Do I Need a Better Brewing Setup?

Today's brew event was a combination of things. A new recipe experiment for a friend and an attempt at multi-step mashing with a cooler-as-a-mashtun system. The beer is a Patersbier. The actual beer that this is based on comes from at a Belgian monestary and is brewed solely for consumption by the reverent Cistercian brothers. This ale is not served or sold to the public, making it one of the rarest beers in the world. Although the NB kit is Pils only, mine has some acidulated malt (3.5%) and some CaraVienne (3.5%). The hops were also changed up a bit since I have a bunch of Styrian Goldings that were freebies at this year's Upper Missippi Mashout.

The other trick in this beer was to do a short (12 min) mash at 112F, then the rest of the mash at 149F. With a simple system like mine, that means doing the normal hot water addition to hit the initial mash temp, then adding boiling water to reach the final mash temp. There are plenty of calculators out the that tell you how much boiling water to reach your next temp ... I was led astray by them. I had planned to do a bit of a lauter decoction at the end of the mash but I could not hit the second temp with the calculated values and things went to hell in a handbasket. I ended up having an inital mash at 112F, then added far from enough boiling water. While I madly got extra water boiling, the mash had an unintended 25 minute rest at about 121F, then finally the final (planned) 45 minutes at 149F. The notes below tell all the sordid details.

Boiloff was another weird problem. Over 90 minutes, I boiled off 2.25 gal, way more than normal. It was 13% more humid, so I'd expect less boiloff but I got way more. I guess I just had the boil going a lot more than with the two Crouch Vales.

And another problem - the BreweryTimer app. While the boil timer is great, once the other alarms go, they will not shut off unless I restart the app. I said last time "why didn't I code this up"; now maybe I will.

Patersbier

6 gal  into the primary (planned, 5.25 actual)

Grist

• 9 lb 10 oz Belgian Pils
• 6 oz Acidulated malt
• 6 oz CaraVienne 75L
• Mash @ 112F for 12 min
• Mash @ 120F for 25 min (unanticipated)
• Mash @ 149F for 48 min
• Boil for 90min

Hops

• 1.5 oz Styrian Goldings (2.6%AA) @ 90 min
• 2.5 oz Styrian Goldings (2.6%AA) @ 0 min

Yeast

• Wyeast 3738 Trappist High Gravity, ferment at 63F

I made a 1 liter starter about two days ahead of time.

Brewing Notes

Day 0
0750 :: 3.5 gal on to boil.
0756 :: Mash water @114F.
0802 :: First H2O into tun @ 142F; rest of H2O continues to boil on lower heat.
0805 :: Remainder of H2O @ 195F - heat off.
0810 :: Added tap H2O to tun (keeping vol constant) and got temp to 128F.
0814 :: Mash in @ 124F;  remainder of H2) on flame.
0821 :: Overshot the mash temp - had to add 2 qts tap H2O to get mash temp down to 113F.
0824 :: Mash @ 114F.
0830 :: Mash @ 116F - looks like my (and Promash's) calcs for water:grain and temperature are off for low ratios.
0833 :: Add remainder of H2O for mash.
0840 :: Mash temp only to 122F - WTF! putting 3 gal on to boil to bring it up to 149F - will add slowly until 149.
0905 :: Added 3 gal of boiling to get to 149F.
0910 :: 148F mash.
0917 :: 148F mash, 125F sparge.
0955 :: When I sparged, the mash bed was very very compacted - needed to stir it up to get all the liquid out. Normally I don't have to do that.
1000 :: I got 5 gal first runnings.
1005 :: I only added enough sparge water to get 2.5 gal second runnings.
1010 :: Preboil gravity is 10.25 Brix (1.041) with 7.5 gal --> 80% eff.
1013 :: With full flame, 185F.
1015 :: Current conditions : 71F, 73% RH.
1153 :: Flame off, start immersion cooler. The immersion cooler results are
3 min -- 120F
4 min -- 106F
5 min --  99F
6 min --  93F
8 min --  84F
I love the nice cold Lakeville water.
1211 :: I only got about 5.25 gal into carboy ... big boiloff? The boil rate didn't seem that high.
1212 :: OG is 13.5 Brix (1.054). This doesn't really jive with any boiloff calcs, but it is what it is.
1215 :: The wort is in the refrigerator getting down to 64F (pitching temp).

Day 1
0630 :: I aerated for one minute at 0.12 lpm, then pitched the entire 1 liter starter. The starter was about 68F and the wort was about 65F, so close enough.
1900 :: Nice bubbling (12 bubbles/min).

Day 2
0700 :: Even more airlock activity - 24 bubbles per minute. No blowoff into the airlock jug. The carboy is about 63F.

Day 4
1800 :: It has been stable around 63F for a few days now. Activity has dropped to zero at this point. I will rack to secondary tomorrow night.

Day 7
I was going to rack it, but the gravity was only 1.014.

Day 16
Back from vacation, the gravity is 1.012 - I guess I could have racked it. Something happened while I was away and the temp got up to about 72F, but almost no fermentation occurred (the gravity barely dropped) so I hop no off flavors got into it.