MtnMoonshiner wrote:I've been thinking about this all day, and there are several problems I can imagine....without actually being there or watching how you did it etc...
If I understand correctly, your grain never settled to the bottom. Leaving you with something that looked like what you started with....as opposed to ending up with grain on the bottom and liquid on the top?
Alrite, we did this recipe twice; first time we measured out the cracked corn into our FV, then we boiled the water separately in one of those urns (~20L, thats around 5 gal) and poured that into the FV, once we had enough water in there we started to mix it up with a paint mixer and drill. Once we got to three-quarters full we allowed it to rest while following your instructions on mixing in the rye meal (did that separately in another large bucket. Our FV is 220L and is insulated to hold the heat better. After lunch, we went back to it and added the rye and more water and mixed it more... Because of the insulation, the demp didn't drop very fast, which we thought was good... at first. Thinking it would do good to gelatinise the corn and do good things to the rye. In the mean time we ground the barley (barley mill, medium setting), added it (from memory the temp was approx. 60-65 degrees Celsius (140-150F) and mixed again... Couple of movies later the temperature of the wash was still in the 60C so we closed the lid and left it over night...
MtnMoonshiner wrote:Did you pour enough water into your mash tun after mixing and everything? Is your mash tun big enough to hold enough water?
yes, see above
MtnMoonshiner wrote:If you cut down the recipe size, did you use enough malt? Did you scald the yeast by pitching it while the mash was too hot?
Hopefully we can get this sorted out and have to making liquor instead of expensive porridge...
We scaled the recipe to 200L, and waited until the temperature was around mid to high 30C (86-95F) before pitching the yeast. We used simple bakers yeast and have pitched at this temperature on many occasions before without any real issues...
MtnMoonshiner wrote:If I don't reply for a while, the wife and I are headed to the beach for some fishing. I'll answer ASAP though.
Haha good luck, I can only answer before or after work anyways, so it'll be like sending a letter... if you remember those?! :D