Today was a Murphy's Law day and nobody told me. 
Everything started off well enough. The boiler was ready when I was. The Maize and the Malted Barley were all pre-measured last night and off we went....
Maize in sprayed with cold water as I poured it in to prevent clumping. Open the boiler tap and run in 35lt water @90oC stirring all the while. 
Sofar-Sogood! 
Wait 60 mins then check the mash - thick, smooth, hot, lovly jubly
Time to top up the water so I can add in the sugar. I had decided to use cold water to adjust the water temp down to 70oC so that when the Malt was added the grain would cool the mash to around 64-67oC - perfect for the enzymes to work.
In the hour since starting temp of the mash had dropped dramatically and was now 50oC - too low for the enzymes. Unfazed as I was - cool under pressure - I decided to heat water in my boiler and add enough to bring the temp back up where I needed it.
I loaded the water into my boiler and put it on full power to boil. Unfortunately, by the time the water would be hot enough the scheduled 15lt left to be added would not be enough to get the mash temp back up to 70oC so I upped this to 25lt.
I then took 25lt of wort out of the barrel and put it in my old plastic boiler the one with the washing machine element...this one...
…..which I then connected to my power controller and ran the power up to 50%. It took 40 mins to get the temp of this wort up to 70oC without burning and it worked a treat. At the same time the water in my keg boiler had reached 98oC.
To get back on track I ran the 25lt of boiled water into the 50lt barrel and added a further 4kg of sugar. This brought the mash back to 68oC – perfect for adding the malt to convert the starches.The 25lt in the plastic boiler was transferred to a 33lt fermenter and 1kg of malt added to that. I now had a Tale of Two Buckets and a total of 85lt (including grains) instead of the planned 55lt but had recovered the mash from the jaws of disaster.
Both were left for an hour then stirred to let the enzymes complete their work and after a further hour I introduced the wort chiller and cooled both batches to pitching temps in just under 40 minutes.
With the end in sight, I added Amyloglucosidase (AG) to both containers to break down the last of the starches that the Alpha Amylase cannot convert. Next I tested and adjusted the pH and took gravity readings.
The 50lt has become 60lt and I pitched this with 28g of Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. bayanus, a Champagne Yeast from Brouwland under the brand name Vinoferm.
The 25lt fermenter I pitched with Alcotec's Single Strain Whiskey Yeast...and I was just about done.
Instead of the usual airlock I fitted each container with a blow tube which goes into a bucket of water and allows CO2 out but also allows for foam expansion should the ferment get 'lively'.
I had started at 0830hrs in the morning and, after near disaster, recovery and clean-up, I finished last night at 2050hrs – knackered!
The moral behind this long and sorry tale is, if you're doing corn this way don't take your eyes off the temp of the corn mash at any stage and make sure you have enough HOT water ready to bolster your mash temp until you get the malt in and working. It's easy to cool the mash but quite difficult if you have to heat it up again. 
This morning it's a new dawn, both fermenters are fizzing and bubbling away. Both have a good cap on top and and are blowing CO2 at a goodly rate.
Maybe there are some useful lesson for others in my record of cock-up and recovery. I know I've definitely learned lessons here. 
AM 
Statistics: Posted by Almanac — Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:24 am
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