Brewed my first all-grain beer yesterday. Had a fantastic time doing it too, but there seems to have been a big problem.

My strike temperature was off a little, and I ended up settling out the mash at 156° instead of 151°. No biggie. I let it sit for 75 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes or so. The thermometer indicated only a 2° drop over the 75 minutes. Afterwards I fly sparged until I had 6 gallons in the brew pot.

I realized as soon as I moved the burner into place that the propane tank was a wee bit light. Turned out it was practically empty so I had to run to the U-Haul store and pick up some more. The boil went perfect with not even the slightest boil-over.

After the boil, I used my immersion chiller to cool off the wort. I sanitized the probe from the digital thermometer, hooked up the chiller to the sink, and let her rip. However, after 20 minutes (which every other time has cooled it down to 80°), the thermometer was still reading 135°. Curious, I chucked the probe into a cup of ice water. It read the ice water as 91°. @!$(*%!!!! My thermometer was busted.

So God knows what the mash temps really were. I can’t even get a gravity reading as the hydrometer would just bottom out.

So the SOB is sitting in the fermenter, happily bubbling away. What I plan on doing is (a) purchasing some analog thermometers and a new digital one, (b) calibrate the son of a bitches against each other, (c) and brew again this weekend using the yeast cake from the hosed brew. The ingredients are cheap so it’s not like a big loss.