'Closet Cleaner' Irish Red
Every so often you look upon your mass of brewing equipment and ingredients and think to yourself, "Wow, there's a lot of loose ends here!" So you wash and tidy all your gear, organize that collection of empty bottles you've been saving (corkers in one box, cappers in the other: oh shit, this one still has a label on it...), scrub the inside of your fermentation chamber and take hydro readings on all your long term aging projects. Yet, after all this you still have six bags of half used grain, a vial of yeast with no brew planned for it and odds and sods of hops you were going to use but never did. So you plan a beer.
Irish Red Ale -- 28/08/14
Estimated OG: 1.045 Estimated FG: 1.012 OG: 1.043 IBU: 27 SRM: 16
Grain Bill: 6 lbs Pearl Malt 1 lb Flaked Oats 1/2 lb Amber Malt 1/2 lb Crystal 40 1/4 lb Brown Malt 1/2 lb CaraFoam 1/2 lb Pale Chocolate Malt
Hop Bill: 1 oz Styrian Goldings 4.6%AA) @ 60 min 1 oz Styrian Goldings (4.6%AA) @ 30 min
Yeast: 1 pkg White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast built to a cell count of 215 billion
Other: 1 tsp wyeast yeast nutrient @ 10 minutes
Brew Notes: mashed @ 152F for 60 minutes
Then, once you plan it, your brew day goes to hell and you have terribly poor (read 55%) mash efficiency, a stuck sparge and you need to add all the DME you have as well as a half pound of table sugar just to get the beer into range of the OG you were looking for! Hindsight is 20/20 but it turns out Pearl Malt has really low diastatic power: should have looked into that beforehand.