Stout 3.0

After a long period of mourning, and a proper send off for our IPA we returned to our equipment with a new resolve.

What better to replace our lost IPA than a nice dark stout, just in time for Spring! Everyone loves dark beer on a warm day!

Here at Midnight brewing we have a tendency to be a little off with the dates and brewing schedules. About the only beer that we timed correctly was our Pumpkin Ale. Our Belgian was in the late fall, Our Holiday ale was brewed mid December...

But lets get to the 3.0,

Due to requests from a certain connoisseur of our stout, we decided to up the roasted barley and chocolate malts in this version. Version 2.0 was good after sufficient lagering, but was lacking the complex flavors that we achieved from version 1.0 which was an extract brew.

And another installment of Lessons learned:

All started off well, we struck early and even got the mash off to a good start. Until the dreaded stuck run off. We have been referring to stout since our first all grain batch as "the cursed beer". You may say "Oh dark beer, no problems there". Sure, its forgiving in the flavor department, but since we moved to all grain we have had no luck with our lautering and stout. See Stout 2.0

A little history of our mash tun; we set out to design a mash tun that resembled "El Cheapo Mash Tun"
Short Story: We bought the wrong kind of braid, the plastic polymer kind, not the stainless steel. We thought it might have been a little too easy to cut (ok so our trips to the hardware store aren't always that fruitful or relaxing).

Anyways, my cousin a veteran homebrewer gave me a piece of the stainless steel braid at Easter that he used in his mash tun. Awesome right? I agree. Multiple homebrewers in the same family!

But the awesomeness ends there as we decided that we wanted a quick brew session and that we should wait to modify the mash tun until after this brew...

Well after 5 or so mashes, the polymer braid that we had been using was completely crushed, which left us with a runoff worse than an old man with an enlarged prostate.

A few of the solutions that we tried:

Blowing up the hose: Not recommended, can easily burst blood vessels and blow who knows what into your delicious mash. Succeeded in getting the flow to pick up briefly, but quickly stopped again. A Brewer laughed hysterically at this one as I must of looked like I was doing some kind of crazy imitation of Dizzy Gillespie

Remove braid and hope for best: Not recommended either, results in large volume of wort everywhere and a slight "deck" taste to your finished beer.

Ultimately we poured the mash into our fermenter temporarily and installed the new braid. Which of course worked perfectly.

Lesson learned: If you got an equipment upgrade, use it right away.