Well, The best laid plans and all that. Thought I would brew up nice little summer Blonde ale. Used Beersmith 2 to put together the recipe and it was all coming out right.

Was going to use some hallertauer hops and a little rice to lighten up the beer to make something that would be nice and refreshing after a day patrolling the border of the compound.

Unfortunately, I used Munich Malt instead of Pale Malt. The only real issue is that Munich malt doesn’t have quite as much diastatic power as pale malt, and it has a little more ‘color’ than pale malt.

True to form, I forgot to pay homage to the beer gods and missed the target temp (low) by 10 degrees. Hooking up my HERMS (Heat Exchanger Recirculating Mash System) to bring the temp up, I immediately encountered a stuck mash. I blame the rice for both undershooting the temp as well as the mash being stuck. Well, Instead of getting all upset about it, I grabbed a pint glass and filled it from the tap with some English Bitter. Sure thing, 2 minutes later the mash was unstuck and flowing smoothly (albeit slowly) through the system and I was able to raise the temp up without a problem.

No worries, It converted the rice right on target and all is right with the world.

I went ahead and did a mash at 148.5 degrees in order to make a more fermentable, aka, drier beer.

Experimented with doing mainly late hop additions. Could not really taste much in the way of hops in the final sample, so I’m thinking I’ll dry hop it with some more hallertauer prior to kegging.

Going to have to work on my volumes. Started with 13 gallons in the brew kettle and ended up with only 9 in the fermenter. I am not willing to add water to top off, so will just live with it. Next time I’ll collect another gallon or two in the kettle before I start the boil.

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