Since the disastrous house infection cost me two fermentors and huge quantities of beer, I have cooked up four batches to fill those sad empty cornelius kegs. Hops Sweepings Ale, Tettnanger Blond and Cascarillo Pale Ale are all in kegs now and, with the exception of a clearing issue with Hops Sweepings Ale, everything went without a hitch. The fourth beer, a creation of wheat and rye, using the new SafBrew WB-06 wheat beer strain of yeast, resulted in one of the worst brew days I have ever had.

As part of my “get some beer done and quick” campaign, I took a half day from work to brew. The idea was to do a wheat beer, as wheats are fast-maturing by nature, but it turned out that the 3Kg bag of Wheat Malt I thought I had was actually only a 1Kg bag.

As I really wanted to try out the new SafBrew WB-06 wheat beer yeast, I headed down to the health food shop for some flaked wheat. When I got there I noticed they had flaked rye. Hmmm...

The grist I decided on in the end was:

• 2.5Kg Pale Malt
• 1Kg Wheat Malt
• 1Kg Flaked Rye

I started out by cooking the rye in boiling water. The logic here was that, as these grains are not designed for brewing, I could not be sure that the flaking process had gelatinised the starches to make them convertible by the enzymes in the mash.

I don't know why I thought this. I have used flaked wheat from the same company in the mash before, with great success, but I went and boiled the rye, turning it to glue. I then proceeded to throw this glue, along with the rest of the grist into my mash tun.

I should mention at this stage that I use a slightly quirky method of mashing. I mash in an electrim boiler (polypropylene bucket and electric element) with bungee cord securing a 1 meter square of muslin to the neck, to form a grain bag, suspended inside. It is primitive and has many disadvantages, but it requires relatively little storage space and I usually get efficiencies in the low 80's.

Anyway. With this gloopy, adjunct-filled mess in my mash tun I decided that a protein rest might be a good idea, so I added hot water and got the mash to 55°C. I held it there for 30 minutes before I realised that I had failed to adjust my water in any way.

My water is great for light copper to dark brown beers without any adjustment, but this grist lacks the dark malts which acidify the mash to the pH required for the enzymes to work properly. Out came the pH meter and sure enough the mash pH was far too high. Twenty minutes of playing with Calcium Chloride and Calcium Sulphate got the mash to the right pH. I held the temperature at 55°C for a further 20 minutes here, as the earlier protein rest was at the wrong pH.

The addition of boiling water got the mash to 61°C, a nice spot in the middle of the saccharification rest for Beta Amylase. I checked the pH again at this stage, just to be sure. Well within tolerance. Grand.

30 minutes later I decide that it is time to raise the temperature to the next saccharification rest, to let Alpha Amylase have a go at the starches.

In retrospect, my next action makes me wonder if I hit my head on the way home from work, or something. In order to raise the temperature I decided to use the electric element in the bucket. Yes, I switched on an electric element immersed in starch laden wort. Not a bright idea. After a few minutes it cut out and I realised what I had done.

Four decoctions later, I had the temperature up to 69°C, the middle of the Alpha Amylase rest. I would normally expect to hold the temperature here for 40 minutes at most, but it took a full 90 minutes at this temperature before I got a negative result for starch from an iodine test.

To make matters worse, the gloopy mash was coming back to haunt me. The two 55°C rests apparently hadn't done much to loosen up the mash and the run-off was pretty slow to start. Eventually it slowed to a trickle and I realised I had run up against one of the problems with my muslin sheet method: the cloth had become clogged with glutinous sludge.

A quick batch sparge, stir and recirculation got it moving again, but not for long. Eventually I decided that I had to improvise and used a large, two pronged fork (used for carving roasts) to reach down through the mash and poke some holes in the muslin. I could hear the run-off starting as I did this and poked a few more holes, which seemed to have the desired effect, until there was an ominous tearing sound and the entire mash disappeared down the rabbit hole. Bugger.

At this point I was rather glad that I believe in having some backup. Not much backup I grant you, but I habitually leave the hop strainer connected to the inside of the spigot on my boiler, when using it as a mash tun. This hop strainer formed a rudimentary manifold and allowed lautering to continue, albeit very slowly.

At least two and a half hours of hot water additions, stirring, recirculating, swearing and watching the slow trickling of wort went by before I got the volume I was looking for.

At this stage I would normally clean out the boiler and transfer the wort straight back into it, to get the boil started, but there was a bit of a complication. Thanks to my moment of complete and utter stupidity, when I switched on the boiler in an attempt to raise the temperature to the second saccharification rest, the element was covered in burnt-on starch. This, I know from previous experience, causes the element to cut out when it heats up. Not something you want happening when you are trying to boil wort. I now had to remove the element and clean it using vinegar (not as strange as it sounds -- it's an acid), steel wool and lots of elbow grease.

Eventually, I got the boiler back together and the boil started. Unexpectedly, the boil went without a hitch. It didn't spray boiling wort at me or anything. Nor did my wort chiller spontaneously explode while cooling the wort.

The hop schedule I used, for a calculated bittering of 18.4 IBU, was:

• 60 Minutes: 15g Perle (7.1% AA)
• 20 minutes: 20g Saaz (3% AA)
• 5 minutes: 20g Saaz (3% AA)

I ended up with 22 litres of wort at an O.G. of 1.052, which I entrusted to the care of a rehydrated pack of SafBrew WB-06 Wheat Beer yeast. Ironically, with everything that went wrong, I still ended up with an efficiency of 82%, which is about normal for my system.

The whole nightmare took about 11 hours, which is in the region of twice the time I expected to spend on the simple infusion mash wheat beer I had originally planned.

After fermentation and conditioning, this beer went into a keg, at a final gravity of 1.009. The samples I tasted before kegging were pretty good and exhibited some classic Weissbier flavours.

In order to avoid this kind of experience in the future I will:

1. Make sure that I actually have the ingredients I need, before brewday.
2. Adjust my water before I start mashing.
3. Put flaked grains straight into the mash without precooking.
4. Never, never, ever, switch on an electric element in a mash.

Had I even just done number 1 I would not have had the experience described above.