
My second go of the same mistake was a saison which ended up at 1.042 instead of 1.052. I figured that making a smaller batch would help me reach a better boil, and thus alter the low boil-off rate. I did get a much better boil, but the evaporation rate stayed at about 3 quarts per hour. This is being fermented with the Wyeast Belgian Saison (dupont, I believe) strain at 90 degrees. It feels really really strange fermenting a beer this hot, but I wanted to get as much of the saison character out of the yeast as I could. With the lower OG, this might turn into a nice tart, fruity, spicy, sessionable beer.
I'm not overly upset with either of these two mistakes because I still believe they will be enjoyable beers. But I am learning. I'm brewing a Golden Promise Willamette SMaSH (Single Malt and Single Hop) next week, and this time I'm determined to "know" my system and hit my fermentation volume spot on.