About a year ago, I decided to buy a grain mill and crack my own grains.  I figured if I tried to explain it to anyone they’d think I was crazy spending $100 for a grain mill to add another labor step to my brew day preparation when the homebrew shop would do it for free.  At the time I did it because I was feverishly trying to sort out my grain conversion efficiency.  I had a particular batch that had a low conversion efficiency, and after inspecting the spent grain after mashing I noticed a lot of the kernels were still intact, and hadn’t even been cracked.  I decided if I really wanted to be in control of what was going on, I couldn’t be victim to whether or not my grains were fully cracked coming from the homebrew shop.

Ever since making that decision, I’ve felt it was money well spent as I felt more in control of the whole process (which is partly what drives us all to move from extract to all-grain to begin with).  While cracking a batch of grain recently for a Scotch Ale, I would crack the grains and inspect to make sure I was getting a good crush- cracking all/most of the hulls but not turning things to powder.  All was going well as I worked through Munich, White Wheat, and Smoked Wheat.  But when I went through the Golden Promise, I found that maybe only 50-60% of the kernels were cracked.

I adjusted the roller to do a finer crush and re-processed it all.  In hindsight, if I was smart, I would crush all of a given grain in a bucket then then after inspecting the crush move it over to the brewday grain bucket.  But in this case, having not learned that lesson yet, my half-cracked Golden Promise sat on top of the rest of my nicely crushed other grains.  Having no option but to crush it all again on the finer setting, it all went back through the mill.  I got a nice crack on the Golden Promise, but a lot of the other got broken up into very small bits.  I added some rice hulls to help avoid a stuck mash with such a fine crush and was prepared for brew day.  

Had this batch come through my LHBS, I’m sure it would’ve all been run through a fixed roller setting and I’d be stuck with low conversion efficiency.

While cracking this batch of grains, I found another reason cracking your own grains is worthwhile.  Frequently while going through this grain processing you find little bits of bonus grain bits that you can filter out (grain stock other than the kernel), but this time I found an unknown hop pellet sitting in my package of grains.  I have no idea what type it was, how old it was, etc.  I just know I was glad I found it and it didn’t get ground up to be a bonus/mystery flavor in my Scotch Ale.  Making a small 2.5 gallon batch that was also low in IBU, one hop pellet could make a noticeable difference.

If you’re doing a multi-temperature mash by adding heat to your mash tun, you need to be wary of heat plumes fooling your thermometer.  I have an 8 gallon pot with a false bottom that I use for my mash tun.  When I do a multi-temperature mash, I monitor the temperature of the grain/water mash as I’m adding heat.  Occasionally I’ve been thrown into a panic as my temperature seemingly shot past my target temperature.

However, if you’re not running some sort of recirculation pump you need to be wise to these tricks and give your mash a stir to ensure the hot water at the bottom gets mixed in to the entire mash instead of just finding an escape route to the top past your thermometer probe.

Similarly, when first mashing in your grain to your hot water, you need to give it about 5-10 minutes to totally equalize and balance out the temperature between grains and water before trying to adjust temperature up or down.  I’ve had situations where it was location of the thermometer probe giving me an inaccurate temperature, or sometimes just simply giving things a chance to fully mix and stabilize.

One side this homebrewing hobby that can be both a blessing and a curse is the amount of time needed on brew day or preparation for brew day.  Of course this time alone can be a great escape from the stresses of life.  And sitting outside on a nice summer day watching my wort boil and listening to the birds sing I find downright magical.

But telling the kids, “Not now, I’m busy” can make even the most solitude-loving individual feel guilty.  So facing a giant mass of equipment I needed to clean on Saturday afternoon in preparation for a Sunday brew day, I came up with a brilliant idea.

I conscripted the young helping hands I had at home, telling them I’d pay them $5/hour to help me clean my brew equipment.  It was a win-win.  The kids were thrilled to be earning some money to spend on whatever they wanted, they helped me get through cleaning day faster, and instead of this work being alone non-family time we were hanging out having fun listening to music and talking.  Luckily, the kids weren’t up on child labor laws and the concept of minimum wage, so I think I’ll pursue this again in the future sometime.

While doing a yeast starter a while back, I had a strange phenomenon happen to me that caught me off-guard.  Doing a 2L starter in a glass 1/2 gallon carboy, I shake it up about every hour to ensure I am getting good aeration.  While doing this, it builds up pressure as I have the cap screwed on tightly so as not to leak anything.  After it settles down, I loosen the lid a bit and let it vent some of the built-up pressure (and get another dose of oxygen for the fermentation).

During this process, of course the yeast foam wants to rush out as you relieve the pressure, so you have to screw the lid back on again before you lose anything out the lid.  So this day while venting through the lid, I had a slow steady stream of pressurized air going out, watching the foam raise higher in the jug.  Right when it was near the lid, I screwed it down tighter only to find it suddenly rush out and foam out of the carboy.

After this happened a couple of times, I figured out what was going on with the physics of it.  By letting it establish a steady flow rate, when I started tightening the lid I was decreasing the area it had to flow through, which made the flow speed up.  Same phenomenon as a garden hose when you start to bend it over to pinch the flow.

So next time around, I’ll either not let the foam get too close to the lid before tightening the lid down, or not let it build up a steady flow stream by venting for a period of time.

There are different types of LP regulators out there, and some function differently.  I stumbled across this on brew day as I was using my new propane burner.  It came with its own regulator and it looked slightly different than my old one.  I didn’t think much of it and just used the new hose/regulator with the new burner.  But I found the function of the adjustable knob on it was different.

Instead of being an open/close valve (with variable opening amount in between), it actually adjusted the pressure regulation.

This wasn’t intuitive at first and I was frustrated by the fact that I now had to turn the knob in the opposite direction I was used to.  Bigger flame on pressure regulator meant turning the knob clockwise.

However on my old regulator that was a flow control valve, the pressure was fixed (at 10 psi) and my flow control valve opened by turning counterclockwise.

After getting my brain used to turning the knob in the opposite direction, the other issue I found was turning the flame off took a lot more turns of the knob, and it felt somewhat disconcerting that the flame went out before the knob was fully turned all the way it could go.

Not realizing that the new one with the pressure regulator adjustment gave me greater gas flow capability (adjusts up to 30 psi), I switched to the other one that I was more familiar with.  But when I went to boil the wort, I didn’t get any speedier boil than with my older/smaller burner.  So in the end, I switched the lines again.

In the end, it’s worth understanding the function of the adjustments on your propane line because just because the fitting on the burner is the same and the propane tank is the same, what you put in between can have an effect on how well you can use your burner.