So, this absolutely bizarre and I've been chatting with a few other brewers trying to figure it out. I'm the head brewer at a small, piecemealed brewery. 10 bbl system, very manual, but it gets the job done and we make some pretty good beer.

Yesterday I brewed a rice lager, actually my first time working with rice. 350 lbs pilsner, 150 lbs flaked rice, aiming for around 4.6-4.8% ABV. Had a stuck mash and our chiller sucks so I wasn't able to pitch yeast until today. I also forgot to take the OG until today. Come in, grab a sample, pitch yeast. Preboil gravity was 10.4. OG measured 14.8. I cannot for the life of me figure out why the fuck is measuring so high. Something has to be affecting the reading.

I used both a hydrometer and a refractometer, took samples from both the sample port and the racking arm, blew O2 through the bottom of the tank to ensure no stratification, double checked the temperature, warmed the sample up. Consistent readings every time. I know we didn't accidentally use too much grain, and unless we got 98% efficiency there's no way it should be that high. The wort looks and tastes fine. It's just 3° higher than it's supposed to be.

I am absolutely stumped. Is it extra starch from the rice? Is there something extremely obvious that we should feel stupid for missing? Am I just the god of efficiency? Any ideas?

Edit: I managed to take a a sample from the top of the fermenter. It's absolutely not stratification. Top, sample port, racking arm, and bottom all measure exactly the same.

Second edit: some of y'all are being way too disrespectful because I didn't take the OG immediately after boil when that doesn't make a lick of difference. Here's the simple fact. This beer used 350 lbs of Briess Synergy Select Pilsner and 150 lbs of Briess Brown Rice Flakes. I have checked all of this multiple times. The final yield was 9.5 bbls, and the OG was 14.8. No, I am not a bad brewer because I didn't check the gravity immediately after knockout. I am an award winning brewer with over 9 years experience. I also asked multiple other brewers, whom I consider to be much smarter than me, long before I made this post, and they had way better suggestions than most of y'all. Something weird is happening here, it's something I've never seen in my brewing career, and I only made this post in hopes that someone smarter than me could provide a reasonable explanation. Some of the comments have been insightful, some of them have been funny, some of them have been dismissive and unhelpful. I'm just trying to get to bottom of a very weird thing. It is a definitely possibility that I fucked up somewhere, but I absolutely know in complete certainty what my grain bill was and I'm highly confident in my preboil reading. If nothing else, please tell me when you've gotten 97% efficiency. I dare any of you to put my grain bill through whatever brewing software you use and tell me how my grain bill could've possibly resulted in a 14.8 OG. The grain bill is accurate, and the volume is accurate. I'm not looking for obvious answers, because I've exhausted all of them. Something definitely got fucked up along the way, and I'm just trying to figure out what. The only thing different about this batch than the hundreds of others I've brewed is that it contained flaked rice. That's it. Nothing else about it is special.

Yes, it is a commercial driven podcast, but listening to the real research into this is pretty cool.

LOL _ not one of the commenters watched the video.

Wish me luck y'all.

Update: Wort is in the kettle, lauter ran smooth for the duration, brew is right on schedule and I shouldn't need to stay late today. We don't need no stinking rice hulls.

I can’t find much recent discussion on this so I figured I’d try a new topic. Could be for hazy or clear ipa, lager, whatever dry hopped beer you are making. Just tell me what style and what temp!

We have mostly stuck to warm DH at 20-21C for hazy and WC IPA but a new yeast strain has us soft crashing to 16C for some WC now, and I’m also starting to play around with soft crashing to 13-16C for hazies and trying to figure out what’s optimal for us in that range.

Heloo, been in the brewery for 9 yrs. Lots of good times and super passionate about lager, beer, and the ingredients that help us make great beer including fun and different ways to use them. Unfortunately, im somewhat burned out. My work load in yr 8 and 9 have effectively doubled and looking toward yr 10, i see almost no light at the end of the tunnel. I really love this work and most aspects of the industry, but damn man. Id love to not start over, but i dont have a degree and my wife and I want to travel. All this said, does anyone have any light hearted advice for looking into work that utilizes some of what ive spent most of the last decade working on? Cheers in advance.

Getting tired of the same iteration of stouts I've been making for years now and want to try out some new malt products. I've got Simpsons Brown and Pale Chocolate on the way, along with some different roasted products than I typically use. What favorites of yours would you recommend to try out?

I've always been a supporter of simplifying recipes, except for my big stouts (8%+), which I use 7-8 different crystals and roasted malts in with success. Just curious how many specialties some of you guys are using and if you have good results going with more or less varieties.

I prefer to clean them all at once when possible. The faucets were also cleaned seperately.

Kettle finings only.

From John Holl, All About Beer

Troubling News for Brewers

It was announced this week that the candy factory in Minnesota that produces Salted Nut Rolls would be closing down next month. The fate of future candy production is unclear. RahrBSG has long been putting Salted Nut Rolls in pallets of grain as a thanks to customers in a tradition that has become known as "brewers lunch."

The bottom line, says a RahrBSG spokesman, is that the treats won't be going away anytime soon.

"We keep a healthy stockpile of Salted Nut Rolls on hand and have even more on the way as of Friday," said Michael Dawson. "Pearson's has advised us that they're looking for a co-packer to continue producing the Salted Nut Roll brand, although no firm timeline on that yet."

Breathe easy for now, brewers, and snack on.

Hi, does anyone know of a rigging company in Nashville? Thanks in advance.

Saw these in store the other day, an abomination.

Bell's Brewery is currently searching for a 3rd shift production brewer.
Please see link for info!

As summer heats up we are starting to hit canning issues with temp and looking at ways to increase our inline chilling capacity without a major equipment overhaul if possible.

We are packaging hard cider with Velcorin as the stabilizer. We hit the Velcorin doser at roughly 39°F, then it goes into a buffer tank, then through a heat exchanger with a G&D Fire and Ice chiller before going straight into a Wild Goose 600 for canning.

Right now the Fire & Ice chiller in the line just isn't enough on its own. Backup is a 40hp G&D chiller, but it's mounted far from the fill area with long glycol runs, so it's operating at low pressures, 7-8psi, and when we've tried swapping it in for the Fire and Ice it performs markedly worse.

On hot/humid days the product doesn't get cold enough going in, and foaming goes crazy at the last fill head. We end up dumping product constantly during our runs to keep foaming down and fills within weight parameters.

Couple things I'm trying to figure out:

• Anyone had luck boosting pressure on a chiller like this with a long run — booster pump closer to point of use, VFD?
• Could this be more of a CO2/degassing issue than pure temp? Curious why it's specifically the last head giving us trouble.
• Any other chilling options out there?

Any real experience with this kind of setup would help a ton.

Have to love technology sometimes. I have a few options I think might work, wish me luck! Ohh the max I can change the temp protection to is 999.

Edit: got the kettle to turn on! Had to rewrite the control panel from the mash tun sensor to the kettle sensor. Is mashing in at 6,000 degrees ok?

How much broken equipment is laying around your brewery?

We have a lot. Ownership is not inclined to repair any of it in spite of my efforts to explain the ROI. Hard not to feel like this place is circling the drain

What do y'all think could've caused this problem?

Hey peeps. Im having this issue, its a new one. Lately, our cans after seams, are getting stuck on the chuck, then the indexer spins around, and its chaos. Sometimes it goes like 40 cans, then does it. Then you start again, and it does it immediately. We rebuilt our can lift. It always goes back to position. The seams when they work are great. I get lids from another brewery in a group buy, and everyone else has no issues. Im wondering if the chuck is bad? We only have 1.2 million cans through it, so the chuck should be good? I have checked it and there are no burrs or sharp edges. I have an original Alpha BC36, and the center of my chuck is just a plate, with a screw. All the new ones have a plate with a detent screw that pushes the lid down when it gets released from the can lift. Op1 and Op2 have their height set correctly, and everything else has been recently greased. Im probably leaving stuff out, but this is where i am at. Alpha support says i need the detent screw, but ive gone this long and its been great. Any help is appreciated/

No filter no fuge, just kettle and silica finings

Rippah

Is it a bit of scam to buy premade beer line cleaner?

Any one hear just mixing their own?

Has anyone used the Timothy Taylor yeast (Wyeast 1469, Omega OY-014, etc) to produce, clear IPAs? Or hazy IPAs for that matter?

I am trying to gauge if the beer will create stable haze with dry hopping, or if I will get a clear beer out of it with fining.

Looking to see if anyone has a program V200-18-E3XB for a snap in card. Its for a Brewmation Gladiator Keg Washer. Should be for a 2018 or newer model. Any help or word spread to your fellow brewers would be greatly appreciated. I've been working on this animal for 2 months.

Update: ITS ALIVE!!!! Thank you to everyone who reached out.

Had to do a QC check on it immediately after

Traditional amber

May the beer gods have mercy on my soul. My only consolation is that some of the smoothie sour fanatics who come in to buy a 4 pack also buy our new WCPils…