I got my procedure down pat for the most part. I usually know whats going to happen before it happens. But then there are days when I start messing with things that aught not to be messed with, and just random things that happen to try and screw everything up.

Last nights brew was supposed to be a quick knock out of an ESB. Standard stuff. Mash, boil, done. Lets recap the night..

I start by feeding Beersmith all the pertinent data needed to calc my strike and sparge waters. In the midst of that, in the back of my head I remember the other day another brewer telling me that his “cooler weight” setting was off,, and for what ever reason I thought to my self it would be a good idea to change mine as well. I move it up because it felt heavy. Mind you it been on the same setting from the get go and has worked perfectly since. I get my measurements and start up.

In the last week I have been making use of heatsticks, so I chucked one in the kettle to speed up the process. Holy crap does it ever. Like 7 minutes to get strike up to temp. I was shocked really. Wasn’t really ready for it.

Hustle everything into position and get to mashing. What the hell? Stir, stir, stir.. what the hell!? I’m like 6-7 degrees low. 145 is a bit low. But I figured that I have corn in this batch, so I’ll let it mash there for 30 then step it up to the 152. I took a guess at how much boiling water was needed. and actually hit it just right. But as I’m stirring, I see my campden is still sitting on the counter. That 7 minute strike heat up was so quick, forgot to add it. I threw it in, but don’t know if it works after conversion starts.

So with all of that taken care of everything is going as planned. I hit my preboil right on, I found that just one heatstick can keep at least a simmer in my un-insulated keggle. things are lookin good. Coming up to the end of the boil I start to get my late hops and yeast ready.

Yeast. Hmm, where the hell is my yeast? I GOT NO YEAST! The chiller is in the pot already, its almost 9pmand I have no yeast.

Luckily, I have been on a brewing streak. I have 2 batches in the primary. A pale and a stout, both at the two week mark.

Prepare for emergency kegging! It wasn’t no big deal really. I had cleaned sanitized kegs ready any way. As I’m chilling one, I’m kegging the other. Give the yeast cake a swirl or two, and pour some into the ESBand we saved the universe again.

The ESB now has 05 yeast instead of anything British, but we have a heavily churning happy beer. It was just one of those days. Better not be any more like this.

The second beer we brewed on our vacation was a our Duck Creek pale ale. I decided that we would change it up a little this time and make it hop burst style. 

It started out to be a Schwarzbeir when I designed and purchased the ingredients. But by the time got around to brewing it yesterday, I only had room for a 3 gallon batch.

I already had all the stuff so just gonna take the first 3 gallons and go with a Imperial Schwarz

• 6 pilsner
• 4 vienna

For the base beer and to darken it I used 1/2 lb chocolate malt and 1/4 lb each roast barley and midnite wheat in a cold steep.

• 1 oz perle hops @60 
• 34/70 lager yeast.

Vienna just hates me I think. Everytime I use Vienna something goes weird. Not necessarily wrong,, just weird. This time it decided to mill funny, like it pulverised or something.

The cold steep went good I thought. Real black. Didnt even taste like it looks. Which is good.