Another Disasterous Brew Day!

[braufrau]

Darn darn darn!
My buggery bollocks thermometer decided to read 10C high lately. How lately I don't know!
So that means, I "mashed" at 55C just now, mashed out at 66C and then I swapped thermometers and am now letting the sparge water settle at .. no idea what temperature .. somewhere between 70 and 76.

So .. that means I did a 90 minute protein rest, a 20min sacchification (too hungry to spell that properly) and a sort of mash out, except I drained the first runnings before the mash out.

Sigh! This could explain a lot of things, like why my hefeweizen has no head and why my efficiency is so low.
HWMBO generously told me I could buy a new thermometer for mother's day. Well I guess that's better than what I got last year which was "bye! have a nice day" and five minutes later I thought "hang on! what happened to breakfast in bed etc.???"

oh and the mash tun is leaking.

 

[reviled]

Sorry to hear

Sometimes the thermometer will lose 25% accuracy if the battery's are running low...

 

[fraser_john]

I know the feeling! My digital thermometers have a nasty habit of going out of calibration by about 5c and usually I only find out by a brew not attenuating properly.

Hence a new PID/control box project.......

Go out and splurge, sounds like you have permission!

And Reviled is right, our digital meat thermo was reading all sorts of weird numbers the other night till we changed the battery!

John

 

[Bribie G]

What sort of thermometer is it? Mine's a digital stick thermometer with the spear probe, probably good for meat as well, and on the card / shrink when it arrived it said 'never needs calibrating'.

I notice Ross has gone onto another brand now.

 

[Damian44]

I got a good thermometer from Apps Labs. They have a self tester, so you cant go wrong. I mahsed a stout 10C too high and its not too bad.

 

[fraser_john]

What sort of thermometer is it? Mine's a digital stick thermometer with the spear probe, probably good for meat as well, and on the card / shrink when it arrived it said 'never needs calibrating'.

I notice Ross has gone onto another brand now.

Ah, mines a home built computer controlled mash system using DS18S20 digital probes. Too hard, here comes PIDs.

 

[sumo]

I use a $25 meat thermometer (the one that does in the meat in the oven) which I check the calibration on once in a while.... magic... and it still goes after getting a hot wort bath more than a couple of times!

 

[cubbie]

I just did seven brews in a row before I realised my thermometer was farked. All beers vey drinkable, but there is noway I can takes notes from them or repeat them. Got some new digital thermometers for the last brew and they were great, but then I somehow only got 50% efficiency so 8 in a row brews that are questionable. It was also the first time I used my refractometer so perhaps I did not calibrate correctly.

I did expect low efficiency as I had 2.5 of pilsner and 2.5 cracked wheat and 250g oats.

Anyway I had a $15 thermo from IKEA and a more expensive one from a cooking place which I checked against each other. The cheap thermo responded much faster to temp changes than the more expensive model.

 

[bear09]

Invest in a dial thermometer. You can caliberate it yourself with boiling water. Then, I use this in conjunction with my digital therm and I get it spot on all the time.

 

[Tony M]

Invest in a dial thermometer. You can caliberate it yourself with boiling water. Then, I use this in conjunction with my digital therm and I get it spot on all the time.

I have heard from here and other places that the dial thermometers should be calibrated near the the most important temperatures as they can lose accuracy the further away they are from that temp. ie. If you check at 100C, they might read 5C at freezing and vise verse.. It sounds logical to me as they are just a mechanical contraption.

 

[brendo]

I have heard from here and other places that the dial thermometers should be calibrated near the the most important temperatures as they can lose accuracy the further away they are from that temp. ie. If you check at 100C, they might read 5C at freezing and vise verse.. It sounds logical to me as they are just a mechanical contraption.

yeah I would expect variances in calibration at either extreme of the scale, so I would think that calibrating within the typical temperature use range would be the way to go. So for the mash tun, at typical mashing temps - say 65 or thereabouts.

Just how I would do it.

Cheers,

Brendan

 

[braufrau]

Man! Now I've run out of gas!

 

[gibbocore]

ha, must be that time of year, i discovered i was out by about 5 degrees on my MM dial therm, put a milk froth therm and a candy therm into the mash tun and they both agreed that my big dial therm was lying, explains some attenuation issues.

 

[Pumpy]

Darn darn darn!
My buggery bollocks thermometer decided to read 10C high lately. How lately I don't know!
So that means, I "mashed" at 55C just now, mashed out at 66C and then I swapped thermometers and am now letting the sparge water settle at .. no idea what temperature .. somewhere between 70 and 76.

So .. that means I did a 90 minute protein rest, a 20min sacchification (too hungry to spell that properly) and a sort of mash out, except I drained the first runnings before the mash out.

Sigh! This could explain a lot of things, like why my hefeweizen has no head and why my efficiency is so low.
HWMBO generously told me I could buy a new thermometer for mother's day. Well I guess that's better than what I got last year which was "bye! have a nice day" and five minutes later I thought "hang on! what happened to breakfast in bed etc.???"

oh and the mash tun is leaking.

Dont worry BrauFrau it is still in the ballpark it will probably be your best tastiest well attenuated beers ever.

Pumpy

 

[braufrau]

Thanks Pumpy. I've been trying to convince myself of that all day.
I think the last 3 brews at least must have been made with the thermometer out of whack andthe one HWMBO is currently drinking is a very tasty hefeweizen, which just has no head retention, so I guess I've made some sort of beer.

 

[Hutch]

The same stick thermometers that Ross used to sell are now available from Jaycar for about $22.

I have one of these, and it is almost spot on my home-made reference digital thermometer (+- 0.5deg accuracy) across the range 20-80 deg C. Can't have too many thermometers in the brewery -> more independent readings = less error.

 

[Katherine]

I've mashed two glass thermometers and fermented one! Ill be using my meat thermometer on the weekend! Wish it luck!

 

[AndrewQLD]

Chin up Braufrau, days like this suck, but we all have them and you know your next brew day just has to be better.
I think you just rolled all your stuff ups for the year into one day!

Andrew

 

[braufrau]

So do sensible people ahve two gas bottles?

 

[brendo]

So do sensible people ahve two gas bottles?

that's why you have a bbq... acts as your spare... also handy if I am doing back to back batches, can be heating HLT and kettle at the same time if need be.

Always good to have a back up bottle...

Brendo