Batch #4 - Lagunitas Little Sumpin Sumpin Clone

Today was a "take 2" of the Lagunitas Little Sumpin Sumpin. Last week when we brewed we suffered a bit of a stuck mash. Our HERMS system takes the liquid from under the false bottom in the Mash Lauter Tun (MLT), circulates it through the Hot Liquor Tank (HLT) to heat up, then is deposited back on top of the grain bed in the MLT. Last week's issue ended up being that the grain bed was too dense, this was due to a couple of factors.

First, wheat is a heavy ingredient in this brew. As such wheat is more dense than barley. When you crush a barley you get the husk as well as its insides. Wheat does not have a husk. A trick you can do is to add rice hulls to your mash to create that airspace needed so the grain bed doesn't get so dense.

Second, I crush the grain a bit finer than other people with this similar brew setup. After learning this I set the crusher to a larger gap (.045 inch).

With these two adjustments made, today's brew went much smoother. The mash was spot on temperature, I was able to mash out by raising the temperature up to 169, then I sparged for 1 hour. Everything went as planned.

Yesterday I prepped everything ahead of time for today's brew so I wouldn't have to worry about measuring anything, cleaning, transferring, etc... That work paid off today as I was able to relax during much of the brew session. The only item I needed to do today was to transfer last week's brew to secondary and dry hop. Outside of that it was all brewing! (lots of cleaning as you go too)

I also spent today cleaning up the freezer fermentation chamber. I made two mistakes in setting this up last week. First I did not check to ensure the defrost plug was completely secure. I ended up having puddles all week that needed cleaning. The other item is I did not setup my blow-off tubes correctly and some overflowed into the freezer bottom. After I transferred the batch in there today I cleaned up the freezer and secured everything for today so as not to repeat this week with another mess.

All-in-all I am very happy with the rhythm of today's brew day. There was not any lost time anywhere, everything flowed around well (with no spills), and cleanup was better and easier today as well. Brew days are long, and getting more efficient not only produces better brews, but saves time.

Right now it takes me around 9 hours on brew day! Some key time factors:

• 30-45 minutes to bring 20 gallons of water in the HLT up to 155 degrees
• 30 minutes to transfer water to MLT and bring temp back up
• 30 minutes putting in grains, stirring, and setting ph level
• 45 min mash
• 20 min mash out
• 60 min sparge
• 20-30 min to bring up to boil
• 90 min boil
• 45 min chill and transfer to fermenters
• The rest of the time is cleaning...lots of cleaning!

No idea what the above actually calculates to, and some recipes have different mash times, and boil times, but that is the bulk of it time after time.

I should also mention I got to taste Batch #1 as I Kegged it yesterday. Tastes really good for our first batch. The original Dogfish Head 60 min IPA I believe has some chocolate malt in it (I need to investigate that). Our recipe did not, so you don't that that subtle flavor, which is ok by me. I do believe the dry hopping could have been better though, as I don't think I got the full effect. Issue was many of the hops simply laid on the surface of the wort. I think there are tricks you can employ to ensure the hops remain submerged.

Today I also got to taste last week's Batch #3. I think this tasted great! Really looking forward to how this weeks improvements improve the taste between the two batches.

Next week we will be kegging batches #2 & #3, and brewing a new batch of Banana Ale. Until then!